As someone who has not seen a ton of 1950s television, some of the references in this week’s reading are a bit lost on me. I plan on leaving a much longer reading related post either tonight or tomorrow, but I wanted to try to get a bit of 1950s television conversations going before Friday. I think that the episodes we watched in class both provided some interesting intersections with the readings and offered some points or questions about narrative (which aren’t fully addressed in some of these readings). Basically I would love to hear from anybody with love of 1950s sitcoms!
As I was reading Lipsitz, I found it helpful that he provides numerous examples of how different shows work out a variety of different consumer insecurities (which stem from post-Depression anxiety). His example of Mama on p.101 seems to be a particularly effective example of “putting the borrowed moral capital of the past at the service of the values of the present.” While Lipsitz is focusing on the ways in which historical memory is reworked in television to serve the needs of capital, it seems to me that the episode of The Honeymooners screened in class works out consumer insecurities in a different fashion (one which particularly resonates with Mimi White’s chapter on the Home Shopping Network). Therefore, if Lipsitz is talking about the role of history in the construction of the consumer, is there a way that we can talk about how taste functions within these shows as well? The Honeymooners episode screened in class seems to set up a binary between “good” consumer objects (tv, washing machine, vacuum – all the objects that cannot be obtained) versus the “bad” object of the 85-in-1 corn remover/can opener/paring knife/thingy. While the humor from the episode is derived from the viewer’s ability to clearly identify the uselessness of the item, which in turn validates the utility of items such as the television, vacuum, etc and the viewer’s role as discerning consumer.
Lastly, Lipsitz also discusses the way in which the narrative of many of these shows can often be resolved by consumer products (p.81). My comment on narrative seems to depart a bit from this analysis, but I found it curious that in both Make Room for Daddy and The Burns and Allen show that the narrative action seemed to be primarily driven by the female actions and decisions. As I said before, I have very little frame of reference for 1950s television, but it seemed curious to me that the narrative was primarily driven by the mother.
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