Sunday, November 2, 2014
MTM vs. Lear
From your viewings of All in the Family, Good Times, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and your reading of Kirsten Lentz’s essay, how do you think Norman Lear’s shows differed from MTM’s? Why do you think the term “quality” was often used to refer to MTM’s shows and “relevance” to label Lear’s programs? How does Lentz see these productions as differing?
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Norman Lear's shows were focused mainly on relevance, whereas MTM's shows were considered those of quality. In Lentz's essay, she talks a lot about how relevance is considered that which discusses social issues, especially that of racial matters.
ReplyDeleteIn Lear's shows, we saw a lot of topics that addressed those of social issues. For example, Maude addressed the issue of abortion - and in Lentz's article she also talks about an episode in which she is overbearing on her housekeeper, Florida. She wants Florida to acquire equality of women and blacks. In All in the Family, they played a lot on the idea of class versus race. The black man was the more sophisticated man (although he seemed very demeaning) and the main character was lower in class but looked down upon him because he was black. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman talked a lot about sex as a conversation between husband and wife in the home, which was normally a taboo topic on television.
In MTM's, quality was considered important, especially in the terms of being more "literate," as well as being more "stylistically complex" with "more character development." When I look at the episode we watched, a lot of it took time to develop the character of Mary and Lou. However, it also focused a lot on feminism - Mary being degraded in the office because she was a woman. Lentz also talked a lot about how there were "modernized images of womanhood" and this is also seen in the way that Mary was a single woman at home, working to support herself.
What I'm confused about is how Lentz talks about quality versus relevance but then she brings up feminism under the quality category. Wouldn't feminism be considered more of a "relevant" category?
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ReplyDeleteMy immediate impression of Norman Lear’s shows like All in the Family were of a style of programming that is much more shocking than what was produced by MTM in programs like The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Lentz’s article added more dimension to my apperception of the two shows, directing my attention to what I understand to be the intention of the two production companies. Both companies were motivated by a desire to boost the image of television, of selling a new kind of product to a market that was increasingly concerned with matters that were more profound than the “base entertainment” critics accused networks of airing. I might speculate that people at the time felt guilty about just kicking back and blissfully wasting their vast leisure time before the tube; while major civil rights issues were being litigated on the streets, it might have seemed inappropriate to leave them out of television. To elevate the seemingly mindless qualities of “the vast wasteland” of entertainment required producers to inject some meaningfulness into their programs.
ReplyDeleteBut MTM and Tandem/TAT (Lear’s company) responded to this demand differently. For MTM, the sense of duty of covering serious matters manifested in a preoccupation with “quality television.” Their priority seemed to be to address television role as a producer of representations, motivated by what Lentz calls a politics of the signifier (the sign apart from its meaning). In the case The Mary Tyler Moore Show, we see the insertion of a critique of television production figure in the dysfunctional Six O’Clock News for which Mary works. The show’s acknowledgment of much of television’s poor quality elevates The Mary Tyler Moore Show, drawing a line of distinction between itself and the shows to which it is referring. The problem the show seems to be addressing then is “how are things said?” And, more precisely, how can representations be constructed with high quality?
The programs coming out of Tandem/TAT, on the other hand, seem to be more concerned with “what isn’t being said.” A show like All in the Family seems to shirk efforts to make itself look aesthetically pleasing. It seems to want to ignore that it is mediated (which it is by virtue of being a representation), laying bare its construction through a stagy aesthetic not for the sake of addressing issues of signification but in order to demonstrate that illusionism is not its priority. Rather than worry about representation in the sense of one thing standing in for the other, All in the Family is concerned with representation in the sense of representing “realities” that exist outside of signification. This “effort” by Lear to get at the illusive unmediated referent – the real deal before it is described with letters and images and sounds – Lentz calls the “politics of the referent” and it was motivated by a demand for what the industry called “relevance programming.”
However, I think rather than present something unmediated (which would be impossible because to present anything requires some kind of preparation and by extension some kind of manipulation) what Lear’s shows reveal is the power of shocking signifiers to break down the barrier between representation and experience. By this I mean the effect of shock is to make the moment of receiving the message the “main event”, more so than the broadcasting of the message. The experience of decoding a shocking message supersedes questions of judgment about the quality of the representations. Rather than feel myself scan the topography of an interesting structure as I do with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family has a visceral impact on me because it routinely uses words that I have been acculturated to find upsetting. In turn, the experience of the show seems more real and immediate. Though The Mary Tyler Moore Show is just also trying to represent things that are going on in “reality” (e.g. the reinvention of gender roles) it does not have the same impact as All in the Family because it doesn’t stir my nervous system with words like “abortion,” “Negro,” and “eviction notice,” etc. More importantly to me is that even though there is this visceral impact to Lear’s shows, they are essentially as productive in engaging with the major issues that exist outside of representation: while Lentz suggests that Lear’s shows influenced generations of viewers, she does not try to provide a convincing argument that the show was say a decisive agent of social change.
