Core Response - Week 4

In George Lipsitz's "The Meaning of Memory," he frames the development of early network family sitcoms around the rapidly shifting definitions and imaginations of class, ethnicity, and the very structure of family itself. Specifically cited is the New Deal, post-Depression era worldview, which bled into the postwar, 1950s mobilization around consumerism; these changes "had led workers to internalize discipline and frugality while nurturing networks of mutual support through family, ethnic, and class associations." By contrast, he reads many of the family sitcoms of the '50s as a response to this, a way of providing "relentless flow of information and persuasion that placed acts of consumption at the core of everyday life."

It's interesting to read his comments with the works of Mike Schur fresh on the brain (following the Parks and Rec reading last week, and the conclusion of The Good Place last Thursday).

Parks and Recreation is, undoubtedly, an Obama-era relic. Wearing its heart on its sleeve, it almost uniformly advances the idea that those who disagree with Leslie Knope and her ilk are wrong simply because they haven't been convinced yet (I say this with love!). As we read last week the show whiffed a little on the "grander" political aims of its ethos, carefully avoiding particular hot-button topics like abortion, not unlike what Lipsitz speaks to: "Mere disclosure of opposition does not guarantee emancipatory practice." But in many ways, Parks and Recreation flies in the face of what Lipsitz puts forth about the 1950s sitcoms: It emphasizes a "chosen" family, made up of community support; it champions the very notion of government support that was put forth by the New Deal; it represented "diverse aspects of social life," including the conflicting values systems that seemed to clash on larger and larger stages at a partisan level every day. Even The Good Place largely falls in line with the ideas Lipsitz closes with, on how "communication and criticism can help determine...whether they build communities in dialogue with the needs and desires of others."

Perhaps the latter feels more bold in times such as these; by contrast, where we are now in the political discourse, Parks and Recreation feels almost downright naive. But the central tension seems to remain: How the "unfinished dialogue of history" is mediated and tossed about by television as a hegemony (or not).