1 Lecture 02: Back When Ethnic Was Funny The Goldbergs (CBS 1949-56) Amos ‘n” Andy (CBS, 1951-53...
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1 Lecture 02: Back When Ethnic Was Funny The Goldbergs (CBS 1949-56) Amos ‘n” Andy (CBS, 1951-53 ) The Beulah Show (CBS, 1950- 53)
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Transcript of 1 Lecture 02: Back When Ethnic Was Funny The Goldbergs (CBS 1949-56) Amos ‘n” Andy (CBS, 1951-53...
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Lecture 02:Back When Ethnic Was Funny
The Goldbergs (CBS 1949-56) Amos ‘n” Andy (CBS, 1951-53 )
The Beulah Show (CBS, 1950-53)
Daniel Bernardi
Every lecture/Power Points starts with this page. The title is 44 pt Arial red. Below the title should be a picture followed by a caption. Captions are in 14 pt Arial black. Every image MUST have a caption that includes, if approrpiate, its title and credits (copyright). If it's an artistic work, it should include the artist;s name as well. The art's name should be a hyperlink to his or her website or a website that provides greater detail about the artist.
Lesson 02 Agenda• Last Time on FMS 300…
• What is an Ethnicom?– Form & Function– THEORETICAL TERM ALERT
• The Meaning of Memory– Why Reset US Cultural Mindset?
– How Did TV Help Out?
• The Rise & Fall of the Ethnicom
• Let’s Watch Some TV!– Beulah, Amos ‘n’ Andy, The
Goldbergs/Molly
– Pre-Suburban Madonna: Ladies with Chutzpah
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Life with Luigi (CBS, 1952-1953) Life of Riley (Dumont, 1949-50; NBC 1953-58)
Daniel Bernardi
The third slide of every lecture/Power Point is "Lesson Agenda." I recommend dividing each lesson into three sections, so that there are three bullets on this slide - one per section of the lecture. I do not recommend including sub-bullets on this slide. Keep it simple. Here you are pointing students to the general outline of what they will be hearing and reading in this respective lecture.
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Section 1: Last Time on FMS 300:
Insert Image Here
Add Image
Caption w/ Credits
Here
Daniel Bernardi
Once slide three is complete, you can divide your lecture according to the three bullets/sections listed in that slide (again, I recommend three). Each section has its own header slide. Under Section 1 (or 2 or 3), you'll add the title of that section. That title correspond to the respective bullet in slide three.
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Highlights:
• Why Study Television and Cultural Studies?– Cultural Artifact, Industrial Product, Creative Pursuit
– Reflects & Refracts American Popular Consciousness
• Radio Sets Trajectory TV– 1948: Industry, Politics,
Culture
– Television: first and foremost,
a commercial medium.
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Section 2What is an Ethnicom?
Mama (CBS, 1949-56)
Daniel Bernardi
Once slide three is complete, you can divide your lecture according to the three bullets/sections listed in that slide (again, I recommend three). Each section has its own header slide. Under Section 1 (or 2 or 3), you'll add the title of that section. That title correspond to the respective bullet in slide three.
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Form• An Ethnicom* is a situation comedy that:
– Provides specific performances of class, race and ethnicity– Based on radio programs that were proven successes (or spin-
offs from them).
Similar to Kitchen Sink Comedies like The Honeymooners (which foregrounds class rather than ethnicity or race), these urban domestic comedies are usually based in the home (minimal number of setups).
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Function• An Ethnicom provides:
– Varying directives on striving for a piece of the American Dream for different populations rooted in specifically coded performances of class, race and ethnicity coming.
– In other words, these programs supplied
social instruction for those outside of the desirable “norm”: “how-to-guide” for middle-classness.
THEORETICAL TERM ALERT• Culture: a whole social process, in which men and women define
and shape their lives.
• Ideology: is a set of aims and ideas that directs one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be a comprehensive vision, a way of looking at things (as in common sense, philosophical, political and/or social terms), a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society (a 'received consciousness' or product of socialization).
Who was the desired and desirable audience?
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THEORETICAL TERM ALERT
• Cultural Hegemony: Antonio Gramsci’s concept which contends that a culturally-diverse society can be ruled or dominated, by one of its social classes.
• A key element in this dominance of one social group (i.e. the ruling class) over all others is the notion that the ideologies of the ruling class come to be seen as the norm and perceived to serve—and include—everyone when only those in the dominant group actually benefit.
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THEORETICAL TERM ALERT
• Since these norms are seen as common sense, and natural and, even those who are considered Other and are excluded from the ideological and economic comforts by dominant ideology to the dominant group still buy into the beliefs systems—sometimes with more vigor than those for whom inclusion is a given.
