International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

The situation comedy, or sitcom, has been a staple of entertainment media for decades. More than 900 have been on the air since 1947. Starting on → Radio, it quickly became popular with audiences. With the advent of → Television in the late 1940s, sitcoms migrated to the small screen, and it is these sitcoms with which most people today around the world are familiar. Content and neo-Aristotelian analyses of from 1 to 100 episodes each of approximately 800 situation comedies has led to the following understanding of situation comedies and how they work (Taflinger 1996).A definition of situation comedy should look at each word of the name, starting with “situation.” There is a continuation from episode to episode of the same elements: (1) a regular group of characters who appear in all or almost all episodes and who maintain a continuing relationship to each other (e.g., husband and wife and perhaps children, siblings, co-workers, neighbors; (2) a group of settings used in all or almost all episodes in which most of the actions take place – for instance homes, workplaces, schools – and in which (3) the premise of the show is established (Taflinger 1996). For example, the situation could be parents teaching their children how to live and behave in the world, or how doctors and nurses cope with being in a war zone, or how a man's reach exceeds his grasp, or how friends try to get and ... log in or subscribe to read full text