What's So Funny?

What’s So Funny? Television Comedy by Generation

Television situational comedies and comedy sketch shows are designed to please a particular demographic. The shows with the most longevity are time relevant to the audience for which it is written. The writers success is measured by whether or not they have moved their audience to laughter. But why is it funny? What makes the audience laugh? One may argue that we are born with a degree of what appeals to us comedically, or perhaps we laugh at what our parents have told us is funny and what they laugh at. But when you analyze the formats of popular comedy television shows, we begin to see they are a result of the environment in which we are surrounded, both familial and societal. And what each generation finds humorous has and will continue to change with each generation.

By comparing and contrasting the various generations and their impact on sketch comedy and sit-coms, it becomes apparent that what we think is funny has changed over time and can be attributed to what is happening in our lives and in the world. Using examples of race, profanity, sexual comfort levels, violence and politics, we see a change in what is considered to be taboo subjects, and that which was once considered unacceptable behavior becomes acceptable over time. When examining several comedies shows throughout the decades, beginning with ‘the golden age of television” (1948-1959), in which some of the most popular shows were The Donna Reed Show, Father Knows Best and the Danny Thomas Show, to more recent shows in the 2000’s like Modern Family, Big Bang Theory, The Office, and others, some patterns begin to emerge. There are so many ways we see that comedic appeals have changed. From subtle to brazen differences, we see that people find humor in what they have experienced, what makes them comfortable, and sometimes with what we find discomfort in, because it is familiar or time relevant.

Let’s take a look at the shows people found funny and entertaining from each decade. Take into consideration the physical settings, the themes, the family make up, the gender roles, and the type of humor the writer is going for. You will see that what may have been a staple comedy in one decade would never be a hit in another time. Something your grandmother found hysterical in 1951, has not aged well when you watch it now. What is missing? Likely it is not having the experience of living in the time the show aired

“In the early 1950s television was still a developing medium and the sitcom was yet to be established as a coherent format” (White). Earliest sit-coms such as the Honeymooners were still using pratfalls, one-liners, and physical comedy made popular in vaudeville, but Lucille Ball brought that to the tv screen and incorporated her own spin on it. It is October 15, 1951, and the debut episode of “I Love Lucy” is playing on a massive 16” black and white television screen in nearly half a million homes across the country. The studio audience is laughing at Lucy’s antics as are those watching from the comfort of their living rooms. It is not the first comedy show to air on the newly available home TV set, but it will break barriers not seen before in the genre of a televised show: a female titular starring role in a situational comedy. Most of the shows in the early 50’s centered around a male character. The wife is generally there to say ‘yes dear” and deliver the straight lines to the male. Lucy broke that barrier; however, the show’s format of male and female roles was consistent throughout this decade. As in the shows I previously mentioned, Ricky and Lucy Ricardo are typical spouses of this generation. “The role of women in the family was further gendered. Women’s magazines, psychologists, and a variety of other opinion makers asserted that child rearing and house management were their primary, full-time responsibilities” (Cinotto). In shows like Leave it to Beaver, Mrs. Cleaver did all her household duties in a dress, heels, and pearls. and children were to be seen and not heard. Leave it to Beaver and Dennis the Menace were a couple of the few shows that had a child as the title character. Again, reflective of life in the 50’s and what was acceptable on tv, the antics the boys got into consisted of pulling a girl’s braids, breaking a window, or hiding a fish in a bathtub. You would not see an unruly or rude child on tv in the 50’s. The audience would not have tolerated that. Television families of the 1950’s all featured a nuclear and intact family; father, mother, children. Thanks to the economic boon on the heels of post war America, the average American income had doubled from 1929 to the 1950’s and “more Americans than ever before or ever since achieved the dream meal that Norman Rockwell had so convincingly depicted” (Cinotto). TV was sit-coms were a direct reflection of the American Dream everyone was trying to achieve.

Sometime in the early 60’s we began to see a couple of changes in the sit-com format. Some changes as subtle as Mary Tyler Moore fighting the directors of the Dick Van Dyke show to be able to wear pants on the show. GASP! A more obvious change that occurred in the 1960’s was the introduction of shows that were not family focused. Many silly shows came out in this decade, like Gilligan’s Island, Get Smart, The Beverly Hillbillies to name a few. The only family focused hits were odd families like The Munsters or the Addams Family. Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie were extremely popular with a nose-twitching witch and head nodding genie as the stars. Mr. Ed featured a talking horse. What made these ridiculous concepts funny in the 60’s and yet seem so ridiculous now? Could it be that these types of shows were meant as a distraction from what was going on in the world? The 1960’s were a tumultuous time in the United Sates. There was a civil rights movement, assassinations of political leaders, the war in Vietnam, women’s liberation movements, protests and demonstrations on a daily basis consuming the news. In the book, Now That’s Funny, the authors present some theories by the famed psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud. Freud described several types of humor and when and why we use it. One of his theories is that we use humor as a way to deal with something painful, or to relieve tension. Could the creators of these shows have been giving the people a way to find humor and laughter in a world that was changing all around them? This would certainly fit into the distraction theory. The shelf life of most of the shows that were big hits in the 60’s was an average of 5 years. Perhaps just long enough for the audience to see through the ridiculous concepts as they moved into the seventies.

