Genre Analysis
Does it challenge viewers to "read" the sitcom - "Friends"?

          Today, TV programs are routinely classified as genres in TV Guides. This means the television audiences know what to expect from each particular genre; hence, they tend to “read” the visual text (i.e. the TV program) without thinking. Genre analysis is to “look at the relationship between a genre and a particular example of the genre” (Grossberg 1998, page160). For example, “Friends” is a situation comedy and fits into the genre of sitcom. The subject program supports the features of a sitcom and enables the participants in the audience to interpret the messages without challenges.

          “A genre is a class of texts that have something in common” claims Grossberg (page159). In reality, it is seldom hard to find texts that are exceptions to any given definition of a particular genre, the same holds true for the sitcom “Friends”. Nevertheless, there are different ways for defining a genre based on “a shared set of conventions”, “the underlying structure of values that genre puts into play”, and “a particular set of intertextual relations” according to Grossberg (page161). Hence, both the connotation embodied by genre and a set of cultural, social, historical and industrial contexts can be seen as one of the forces which contributes to genre analysis. Inevitably, “Friends” is embedded in this particular context as we can see the middle-class setting and life styles in the show reassuring the value of the mass audience. Since this analysis study is only designed to focus on the particular area that shows how well “Friends” fit into the situation comedy, in depth discussion on other two dimensions will thus be eliminated.

          Television is a major form of entertainment in the world today and a major component of North American life. TV might be metaphorically visualized as a mirror in which the viewing family sees an idealized, ideologically distorted reflection of themselves represented in a typical genre of TV: soap opera. Where TV represents typical American families, a sitcom of soap opera symbolically represents an image of the American family to itself. The situation comedy, defined by a consensus from its producing end to receiving front, is a commercial product of popular culture with salient characteristics: “the half-hour format, the basis in humor, the problem of the week” (Fever, 1992 Page?). NBC’s series show “Friends” is one of the most popular sitcoms on television, and is based on the theme of the comradery among six friends, three women (Monica, Phoebe and Rachel) and three men (Ross, Joey and Chandler) living in Greenwich Village, New York City. The emphasis of the show is on verbal and physical actions instead of emotion or development of human nature.

          However, just what is it that constitutes the situation comedy? In general, some characteristics of the situation comedy include the plots, characters, settings, and thought.

          "The representational structure of the sitcom is more straightforward than its dramatic counterpart" (Chandler 1997). Time, always of great value in so rigidly structured an art form as television, is thus saved, hence, the problem is introduced very early in the program and the plot is set in motion. The plots for many episodes will involve a disruption of the status quo by one of the characters attempting to break with the middle-class mores (Fever 1992, page?). For example, in an episode of “Friends”, Joey is offered and accepts a job as an actor with a full nudity scene in a movie. Even though he decides to go for the job, he is not happy, and only regains his peace of mind and contentment when he returns to his usual way of life. There are three types of characters in situation comedies: main, supporting, and transient. The main characters are those that carry the bulk of the action. In general, there is only one main character, but there may be as many as six as in “Friends”. Supporting characters are members of the regular cast who support the main character and often act as foils. Also, there is extensive use of transients who only show up once or twice in an episode.

          The plots for “Friends” are plots of action identified as one of the salient features of a sitcom. That is, the emphasis is on the action rather than on characterization or thought. The complications of sitcom are flaws in the plan to solve the problems or natural outgrowths of the problem. Another essential element of sitcom is the crisis. The climax is the highest point of physical and verbal action. The protagonist has gone to his farthest extreme in mistake, misunderstanding, attempt to influence, or to cope with the unforeseen occurrence. A result must be obtained, either vindicating his actions or showing him his error, thus achieving resolution.

          The resolution of sitcom plots in most cases is a restoration of the status quo. In the same examples, once the protagonists have admitted what they were doing, the facts were told and the status quo restored. For example: Chandler and Monica rekindle romance after their fight with each other about their bad weekend. The denouement of the sitcom is crucial as it shows that the status quo has been reestablished. It can occur very quickly. In the above example, it is simply Ross and Rachel embracing after he reassures her that their friendship won’t change. More often, though it is a short scene showing that all is once again as it was at the beginning, with everyone happy and laughing together.

          As can be seen in the above examples, the orientation of the plots is toward trivial incidents rather than character or thought. The problems are superficial and often invented by the characters themselves, and are minor occurrences happening to the main or a supporting character leading to further action. All of these features are exactly what the audiences expect from “Friends” and a situation comedy. Therefore, it becomes relatively easy for them to interpret or “read” the program.

          Although Fever claims that characters of a sitcom evolve over time with a growth based on the “awareness of its own past … in the continuing serial” (Fever 1992, page?), usually, characters in a sitcom are superficial. That is, though they have the appearance of humanity, certain characteristics are exaggerated in a sitcom for comic effect abandoning the development of human nature. The motivations and emotions that are shown by the characters are few and simple, basically those necessary to continue and illustrate the action. Joey is an actor and usually rejected at casting interviews. Even when he gets the job, his stage performance is very dreadful. Hence, Joey always has to struggle with his acting job. Rachel is a waitress at a coffee shop and she usually makes mistakes. This proves that she is incompetent outside of her interest in shopping and dating. In the last ten years, women have become more and more important in the workplace. Sitcoms now have the professional workingwomen role based on the cultural and industrial changes and Rachel reflects these social changes when she finally proves her talent in a company somehow related to fashion and clothing. Motivations can be jealousy, greed, envy, curiosity, fear, etc., but they are never complex and rarely mixed. The same is true of the emotions shown: they are basic--grief, fear, excitement, love, etc.--and usually exaggerated for comic effect.

