TV & the Family: An Intricate Relationship
What sort of narrative functions does television utilize in order to promote these messages? Which aspects of the televisual apparatus assist in bringing these images to life? As one might assume, there is a wealth of knowledge available on all of these topics. Throughout this paper, I will attempt to create a basic overview of the ways in which television narrative constructs the family, how this construction affects real people, and how certain traditional narrative devices perpetuate this system.
Who is television’s primary audience?
Though it is difficult to find a single starting place for this discussion, it seems as if John Ellis, a British television researcher, would be our best choice. Ellis wrote a series of essays in the 1980s and 90s detailing the way in which television situates the family as its primary audience. He also discusses the mechanisms by which broadcast television has centered its narratives around the interests of this group.
“Broadcast TV dramas are constructed around the heterosexual romance in its normal and perverse forms, and the perpetual construction of standard families: wage-earning husband, housekeeping wife, two children. Situation comedies play on the discrepancies between this assumed norm and other forms of existence” (Ellis 136). Ellis continues by stating that in centering its narratives around the family, television “produces a sense of intimacy, a bond between the viewer’s conception of themselves (or how they ought to be) and the program’s central concerns” (136).
This intimacy is reinforced by other technical techniques such as the “liveness” of the images, the use of close-up shots, and sound continuity (136). Ellis states that television “creates a sense of familiarity between its fictions and its audience, a familiarity based on a notion of the familial which is assumed to be shared by all” (137).
How do television narratives use the family unit to promote its message?
In order to build upon Ellis’s theory that television’s primary audience is the nuclear family, we should examine the means by which televisual narratives conform to and perpetuate this idea. In her article entitled, “Narrative Form in American Network Television,” Jane Feuer describes the continuing serial and the episodic series as two television program formats by which the family unit is considered an integral part of the storytelling process.
She states that serial programs [ie: soap operas] rely upon a constant “disintegration of the family” (Feuer 105) in order to sustain their plotlines week after week, while the episodic series [ie: sitcoms] rely upon a constant “reintegration of the family” (105). These two programming formats are means by which television promotes its ideological objectives: “the need to repeat and the need to contain” (114). An example of the traditional sitcom that followed this format would be Norman Lear’s, “All in the Family,” throughout which the nuclear family was “beset from the outside by a variety of socially-derived problems.
This ideological conflict which each week would spring from a new source [âÂ?¦] would split the family apart [âÂ?¦] by the end of the episode, the specific ‘enigma of the week’ would be resolved” (107). Alternately, on continuing serials (a form typically employed by soap operas), conflict is rarely saved for the end of an episode – it is instead resolved in the middle, leaving room within the show to develop the next week’s conundrum. This is what keeps the audience coming back week after week; “disintegration must be the method of self-replication,” (112) Feuer states. “Integration into a happy family remains the ultimate goal, but it cannot endure for any given couple” (113).
Television’s reliance on these traditional narrative forms serves many purposes. Tania Modleski, in her article entitled, “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas” delves deeper into the phenomenon of soap operas and examines their role in creating an ideal notion of the family, and how this creation affects its viewers – primarily women with children who work within the home.
She notes that soap operas often consist of two or three families that are all interconnected (Modleski 85). These families stay together, regardless of how difficult situations become – this plot organization appeals to many mothers due to the fact that for many women, their family is their primary support group – soaps offer calming reassurance of the family’s inherent immortality (90). Soap operas construct the viewer as an “Ideal Mother” (92), a person who possesses greater wisdom than all of her children. She identifies with no one character exclusively. Also, soaps convince women that the most important thing is a united and happy family, yet at the same time, consoles them for failing to achieve this ideal (92).
What do families on television look like?
James Robinson and Thomas Skill, in their essay, “Five Decades of Families on Television: From the 1950s Through the 1990s,” point out that, “The fictional family on television, in its many forms, has become one of our most enduring benchmarks for making both metric and qualitative assessments of how the American family is doing in the real world. For many in the arena of public policy, the debate frequently points to television as a primary source for what is good or bad about the family institution” (Robinson and Skill 139).
