Negative Messages on Primetime

Negative Messages on Primetime

Primetime consists primarily of a slew of negative messages fired rapidly at the uninformed viewer. Without a proper knowledge of these implicit messages, the average television viewer will see nothing but the cheesy explicit morals intentionally added by the networks in order to raise public approval. A careful analysis of three episodes selected randomly from the sea of sitcoms on public television can clearly expose the implied statements beneath the laughtracks. In the following essay, I will pull apart Dharma and Greg, "Kitty Dearest", Sabrina the Teenage Witch, "You Can't Twin", and Frasier, "Bla-Z-Boy" and explain how each of them follows a precise pattern of deception. First, a brief overview of the vast majority of sitcoms reveals a great tendency towards high socio-economic standing--an awfully strong message to send to children growing up in less wealthy families. Next, laughtrack positioning will lead us to the primary source of comedy in all there episodes: socially awkward situations. Is this innocent scripting, or is it teaching the more impressionable members of our society that human emotion is a laughing matter? Still on the subject of negative messages for youth, we come across rampant lying which does not result in any sort of drastic social recoil as would normally be expected in real life. Finally we reach a bleak conclusion to each of the three shows: After twenty-five minutes of lying, emotional abuse, and unrealistic upper-class adventures, the families and friends make up and all is well again. However detrimental it may seem, Americas favorite source of entertainment relies on misrepresentation and dark moral lessons to draw in its blinded audience.

One would thin...

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...thout any signs of regret. In real life, Frasier and his father could not statistically afford their flawless dream-apartment high up in the Seattle skyline. A single person supporting his father could not ordinarily afford to purchase a custom reclining chair with a four-figure price tag, and a massive recarpeting would have evoked more than a few annoyed expressions. Finally, to say that Sabrina was able to revert her furious pack of friends in a mere ten minutes is absurd to say the least. All these warps of reality come together every night to be fed out through thousands of TV broadcasting dishes, each headed to millions of homes. In each of those homes, every night, a person is being lied to; they are being told of a world fundamentally different from that in which they live. Bit by bit, each sitcom is contributing to another viewers' false perception of life.