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Section 3The Meaning of Memory
(and How To Change It)
Why
Reset
US
Cultural
Mindset?
• “Meaning of Memory”--George Lipsitz*
– Employs German sociologist and philosopher, Jürgen Habermas’ concept of legitimation crisis.
– Historically, without the internalized values (read: work ethic/fiscal prudence), which could restrain consumer demands while reinforcing the ethic of work, capitalism could not flourish.
– However, the crisis occurs when the legitimacy of those values come into conflict with the growth of the capitalist economy and consumer culture.
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Responding to the CrisisLearning to Consume:
When you have only been taught to conserve, ration and save, how do you learn to CONSUME?
Daniel Bernardi
Each section can have as many slides as neccessary, though I recommend no less than 6 and no more than 9. This is because you want your lectures to run at least 30 minutes... ideally, depending on if you have students look at clips or do excersise, 45 minutes. And you never want too much info on any one slide. Don't overload the students with info. Use the bullets and sub-bullets as pointing divices. These divices will also trigger what you record for audio. In your audio, you will want to elaborate, of course, which means that the bullet is really a reference mark for both you and the student.You can also have as many or few bullets and subbullets on each slide. This one has three main bullets each with two subbullets by way of example.
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The medium remains an
ideal tool for tweaking the national
collective social memory.
How Did TV Help Out?Television always has the ability to help rewrite how we think of the past and the present—and the past in the present.
Daniel Bernardi
Each section can have as many slides as neccessary, though I recommend no less than 6 and no more than 9. This is because you want your lectures to run at least 30 minutes... ideally, depending on if you have students look at clips or do excersise, 45 minutes. And you never want too much info on any one slide. Don't overload the students with info. Use the bullets and sub-bullets as pointing divices. These divices will also trigger what you record for audio. In your audio, you will want to elaborate, of course, which means that the bullet is really a reference mark for both you and the student.You can also have as many or few bullets and subbullets on each slide. This one has three main bullets each with two subbullets by way of example.
Why Norton and Alice Want a TV and why Sapphire wants a Dining Room Table
• Lipsitz explains how ethnicoms (The Goldbergs, Mama and Amos ‘n’ Andy) illustrate one of television’s directives in post-war America:
The Embourgeosiement of the Working Class
• This is the process by which the blue-collar, ethnic, apartment dwellers learn the values of suburbia and consumerism.
• Thus, with consumption comes the promise of social mobility, the ability to be like the other nuclear suburban families (conformity) without fear of exclusion, discrimination or persecution (containment).
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Towards Consumer Culture
• What to Do?
– Erase the impulses of rationing, saving, making due inscribed during the Great Depression & WWII
– Replace them with the desire and “duty” to consume in the fifties (and beyond).
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Daniel Bernardi
Each section can have as many slides as neccessary, though I recommend no less than 6 and no more than 9. This is because you want your lectures to run at least 30 minutes... ideally, depending on if you have students look at clips or do excersise, 45 minutes. And you never want too much info on any one slide. Don't overload the students with info. Use the bullets and sub-bullets as pointing divices. These divices will also trigger what you record for audio. In your audio, you will want to elaborate, of course, which means that the bullet is really a reference mark for both you and the student.You can also have as many or few bullets and subbullets on each slide. This one has three main bullets each with two subbullets by way of example.
We Can Buy It! “For Americans to accept the new world
of the fifties consumerism, they had to break with the past.”
--George Lipsitz
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Daniel Bernardi
Each section can have as many slides as neccessary, though I recommend no less than 6 and no more than 9. This is because you want your lectures to run at least 30 minutes... ideally, depending on if you have students look at clips or do excersise, 45 minutes. And you never want too much info on any one slide. Don't overload the students with info. Use the bullets and sub-bullets as pointing divices. These divices will also trigger what you record for audio. In your audio, you will want to elaborate, of course, which means that the bullet is really a reference mark for both you and the student.You can also have as many or few bullets and subbullets on each slide. This one has three main bullets each with two subbullets by way of example.
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Rise & Fall of the Ethnicom
• Cultural Hegemony & Televisual Reception– Programming histories
(and cancellations)
correspond to
shifts in network
strategies and/or
“public taste.” – Impact of Red Scare
Politics on Ethnic
ComedyLife with Luigi (CBS, 1952-1953)
Section 4: Let’s Watch Some TV!
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DownloadReading/Screening
Sheet 2 from Learning Tasks
Shooting Amos ‘n’ Andy (1951)
Daniel Bernardi
Once slide three is complete, you can divide your lecture according to the three bullets/sections listed in that slide (again, I recommend three). Each section has its own header slide. Under Section 1 (or 2 or 3), you'll add the title of that section. That title correspond to the respective bullet in slide three.