ReplyDeleteThese different preoccupations - quality of signification and representation of the “relevant”- were both intriguingly genderized. Preoccupation with quality was the business of MTM who specialized in shows addressing gender. In turn, quality became regarded as something almost akin to cosmetics. The preoccupation with relevance, on the other hand, was the business of Lear and his drive to address racial issues. In turn, relevance was regarded as something that WAS NOT interested in gender, NOT interested in the cosmetics of representation, and, by a sexist downplaying of the importance of gender politics, a resultantly more profound, socially penetrating show.
When Lentz refers to "Quality" she brings up a main point different from what I felt the point of quality television was. Based on prior knowledge and our watching of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, "quality" seemed to me to connote the generally higher production quality of the show. This is also one of the points Lentz brings up, that "quality" television sought to bring more stylistically complex shows with greater focus on character development- to try and elevate the show to a high-brow status, like film. On the surface, this is what the show accomplished. Unlike Lear's shows, TMTMS just in general utilized the language of cinema in its production, to elevate its artistic status. The MTM shows are polished.
ReplyDeleteWhat was not immediately apparent to me is how Lentz brings feminism into the picture. She argues that the emerging feminist movement gave MTM and producers of "quality" television a language with which to rebel against oppression of television as art. The same way that feminism fought for equality against superior social positions of the masculine, television embodied a "feminine" position in contrast to film, which was masculinized. From that perspective, the "quality" product is very aware of television's self-reflexive potential and MTM used the established self-reflexivity of television to talk about television itself, from a distance, as if removed from it. The quality text is therefore not merely a self-referential text. Rather, its references to the problems of television already acknowledge problems associated with the self-referentiality of the medium. As the article delves deeply into, TMTMS, in the episode we watched, was explicitly self-referential, as were many episodes, most of which at least partly took place in a TV study- displaying "bad television" within the confines of a "quality" program.
"Relevance" meanwhile is a matter of discourse about reality. Unlike the quality program, the relevant program does not strive for beauty, but rather acts as more of an affront to real social issues, particularly racial issues. Whereas TMTMS erased race from its world, Lear shows like All in the Family, thematize race and white racism through the character of Archie Bunker. The "relevant" program was concerned with "representational realism". Unlike the "quality" programs which draws on the edifice of television representation, the relatively low quality and theatricality of "relevant" programs does not draw attention to this edifice, lending the programs authenticity, which was of utmost concern.
The Norman Lear shows that we watched in class, All in the Family and Good Times explore themes of race and class, while The Mary Tyler Moore Show does not address these topics as often.
ReplyDeleteThe episode that we watched of Good Times centers on an African American family working together to pay the rent for their apartment. Despite their tough economic position, they work together for the good of the family. The family dynamic of the Evans family sets a great example for viewers of all races. All in the Family took a different approach with race by trapping people of different races and genders in an elevator. The lead actor, a white male, was clearly the most ignorant and racist character of the group. Even though he was a white male, the writers made him the most unlikable character. Both of these shows touch on very relevant issues to the time this was produced. These shows were influential and generated a discourse among audiences.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was not as culturally relevant as the Lear shows. Race was not mentioned; there was one African American character but his race was not talked about at all. Topics surrounding gender are seen in this show, between Mary and her co-workers, but it does not feel as if the show is trying to make a bold statement like Lear's shows. This show is considered a “quality” show because the writers focus more on character development and long-lasting plot lines rather than jokes and making cultural statements, as Lentz mentions.
The shows of MTM were referred to by Lentz as "quality" shows. These shows tended to tiptoe around most social issues of the day, but didn't completely avoid them (ex. a woman in the workplace was a major theme of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"). The MTM shows' humor and critical eye were turned towards the "quality" of television or lack thereof in the day. The Mary Tyler Moore show, set in a TV network, was incredibly reflexive and its newscasts came to mock and laugh at the sometimes low-quality and lowly position of television as an art form in most of the public's eye. The show was more interested in plot and deriving humor from the situations that were generated. This form of television was also known for the mise-en-scene of bourgeoise, depicting upper middle class characters many times.
ReplyDeleteLear's shows were known for "relevance", humor derived from social issues of the day. "All In the Family" and the character of Archie Bunker took several societal issues on in a humorous manner. An unabashed racist at times Archie would drop one-liners and jokes that directly responded to race, economic class, etc. The Lear shows set out to address the issues of the day. Unlike the MTM shows which would sidestep these issues, Lear shows would go headfirst into them. It might have made people uncomfortable but it made them "relevant". The lower-quality aesthetic of the shows tended to show the working class situations of the characters as well