|
|
News
Cities
New York state of mind: how American sitcoms depict US cities
From the suspiciously affordable West Village in Friends to the cosmopolitan Huxtable house in The Cosby Show, sitcoms have shaped our most elemental images of urban America. Maria Bustillos surfs from Cincinnati to Queens to Springfield, USA - The New York of my imagination, before I came to ♥ the real thing, was a weird amalgam of notions gathered from all over ? the Ramones, Rosemary?s Baby, James Thurber, the Velvet Underground, Woody Allen, Diana Vreeland, Taxi Driver, Henry James and Edith Wharton, The New Yorker. But my most seminal images of New York, lodged all the more firmly in my mind for having been subliminally implanted when I was but a wee tot, were sitcom ones.
From That Girl, I learned of the exciting and sweet Manhattan life of an aspiring actress, one who went on dates ? and lived in her own apartment! I Love Lucy, familiar as breathing to those d?un certain âge, displayed a life in New York as smooth as silk: your man might be a professional bandleader, but he?d still keep office hours as you whiled the day away, gossiping, visiting, maybe dusting a bit ? albeit very decoratively, in an immaculate polka-dotted dress with a big, full skirt and little white pointed collar, the whole surmounted by a complicatedly crenellated hairdo. Which seems ridiculously unrealistic, until you consider that decades later Friends would ask us to believe in a New York where a bunch of sketchily-employed twentysomethings (also ever-decorative, if casually dressed in a faux-hip style) can afford to live, with tremendous ease, in a brace of gloriously spacious apartments in the West Village.
The ?idiot box? is not ordinarily considered as a serious didactic tool. Though its primary purpose may be the peddling of soap or cars, even the most lightweight television show shapes and disseminates our most elemental images of society, especially in the minds of the young. Television gives most of us our first glimpse of unfamiliar cities: how they look, and what it means to live there. For suburban or rural kids in the US, television, and in particular the sitcoms that are the first adult shows most American kids are apt to see, first enable us to picture ourselves in the exciting and strange environs of a city.
And we take those pictures with us: the imagined world lighting our way into the real one. Sitcoms are shot mostly indoors on standing sets, so the impression of an American city you receive from watching one is necessarily cerebral, detached, made up of talk. You can?t form your own ideas about how the place looks or feels; instead you?re gathering the ideas of others, of the people who are inside, talking.
And laughing. The sitcom is a machine for making viewers relax and unwind after a hard day?s work. It?s meant to slip down as easily and refreshingly, as relaxingly as a before-dinner cocktail, and such controversies as a sitcom may contain are invariably handled in a gentle and intimate way, intended to provoke quiet reflection, rather than the outrage demanded by, say, a cable newscast. The sitcom offers us a cast of lovable scamps, rogues, moms, gentlemen and ladies, darned kids, cranky grandparents, all moving together through the situation. A setup: a punchline. (People! ? they?re so crazy, right?)
That means that any American city, seen through the sitcom?s lens, will reveal its friendliest, happiest face, with just enough conflict thrown in to provoke a half-hour?s interest. Not a false face, mind you; for to some extent, surely, what people think of the place and say about it is, in fact, the truth of that place? Just: you?re seeing the place (or to be more exact, the people who live there) in a good mood.
News
Cities
New York state of mind: how American sitcoms depict US cities
From the suspiciously affordable West Village in Friends to the cosmopolitan Huxtable house in The Cosby Show, sitcoms have shaped our most elemental images of urban America. Maria Bustillos surfs from Cincinnati to Queens to Springfield, USA
? Visited any city comedy locations? Share your photos
Share 649
inShare4
Email
Maria Bustillos
theguardian.com, Tuesday 29 July 2014 05.22 EDT
Jump to comments (357)
Central Perk, Friends Friends ... a New York where a bunch of sketchily employed twentysomethings can afford to live with tremendous ease. Photograph: Allstar/Warner/Sportsphoto
The New York of my imagination, before I came to ♥ the real thing, was a weird amalgam of notions gathered from all over ? the Ramones, Rosemary?s Baby, James Thurber, the Velvet Underground, Woody Allen, Diana Vreeland, Taxi Driver, Henry James and Edith Wharton, The New Yorker. But my most seminal images of New York, lodged all the more firmly in my mind for having been subliminally implanted when I was but a wee tot, were sitcom ones.