The 1970’s saw some of the biggest changes ever in the format of situational comedies. As our social and family elements began shifting, the tv demographics changed along with them. The 70’s introduced the concept of single parent families. But even as divorce became more common in real life in this era, it would be a while before that was reflected on screen. Single parents on tv were widows and widowers such as the parents in The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Sanford and Son and Different Strokes. The idea of a divorce on tv sometimes was a major caveat on changing a show’s concept. The creators of The Mary Tyler Moore show wanted their star to be a newly divorced woman finding a new beginning moving to another town. The studio executives said the audience would think of it as her character from the Dick van Dyke Show, Laura Petrie divorcing her tv husband, Rob Petrie According to the Jennifer Armstrong, the author of Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, the executives said that it would never go over for the viewers. So, she was rewritten as a single woman redefining her life and career. This was one of the first shows to feature a single woman who was financially and emotionally independent and out on her own. Mary’s best friend, Rhoda, is a free-spirited New Yorker who takes Mary under her wing and shows her what it is to be an uninhibited woman in this era. The show “is clearly about one person living in and coping with the world in the 70’s”, writes the author of Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, which was ‘even tougher when you’re 30, single, and female” (Armstrong). Remember, this was the same time women’s movements were in full swing, birth control was becoming easily accessible with the pill and women were becoming more sexually active as well as independent It was subtle on tv in the early part of the decade, but it is addressed more often near the end. Many topics that were once considered taboo on television are brought to the forefront of shows in the 70’s. In All in the Family, they pushed so many boundaries talking about civil rights, war, sex, politics, and racism because these were the things that were being discussed on the news and in people’s homes. Television went from not saying words like sex or pregnant, to Archie Bunker’s family talking about all of those things plus protests, drugs, and civil rights. Much of comedic appeal is derived from pushing the boundaries and the limits of what has been acceptable into the ‘new’ acceptable. “If there were no limits would there be comedy?” (Neuwirth)

Another noticeable change on the sit-com format to take place in the 70’s was the inclusion of shows with people of color. TV shows of the 50’s and 60’s did not feature black characters other than small parts in which they were negatively stereotyped. In her article Laughing Matters; understanding film, television, and radio comedy, author Christine Ehrick puts it succinctly when she says, “Representations of race and racism in comedy has changed over time”. This point can be found in popular shows of the decade featuring black main characters. Sanford and Son featured a black junk store owner and his son, Good Times focused on a working-class black family, and a huge break out show a spin off from All in the Family was the Jeffersons. This was the first time an African-American Family is portrayed with an elevated financial status. This show also featured a mixed-race couple which was unheard of previously on network television. It was a reflection of the times in which this was created. Even though racism persisted, there were more open discussions about it and the concept of mixed-race couples and friendships was becoming increasingly more common. Another mixed-race family focused on Webster, the diminutive black orphan adopted by white parents. The inclusion of African-American families in more traditional roles from middle class to upper middle class held fast throughout the 80’s and well into the 90’s. Sit-coms with the well-to do Dr. Huxtable and his attorney wife on The Cosby Show started the trend in 1982 and it went well into the 1990’s with shows like Family Matters with its comfortable working class home life and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which showcased a wealthy black family. As explained in the article. Laughing Across the Color Barrier, the author’s give a sweeping view across the decades of people of color indeed moving up economically in the US, but does not suggest that “that the American Dream is accessible to people of color” as a norm. Shows like In Living Color were geared more towards a commonality of how both whites and blacks view black people. They were all about putting the racism right in our faces, not downplaying it. The author contends that by being upfront and out loud, it made racism easier to confront and address. (Schulman)

In the 1980’s and 90’s stand-up comedy was gaining a steady foothold in American comedy. It had moved from the small circuit clubs into television specials. Comedians were regularly showcased on popular variety shows and talk shows like the Tonight Show and The Late Show. It was an obvious segue for stand-up comics to take their comedy to the sit-com format. The 90’s saw a deluge of shows centered around these comics. Bill Cosby, who had decades of success in stand-up, was still going strong with the Cosby Show into 1992. Jerry Seinfeld was a huge success during his 9-year run from 1989-1998 playing himself on Seinfeld.

