Situation comedies have steadily multiplied and evolved throughout the years to accommodate the varying tastes of a growing and changing population. Most sitcoms, as they are commonly known, are inevitably canceled and forgotten once they are outgrown by society to the point that they are no longer relevant, and their humor begins to feel stale. However, there are a select few that survive the test of time and have the ability to keep people laughing for long after their production ends, in rerun after rerun, regardless of how much society has changed since they originally aired. One of the funniest of these select timeless comedies is the I Love Lucy series. I Love Lucy is pure comedy gold, even after all these years, because of the believability of its characters, their relationships, and the realistic situations they face that grow logically into absurdity; and because of the unrivaled, genuine comedic talent of Lucille Ball and her costars. All of these elements combine in perfectly hilarious harmony to give the show a genuine feel and keep the laughs coming in a way that never grows stale or boring.
The I Love Lucy characters play roles that are stereotypical to American society, highlighting the humor in the incongruities of recognizable, though sometimes outdated, social norms, ideals, attitudes, and behaviors. Of these, the most notable is Lucy’s incessant desire to break out of her constraining role as ordinary housewife, in order to pursue success and a career of her own, which was a common sentiment for women of the 1950s. In “The 1950s: Gender and Some Social Science,” Wini Breines points out that gender roles were beginning to change, but had not yet received the approval of society: “During the 1950s the...
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Breines, Wini. "The1950s: Gender And Some Social Science." Sociological Inquiry 56.1 (1986): 69-92. Academic Search Complete. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
“Fred and Ethel are Fighting.” I Love Lucy. Perf. Lucille Ball. CBS. Hollywood, 1951-57. Television.
I Love Lucy. Perf. Lucille Ball. CBS. Hollywood, 1951-57. Television.
“Job Switching.” I Love Lucy. Perf. Lucille Ball. CBS. Hollywood, 1951-57. Television.
Landay, Lori. “Millions ‘Love Lucy’: Commodification and the Lucy Phenomenon.” NWSA Journal 11.2 (1999): 25. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.
“Lucy and Ricky Raise Chickens.” I Love Lucy. Perf. Lucille Ball. CBS. Hollywood, 1951-57. Television.
Oppenheimer, Jess. Foreword. The “I Love Lucy” Book. By Bart Andrews. Garden City: Doubleday, 1985. Vii-viii. Print.
“The Quiz Show.” I Love Lucy. Perf. Lucille Ball. CBS. Hollywood, 1951-57. Television.
Rosenberg, Howard. "Television Reviews." Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File): 1. Feb 28 1989. ProQuest. Web. 28 Jan. 2014 .
Salisbury, Joyce E. and Andrew E Kersten. “Women in the United States, 1960–1990.” Daily Life through History.ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 19 Jan. 2014.
“Women in the early 1950s family were weak, secondary characters, and as such were usually dominated by their husbands and their own conceptions of marriage” (Hastings, 1974). Certain episodes of these shows always tried to prove that women should stay at home. When I Love Lucy came out with a woman as the main star, they still had her stay at home, cooking and cleaning, but still made her seem useless. “Women characters frequently were shown as less mature and less capable human-beings and their husbands often took a quasi-parental role by scolding them” (Hastings, 1974).
Many parts of history show that the 1950’s was a time of great turbulence and unrest in both politics and social life. All this unrest was caused by major historical events, including the Red Scare/McCarthyism and the Cold War. However, although many aspects of life in the 50’s were in such disarray, gender roles were not one of those aspects. In fact, there was a very narrow, strict idea of what it meant to be a male and a female during this time. The following discusses what was considered proper gender roles in the 1950’s and how these roles vary compared to the gender roles portrayed in the 1955 movie, Rebel Without a Cause.
I love Lucy was a very popular sitcom in the 1950s. Through humor and plot it brings out more of positive aspects and less of negative aspects for the 1950's that Coontz described in `What we really missed about the 1950s.'
In the 1950s, women comprised less than one third of the labor force (Berger, 4) (See Appendix B). Women had their place in the workforce, yet it was not very influencial. Women had to fight to hold their positions while confro...
Rich, Michaele. "TV Families of the Fifties." Fifties Web. N.p., 2010. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
The 19th Century is an age that is known for the Industrial Revolution. What some people don’t realize is the effect that this revolution had on gender roles in not only the middle and upper classes (Radek.) It started off at its worst, men were considered powerful, active, and brave; where as women were in no comparison said to be weak, passive, and timid (Radek.) Now we know this not to be true, however, back in the day people only went by what would allow ...
cille Ball. Many younger people only know her for her tv show “I Love Lucy.” The spunky redhead put a smile on many faces with her silly faces and crazy adventures. Ball was also one of the first women to become an entrepreneur by creating a studio with former husband, Desi Arnaz. Lucille Ball was a wonderful woman of her time. She was a strong-willed woman, not caring what the rest of the world thought about her. She was one of the first women to not hide her pregnancy on television. She wore what she wanted to wear while filming her show. She married the man she loved even when society said it was wrong. Ball was an icon for many young women in the 50’s. She taught them that they don’t have to do what society tells them. Ball opened many
Moran, Mickey. “1930s, America- Feminist Void?” Loyno. Department of History, 1988. Web. 11 May. 2014.
Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, explains the mind set of society in the 1960s. She writes that the women of the ‘60s were identified only as creatures looking for “sex, babies, and home” (Friedan 36). She goes on to say “The only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal a woman [was] permitted [was] the pursuit of a man” (Friedan 36). This mind set, this “feminine mystique,” is clearly shown throughout the show Mad Men. The side effect of the feminine mystique hurt all the women of this time. Matthew Weiner shows how this conception of the “ideal woman” hurt all of his lead women. The consequences are shown in the two women who bought into the idea, Betty and Joan, and the one who re...
8 Rosin, Hanna. “New Data on the Rise of Women.” Dec. 2010. TED Talks. Web. 28 Mar. 2012. .
The women of the 1950’s are portrayed as happy, lovely, domestic, the cook, the maid, a mother, and loyal wife to their breadwinner husbands. The husbands worked at their well-paying jobs while the women’s role was to stay home, cook, clean, and take care of the children. These women are well dressed in elegant dresses, high heels, pearl necklace, and always looking like they were ready to go somewhere, and portraying the joy of a clean home or a new appliance. The roles started to shift in the 70’s with “Mary Tyler Moore” as an independent woman who was single, living by herself, working and forming bonds with friends and co-workers. These friends were like a surrogate family to Mary. This later shifted to more female roles and men becoming more like accessories on these shows, only there to help
Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 4th Ed. -. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 1996. 293-307. Hewitt, Nancy. A. "Beyond the Search for Sisterhood: American Women's History in the 1980's.
arose in response to the changing role of women in society (Rich and Walker 1.)