For Your Viewing Pleasure: The Beulah Show
• From The Background (Fibber McGee & Molly) to the “Big House” (her own show as the happy mammy)
• The 3 Beulahs (Two Bills & Two Orioles)• The Lack of Controversy over Beulah Pause Lecture & Watch
20Ethel Waters as Beulah #1 (ABC, 1950-52)
Beulah 2 (Hattie McDaniel) and Oriole (Ruby Dandridge) (1952)
Oriole (Ruby Dandridge) and Beulah #3 (Louise Beavers) (1952-53)
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In The Episode
• Post-War Mammy– Everybody Wants A “Beulah”– Questions of Verisimilitude: “She loves
her white chilluns” – Recognizing “Your Place” on the food
chain
• Cultural [Mis]Appropriation– Bill, Beulah & Donnie’s Hipster Cred
• No Big for NAACP– She’s Not Doing Day Work in Harlem– Class, Class, Crass (Let’s talk of Oriole)
For More Viewing Pleasure: The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show
• From “Dialect Humor” to Performative Blackface
• Blatz Sponsorship
• NAACP Protest
• Multiple Audiences,
Multiple Readings
Pause Lecture & Watch
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Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, above with hopefuls vying for parts in the Black-cast TV Show and, below, as their radio character alter egos, Amos and Andy.
The hard working Amos ( Alvin Childress ) and the hardly working Andy (Spencer Williams) in The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show (CBS, 1951-53)
In The Episode
• Social Mobility– Consumerism– Whose Harlem Was This?– Whose High Culture Is it Anyway?
• Kingfish & Andy– Tim Moore: The “Star” of the Show– And What of Amos?
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And finally… The Goldbergs
• Getrude Berg: Star & Show-runner• In The Bronx:The Goldbergs
• Tale of Two “Jakes”
Pause Lecture & Watch
The Goldbergs with Philip Loeb as Jake (left) Molly with Robert H. Harris as Jake (right)
Molly and Uncle David (Menasha Skulnik) in The Goldbergs.
Gertrude Berg and all of scripts that she penned for The Goldbergs.
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In The Episode• Teaching About Danger
– Generational Wisdom – (Uncle David, Molly &Rosalie) – Leather Jackets & Dungarees=J.D.
• Consumerism– My Life, My Broadloom– Education: the way to “Good Life”
• Containment– Gaps & Fissures in the
Suburban Shell– Happy Endings…Sort of
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The Real Punch of the 3 C’s
• The Three C’s– Consumerism– Conformity– Containment
QUESTION:
How do the 3 C’s relate
To Cultural Hegemony?
Daniel Bernardi
Each section can have as many slides as neccessary, though I recommend no less than 6 and no more than 9. This is because you want your lectures to run at least 30 minutes... ideally, depending on if you have students look at clips or do excersise, 45 minutes. And you never want too much info on any one slide. Don't overload the students with info. Use the bullets and sub-bullets as pointing divices. These divices will also trigger what you record for audio. In your audio, you will want to elaborate, of course, which means that the bullet is really a reference mark for both you and the student.You can also have as many or few bullets and subbullets on each slide. This one has three main bullets each with two subbullets by way of example.
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• Alice & Ralph– Companionate Marriage– The Shrew & The Schlub– Questions of Consumption
• Sapphire & Kingfish– Companionate Marriage– The Shrew & The Sambo?– Questions of Mobility
Pre-Suburban Madonna: Ladies with Chutzpah
Daniel Bernardi
Each section can have as many slides as neccessary, though I recommend no less than 6 and no more than 9. This is because you want your lectures to run at least 30 minutes... ideally, depending on if you have students look at clips or do excersise, 45 minutes. And you never want too much info on any one slide. Don't overload the students with info. Use the bullets and sub-bullets as pointing divices. These divices will also trigger what you record for audio. In your audio, you will want to elaborate, of course, which means that the bullet is really a reference mark for both you and the student.You can also have as many or few bullets and subbullets on each slide. This one has three main bullets each with two subbullets by way of example.
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Not Just Class, Not Just Race, Not Just Gender
• Socio-historical Baggage for Working Class Women
• Class, Race & the urban space
• Alice & Sapphire: Class & Agency
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Final Thoughts• How are race, ethnicity, class and gender
represented in sitcoms today?
• These shows had varying degrees of popularity with mass audiences in the age of the Big Three. Which comedies on TV achieve that today? Are they showing folks who are not middle or upper middle class?
• Again, think about how this lesson could relate to what shows you might want to write about.
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End of Lecture 02
Next Lecture:
Constructing Femininity in the Post War Era
Rocky & Martha in The Martha Raye Show (NBC, 1955-56)Ricky & Lucy in I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951-57)