          Characterizations are generally shallow, the writer emphasizing certain characteristics and ignoring others. For instance, Chandler is the comedian of the gang and uses "humor as a form self-defense", he's great with one liners and he has one for every occasion. Joey is a struggling actor whose has a very low IQ. When asked what he would do if he was omnipotent (God like qualities), he confused it with impotence and said that he would commit suicide. Monica is Ross' younger sister who is obsessed with cleanliness, cooking and sex. Rachel is the most popular of all the friends. She used to be a daddy’s girl and lived off of her father’s money. When she first moved into Monica's flat she decided to "get one of those job things" and got a job as a waitress at “Central Perks” and is probably the worst waitress in the world. Phoebe is a masseuse who sings in her spare time at “Central Perks”. She is the weird one of the gang and comes out with some really unusual comments. Ross is Monica's brother and Rachel’s former boyfriend. Even though he has the highest educational background as a paleontologist and the curator at the museum, his love life is a total failure: his ex-wife left him for her lesbian lover, his second ex-wife left him because he called out Rachel’s name at their marriage ceremony, and he dates his student who is ten years younger than him. All the characters are one dimensional, physically rather than emotionally motivated, yet fit the sitcom genre. Supporting characters in “Friends” are usually henchmen, dupes and straight men. The Ugly Naked Guy (who lives across the street) and Mr. Hackles, the strange neighbor below Monica’s apartment are examples of this. Transient characters in “Friends” are often unsympathetic, providing conflict with the main character or one of the supporting characters, or both of these at once. In the same episode discussed above, the hotel manager, who refuses to arrange another “ocean-view” room, complex the conflict between Chandler and Monica in the process of room switching.

          From all the examples above, one can easy to tell how “Friends” is well fitted into the sitcom genre. The flat and superficial characters help audiences to watch the show without much challenge.

          The settings for a sitcom, like the characters, are generally simple and functional, serving as a background for the action rather than being a part of it. They show little personality, either of their own or of the characters inhabiting them. They are kept to a minimum, usually just the home (the living room, kitchen, and occasionally a bedroom), and the main character's place of work. They are generally middle-class, occasionally lower-middle-class, but very rarely upper-class. The inheritance of middle-class value is thus designed for the purpose of reinforcing the mass audience’s milieu.

           The characters in sitcoms rarely seem to indulge in rational thought. At most, they devise schemes to accomplish their purposes and to solve their problems. Further consequences of their actions are either never considered or are shrugged off as unimportant. Their thought processes are also superficial, their motivations based on first impressions, appearances, and hasty conclusions. Ross automatically decides to stop seeing Rachel to rescue his second marriage while he doesn’t address the hidden problem of his marriage, i.e. that he is still in love with another woman; Joey swears to secrecy of Monica and Chandler’s relationship out of no real persuasive reason. Other examples are Monica, trying to spend a perfect weekend with Chandler, almost ruining their relationship by insisting on switching rooms and ignoring Chandler’s objection and Rachel struggles with her friendship with Ross only because she doesn’t want to fade out like Kip. Sitcom plots rarely have a theme, a point of view expressed or implied by the writer. Instead, the show uses action and humor for its own sake. The rigid structure of a sitcom is a major determinant for the plots constructed on comic actions. Therefore, audiences unconsciously and intuitively expect “the funny things that will happen this week” without rational confrontation.

          The language and music used in sitcoms are also generally simplistic, the emphasis being on physical actions, not verbal wit. It reflects the shallow characterizations found in most sitcoms, and is limited to only what is necessary for the plot. When a character is witty, it is usually done for effect. For example, Ross is a paleontologist, and often speaks in a very erudite fashion. However, when he does, the rest of the characters either make fun of him, or look at him with a blank stare, at which point he translates what he said into simplistic terms. The first auditory effect noticed on a sitcom is the sheer volume of the dialogues. There is hardly another type of television program on which the characters shout with such consistency. There is little or no use of background music and few sound effects. They almost invariably use a laugh track. There are four basic reasons to use a laugh track. First, people are more likely to laugh with someone else than they are to laugh when they are alone. Thus the track provides them with that crowd. However, the laugh track is not there just to be annoying, but is there for some purely, necessarily technical reasons. The laugh track is a major characteristic of the "music" in sitcoms.

           "Friends" as a sitcom is a basic, even simplistic, form of comedy, and the idea is to get laughs, not examine character or discuss social or personal problems. Consequently, audiences tend to perceive the “meaning” of this show without further challenges of interpreting the message. This show features action as the means by which humor is created, and little or nothing is placed in the way of it (neither setting nor diction, and little thought is given to possible outcomes of action). The genre of sitcom is a useful frame for analyzing TV programs, because it encourages the examination of ways in which characteristics of a show are shaped by this particular genre; hence, viewers are approached to empathize with the message systematically.

          While the above discussions have focused on the properties of a sitcom genre in shaping the show - “Friends”, it is important not to neglect that genres exist within the context of a set of economic relations and practices to reinforce the audiences’ values. The economic factor is the crucial attribute to the profitable genre of TV repertories, like the sitcom; thus, genre analysis in general broaden the sitcom as a genre besides the above discussion.

Grace Cuiming Li

REFERENCE

A.Silverblatt, Media Literacy, Westport, CO: Praeger, 1995

Chandler, Daniel (1997): (www document) URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/TF12710/visper05.html

Grossberg, L, E. Wartella & D. Whitney. “The interpretation of meaning” in Media Making: Mass media in a popular culture. CA; Sage Publications. 1998.

Jane Fever, Charade of Discourse, Resembled. University of Northern Carolina Press. 1992

Stefan Herrmann, Do we learn to ‘read’ television like a kind of ‘language’? (www document) URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/sfh9901.html

Wellek and Warren, The Theory of Literature