The authors studied 630 different television programs that all centered around a family-based narrative and unearthed many observations about how television families match up against real life ones. They found that the predominant racial configuration of the families on television was white, the size of the TV family has increased slightly over time, most of the families were headed by married couples, and the most common family configuration was nuclear (158). The divorce rate on television has also jumped (much like the real divorce rate), with television much more likely to portray a single father as the head of a household as opposed to a single mother, which greatly contrasts with the real national figures (159).
They claim, “Although real families may not completely mirror TV families, it is clear that TV portrayals of the family are becoming more complex and diverse” (160), yet, “In the final analysis, this study of family portrayals suggests that television has been and remains clearly out of sync with the structural characteristics of real-world families” (161).
Other sociologists have also carried out studies dealing with the portrayal of families on television. Some theorists conclude that television is at best, a ‘close follower’ of real-world trends and lifestyles. They state that television is far more likely to reinforce traditional models of family than to promote non-conventional configurations (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1980). In terms of economics, Thomas and Callahan found that “for the families portrayed on television, money clearly does not buy happiness and that, in fact, relative poverty does” (186).
When discussing race relations, it helps to consider Sweeper’s study which found that members of African-American television families were more likely to come from broken homes than members of white families. Occupational status and educational achievement were also lower for black family members (Sweeper, 1984). In Atkins’ 20-year study of familial interaction on television, it was concluded that the problems, concerns, and program themes encountered by families in the 1980s were much more intricate and complex than the ones encountered by families of the 1960s (Atkins, 1986).
How do televisual representations of “family” impact real-life families?
There are many theories as to why televisual representations of the family have such an affect our own family experience. William Douglas, in his book entitled, “Television Families: Is Something Wrong In Suburbia?” discusses many of these reasons: first, viewers at home are privy to the often-hidden “day-to-day” rituals of another family, something rarely shown in the real world due to strict societal constraints on “appropriate” public and private behavior.
Secondly, “television portrayals are often considered realistic” (10) and “television families usually behave in ways that ‘make sense’ to viewers and are commonly defined as [âÂ?¦] behaving in ways that resonate with viewers” (10). Third, television depictions of family often resonate with real life families because they “describe relational circumstances about which viewers have little real-life knowledge” (11).
In the most basic sense, Douglas argues that television depictions of the family affect the way we see our own family experience because “they form a public record of the family and, as such, provide a consensual reality to viewers, a shared way of thinking about and interpreting family life and family relations” (12). Though despite the supposed ways in which we are shaped by these depictions, it should be noted that “viewers select strategically among available programming and, so, may well seek out families that look and behave like their own” (14).
In fact, David Morley, a foundational film and television theorist, has also stated that viewers are often drawn to characters that resemble themselves (Morley 1986).
In spite of the current debates surrounding television content, “the American family has always been infatuated by television” (Douglas 7). It is very important to note that in 1948, fewer than 1 in 200 homes had a television set. By 1956, over half had a set, and by 1962, nine out of ten homes were equipped with television (Andreasen, 1990). By 1983, daily family viewing time had exceeded seven hours per day. (Andreasen, 1990.)
Television viewing dominates the American family’s leisure time (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). This engagement with television is a unique phenomenon, as Gilder (1992) has observed: “Few people foresaw that television, more than any other force, would provide the unifying images that would define the national experience and consciousness” (Gilder 22).
Works Cited:
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(2) Atkins, G. “An Analysis of Family Interaction Styles as Portrayed on Television.”
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(5) Feuer, Jane. “Narrative Form in American Network Television,” High Theory/Low
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(7) Gilder, G. Life After Television. Norton & Co: New York. 1992.
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Everyday Experience. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hillsdale, NJ. 1990.
(9) Modleski, Tania. “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas,” Loving With a
Vengeance: Mass-Marketed Fantasies for Women. New York: Routledge, 1982. 85-109.
(10) Morley, David. Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure. Comedia. London.
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(11) Robinson, James D. and Skill, Thomas. “Five Decades of Families on Television: From
the 1950s through the 1990s.” Television and the American Family. ed. Jennings Bryant
Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2001. 139-162.
(12) Sweeper, G. “The Image of the Black Family and the White Family in American Prime-
time Television Programming, 1970-1980.” Doctoral dissertation, New York University. 1983. Dissertation Abstracts International, 44. 1964A.
(13) Thomas, S. and Callahan, B.P. “Allocating Happiness: TV Families and Social Class.”
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