Roseanne Barr started as a stand-up comic on talk shows and found success on Roseanne from 1988-1997 basically playing the same persona she did in her stand-up routine. The format for these comics to basically portray themselves was a successful formula for others as well, such with The Drew Carrey Show, Ray Romano in Everybody Loves Raymond, Tim Allen in Home Improvement and Kevin James on The King of Queens. The familiar presence of the stars made the audience fell like these were real people, people we knew and cared about. Some were hits for so long, many continuing past the end of the 90’s. Why were these stan- up comics so successful in bringing their comedy to the television sit-com format? According to the article. “Winning Over the Audience:” to be a successful stand up, you must develop a sense of ‘trust’ in your audience. This happens when the comic sticks to a persona, or a ‘bit’ that the audience comes to expect from them. These comics were able to take those personas they had defined and build a show around them. The shows these stars brought to the small screen were based completely on the characters they experienced on the stage. Having that familiarity turned out to be a proven winning formula as those shows all lasted many years.

An interesting pattern that I found while looking at popular shows from the early to mid- 2000’s, was the absence of laugh tracks and live audiences. I selected several shows that did not provide laughter; Scrubs, Arrested Development, Malcolm in the Middle, Brooklyn Nine-Nine but relied solely on the home viewer to decide what was funny. Taking this a step further, several shows actually invited the viewer into the set, breaking the 4th wall and making us feel a part of what was going on. The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family all involved the characters speaking directly into the camera as though they were being interviewed and fully aware at all times that they were being watched. It does not seem coincidental to me that this is a popular format at the same time social networking is at an all time high, as well as reality shows. Have we become such a voyeuristic society that even sit-coms need to make us feel like we are part of something bigger than just our own lives? This is the current time in which we live, where everyone and everything is up for public consumption. Watching these kinds of shows makes the audience feel like they are always one step ahead of the other characters, like we are in on a secret. This is the same tool Alfred Hitchcock used in films like Rope and Rear Window as well as the main tool used in the film, The Truman Show. As Peter McGregor writes in his article, “The Truman Show as a Study of ‘The Society of the Spectacle.’”, “it’s about us, as an audience—finding ourselves as something more than just spectators”.

Studying the genre of situational comedies through plot and character development from each decade, there becomes an establish a pattern and/or cycle: what is acceptable in life is acceptable on television, and what is acceptable on television becomes acceptable in life. The television comedy is a reflection of the times in which they are written and we direct the theme at the same time we are being directed by it. The decade each of us grew up in obviously puts us all in specific age categories. An article in the Washington Post sums up a study that was done where researchers showed clips from television shows to various groups according to age; young, middle-aged and older adults that showed aggressive behavior in their approach to humor. The youngest groups found it very humorous and entertaining, and the percentage of those it appealed to declined into each older age group. The older adults did not find humor when it was at the expense of others. This correlates with my theory that people who lived during the earlier generations of television humor were looking more towards comfort and stress-free comedy in their sit-coms of choice. However, the study's lead author, Jennifer Tehan Stanley, who is the assistant professor at the University of Akron, says, "It’s important to consider, when you see age differences, not to always go to a deficit model”, as in not putting a definitive label on age-appropriate humor. “It’s about what works for you and what helps you to function in your social and emotional domain” (Izadi).

Works Cited

Abrahams, Daniel. “Winning Over the Audience: Trust and Humor in Stand‐Up Comedy.” Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, vol. 78, no. 4, Fall 2020, doi:10.1111/jaac.12760. Clovis Community College Online Library. Accessed 28 November 2021

Armstrong, Jennifer. “Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted”. 2013. New York

Cinotto, Simone. “‘Everyone Would Be around the Table’: American Family Mealtimes in Historical Perspective, 1850–1960.” New Directions for Child & Adolescent Development, vol. 2006, no.111, Spring 2006. doi:10.1002/cd.153. Clovis Community College Online Library Accessed 5 December 2021

Desberg, Peter and Jeffery Davis. “Now That’s Funny!”. 2017. New York.

Ehrick, Christine. “Laughing Matters: Understanding Film, Television and Radio Comedy.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television, vol. 34, no. 1, Mar. 2014, doi:10.1080/01439685.2013.872452. Clovis Community College Online Library. Accessed 10 November, 2021

Izadi, Elahe. “What’s So Funny? Depends on Your Age”. www.washingtonpost.com. October 9, 2014

McGregor, Peter. “The Truman Show as a Study of ‘The Society of the Spectacle.’” Australian Screen Education, no. 32, Winter 2003. Clovis Community College Online Library. Accessed 6 December 2021

Neuwirth, Allan. “They’ll never put That on the Air”. 2006. New York.

Schulman, Norma Miriam. “Laughing across the Color Barrier: In Living Color.” Journal of Popular Film & Television, vol. 20, no. 1, Spring 1992, p. 2. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01956051.1992.9943957. Clovis Community College Online Library Accessed 3 December, 2021

White, Rosie. “Funny Peculiar: Lucille Ball and the Vaudeville Heritage of Early American Television Comedy.” Social Semiotics, vol. 26, no. 3, June 2016. doi:10.1080/10350330.2015.1134826. Clovis Community College Online Library. Accessed 11 November 2021