The sign of the basement is significant in that it literally represents the idea of drug use being ‘underground’ as it is illegal and not accepted by mainstream society. Although it was prevalent in the seventies, it was never spoken about in most contexts, but covertly understood, as though by tacit consent if it was not discussed, it did not exist. While some other television programs, such as Oz, explicitly depict drug use, they are socially situated in a nineties context where such portrayals are seen as more acceptable (perhaps due to the fact that most nineties parents are actually products of the very seventies culture of which drug use was a big part). The fact that drug use is represented overtly on Oz, while only ever implied in That 70’s Show is also probably a function of the time in which the show is aired, as well as the network it is aired on and the show’s intended audience, which is undoubtedly much younger than the inteded audience of Oz.

On That 70’s Show, the frequent ritual is never directly shown but only implied. The viewer knows that they are smoking drugs by the use of camera angles, the shots swing from character to character, all of whom are seated in a circle. It is almost as if the camera is intended to be the joint and as if the viewer sees each character from the angle of a joint being passed from person to person; we even see the characters upward from a camera angle below face level. But because on the denotative level, this practice is only ever hinted at by various clues which, in addition to the circular movement of the camera, include the characters' blank looks, hysterical laughing, mindless comments (especially Kelso's) and constant desire to snack, the viewer must have a good understanding of the social practice of smoking marijuana that the boys participate in, in order to understand the connotative significance.

Although we never see the drugs, to most of the show's viewing audience, it likely seems obvious exactly what the guys are doing. However, without an understanding of the drug-smoking ritual as well as the drugs side effects, the characters' seating arrangement would seem cryptic at best, as would their bizarre behaviour. The event is neither obvious nor intuitive without the assumption of a certain degree of requisite background knowledge. As Stefan Herrmann says, the text is not truly 'read' in the same way as a book. However, the understanding of a specific referent system of ritual is required in order to understand the signs involved in the portrayal of drug use. Once understood, the true meaning of the practice can be apprehended, but possibly only upon a number of viewings of the program, when the pattern begins to emerge.

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Written by Tamara Extian-Babiuk