From That Girl, I learned of the exciting and sweet Manhattan life of an aspiring actress, one who went on dates ? and lived in her own apartment! I Love Lucy, familiar as breathing to those d?un certain âge, displayed a life in New York as smooth as silk: your man might be a professional bandleader, but he?d still keep office hours as you whiled the day away, gossiping, visiting, maybe dusting a bit ? albeit very decoratively, in an immaculate polka-dotted dress with a big, full skirt and little white pointed collar, the whole surmounted by a complicatedly crenellated hairdo. Which seems ridiculously unrealistic, until you consider that decades later Friends would ask us to believe in a New York where a bunch of sketchily-employed twentysomethings (also ever-decorative, if casually dressed in a faux-hip style) can afford to live, with tremendous ease, in a brace of gloriously spacious apartments in the West Village.
The ?idiot box? is not ordinarily considered as a serious didactic tool. Though its primary purpose may be the peddling of soap or cars, even the most lightweight television show shapes and disseminates our most elemental images of society, especially in the minds of the young. Television gives most of us our first glimpse of unfamiliar cities: how they look, and what it means to live there. For suburban or rural kids in the US, television, and in particular the sitcoms that are the first adult shows most American kids are apt to see, first enable us to picture ourselves in the exciting and strange environs of a city.
And we take those pictures with us: the imagined world lighting our way into the real one.
Shiny happy cities holding hands
Roseanne, set in the fictional town of Langford, Illinois. A machine for unwinding ... Roseanne, set in the fictional town of Lanford, Illinois. Photograph: Moviestore/Alamy
Sitcoms are shot mostly indoors on standing sets, so the impression of an American city you receive from watching one is necessarily cerebral, detached, made up of talk. You can?t form your own ideas about how the place looks or feels; instead you?re gathering the ideas of others, of the people who are inside, talking.
And laughing. The sitcom is a machine for making viewers relax and unwind after a hard day?s work. It?s meant to slip down as easily and refreshingly, as relaxingly as a before-dinner cocktail, and such controversies as a sitcom may contain are invariably handled in a gentle and intimate way, intended to provoke quiet reflection, rather than the outrage demanded by, say, a cable newscast. The sitcom offers us a cast of lovable scamps, rogues, moms, gentlemen and ladies, darned kids, cranky grandparents, all moving together through the situation. A setup: a punchline. (People! ? they?re so crazy, right?)
That means that any American city, seen through the sitcom?s lens, will reveal its friendliest, happiest face, with just enough conflict thrown in to provoke a half-hour?s interest. Not a false face, mind you; for to some extent, surely, what people think of the place and say about it is, in fact, the truth of that place? Just: you?re seeing the place (or to be more exact, the people who live there) in a good mood.
Everywhere, USA
Tom's restaurant, as featured in Seinfeld. Tom?s restaurant, as featured in Seinfeld. Photograph: Valentino Visentini/Alamy
Many, if not most, of the stories in I Love Lucy could have been set in any American city, as if the intent were to communicate the familiarity and homeliness of Manhattan and by this, the shared experience of all Americans, rather than any lofty ideas of urban sophistication or worldliness such as we would eventually see in the New York of Sex and the City and 30 Rock. This bedrock egalitarianism (we?re all the same, deep down) is a key feature of I Love Lucy?s longevity: the Ricardos? world is one we?ll always be invited into, where Carrie Bradshaw?s will ever be a place that few can afford even to visit. In this way, Seinfeld followed in Lucy?s footsteps: all shared the discovery that if we did not have a Soup Nazi of our own to torment us, in every city neighbourhood there was a local Sushi Nazi, or a Steak or Szechwan or Cocktail Nazi, who?d turned us into craven slaves willing to suffer nearly any humiliation for the sake of their irresistible wares.
In the 1960s, Green Acres addressed America?s rural/urban divide in the person of Oliver Wendell Douglas, a well-to-do lawyer who gives up a glamorous life in New York for his dream of owning a farm near the fictional town of Hooterville. Douglas, played by Eddie Albert, was a wonderfully Mitty-like confection, and Eva Gabor, who played his Hungarian wife Lisa, was the perfect smart/dumb-blonde comic foil. The show was wildly popular, especially with older audiences, but by 1971 a taste for more ?relevant? stories had taken hold and Green Acres fell victim to the so-called ?rural purge? along with The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Mayberry RFD. |
|