( A site written in November 2007 )
Comedy shows as historical windows
When you watch comeedy DVDs allot of ones from the past and present are funny, and many people say some feel dated and less funny than they seemed at the time. I have experienced this at times, maybe people copied the jokes or they were for the time. But some are still funny years even decades afterm and at times you can see the joke in comedy shows many years old. Indeed some people even genuinly find past days Shakespearean comedy funny. At times even you can sense their were gems of wit in these statements, I.E Thomas Jefferson's quotes about they are not building any more land, and such. Aswell as this, lets face it quotes from the 19th Century that use language we still use are still usually funny as to Seinfeld from all the way in the 1990s is still as fresh as ever. But here is what this is about lets see comedy shows as history windows, windows onto the present for the future for sitcoms made this decade and windows onto what the 1960s was like for comedies made in that decade. Lets see what we see from this look at.
Its amazing, look
at British sit coms, i.e Steptoe and Son, they give a picture of what life was
like in that particular aspect of life in that part of Britain in the 1960s. With
the horse and cart, and clothes, and even in some ways attitudes of some of the
cast. Or Cheers showing the accents and fashions and styles, and often habits
of people in 1980s America, and Boston. Hancock's Half Hour sometimes talks about
stuff which fit in with history teaching and documentaries about the 1950s and
1960s, about the NHS, blood donors, and ham radio, and all these life activities.
How people enjoyed themselves and such, things historians are desperate to guess
on when talking of say the Middle Ages, with people guessing what this small wood
item, or that stone is for. Guessing what theye did with some piece of pot, and
imagining the scene, with music and such. Comedy is better for this, as they have
some humour to add on, while soap operas I feel are less able to so this. And
Whataver happened to the likely lads, parts of it I suspect of the area are ways
some people have lived in the area of the North East of England past to the 1920s,
and parts of the lifestyle earlier, with parts brining in new 1960s ideas, of
the changes brought by technology to fashion for then. With the 1970s episodes,
touching of changes in urban renewal, and tower blocks, and the easier access
to the car than in earlier decades, and increasing material wealth of society,
and access to holidays abroad. Rising Damp talks about the politics of race, and
rent, and college, and loads of comedies do loads of things like this. The thing
that really made me decide to do this article was looking at a front cover of
a book about Seinfeld, and the fact is when you see the series it is amazing how
shiny and colourful and bright everything is, but in this they were in the grimy
1980s Subway system, with George in his grey suit, and all the characters in stuff,
which looks like they could have been characters in tha late 1970s show Taxi,
or the 1980s, Crocodile Dundee, or Working Girl from the 1980s. Yes Seinfeld was
a 1990s show, but it was before New York, saw big crime falls in the 1990s, and
they would have done what was a bit earlier, so they got the tale end of New York
and it's high 1980s crime rates, and social deprivation, and decline. While also
having the young uppness of essentially working or middle class ways. Its hard
to explain what they were, but the series itself also tells the tale of some every
day New Yorkers. the ways they lived, the fashion, the jobs, the places where
antics could occur, coffee shop, cinema, houses what each looked like, jobs, This
is the sort of thing history tries to be searching for to look at, and these tell
what life is like for many. And their popularity at times is a barometer of what
life was like. Though for some kinds of series this untrue, i.e Dallas, is not
a average Texan life. Not that nobody lived that way, but it was no way as everyday
as Seinfeld. Though Fraser is I think a good indicator surely for all I know of
1990s radio and media, and psycho analaysis stuff. Loads of series are like this,
like all those 1960s US comedies, like I Love Lucy and the Dick Van Dyke show,
it may be wrong, but they seem just like 1960s documentary depictions of life
then, like Pandoras Box, and adverts, of the time, and movies of the time at times,
not that everybody would have lived in those ways, they look a bit like the children's
books I remember from the 1980s, of this is what a car looks like, this is what
a sink looks like, and they have big writing of sink by, for you to learn stuff
on, or be interedted in raeding, on those ones from the 1960s, Topsy and Tim were
their names. We had the 1960s versions in the 1980s. Its a great thing. I do not
think anything does it better than sitcoms, I feel as they do average days more,
which most days are, unlike dramas and soaps which do more sensational stuff,
and are often less realistic, and less supposed to be everyday, and sometimes
supposed to be sensational and fantastist. Sit coms are often fantastist but often
not. Sit coms also do not as often have a agenda, of saying lets make this super
wealthy or super poor, for some reason. WEven if the sitc com has an agenda, well
they do not usually. So I suppose in the year 2100 people will have decades of
these, and some which extnded a bit further back, Like Dad's army, that was one
I used to think this about, and it is, as yes it was made in the 1970s, but it
was written by people who were in the World War and the Home Guard. So they show
what life was like and to some extent honestly as its easier to write about things
you know, in the 1940s. Whereas somebody writing about the 1940s now, will have
horrificly large elemeents influenced by TV progrrammes about then or our own
attitudes, i.e what we like to do, not automaticly understanding how things fir
together for that time, and possibly never really doing os, possibly. Maybe though
movies do this to a tiny extent. But I think maybe comedy again is best at that.
Look at Chaplin, the streets he is in in some of his shows, are so evocative of
streets I have walked down in some cities, and surely some of what he did represented
what life was like at times. And its the same for Laurel and Hardy, with the attitudes
of people, and accents. How people did things, how they would push a piano up
loads of flights of stairs, as maybe it would be a bit different today. Though
there are things which spark some, oh its like today feelings, but what about
episodes where they were cotton picking in the south, thats something that really
I believe is not at all simmilar today as it was in the 1920s, which maybe even
had aspects of what it was like in the 19th Century, Maybe even a glimpse of the
attitudes and evils of the pre 1860s America. So its all amazing, these things,
what evocative histories these comedies can bring through. With dramas also giving
some know, how. I mean though sometimes people say their are certain aspects we
do not understand about old myths or dramas as we do not know all they did, and
did Shakespeare mean this or that, who knows for sure they say. But we have a
pictorial indication of loads of stuff in comedy which is always more everday
as the jokes are thought up by people on everyday occasions. It would be great
to have had Roman Empire era made sit coms, to show their lives. Though the translations
would be hard.
A site written in November 2007
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