By loga 10'o The Simpsons Essay

A sitcom is a situation comedy. In a sitcom there is usually a nuclear family, which involves their being a mum, dad, sister and a brother as the main focus. A normal stock plot for a sitcom is that everything more often than not starts happily and ends pretty much the same. There are a few minor hiccups in-between that are easily worked out. They usually contain farce, satire, puns or slap stick comedy to amuse the audience. Sitcoms generally last about thirty minutes, for example in 'my family' and 'king of the hill'.

Sitcoms have changed and modernized considerably to fit in and relate to society today. For example the 1950's sitcom 'leave it to beaver' was about a typical middle-class white family who had their fair share of problems but managed to resolve them in the end. They were extremely polite to each other and acted as role models of how a 'proper' family should behave, but of course not every family was like that. Real life families have bigger problems, more controversial. This is what the sitcoms in the 50's lacked in, real life issues.

Nowadays sitcoms relate to young people today and how it is affecting today's culture and traditions. A sitcom such as the 'Simpson's is vastly popular because they are not afraid to tackle real life issues, which are in-fact very diverse and controversial. Homer doesn't always get along with his in laws. Bart is very naughty but we still understand where he's coming from. Lisa is very clever and she does sometimes get some grief for being too clever. The Simpson family are not extremely rich and do go through money problems just like the rest of us. They are something like a factual family to a certain extent.

As soon as we see the opening sequence to the Simpson's we immediately gather that it is going to be a comedy series because the music is very dynamic and energetic. When we see a birds-eye view over Springfield we get an image of a very normal and customary town. Then when we see what each of the characters is doing. We then learn more about the characters and their personality. We learn that its not going to be like the other sitcoms, everything is not going to be so black and white.
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When we see a boy writing his lines on the black board we now get an insight into his character. He's going to be a child who gets into a lot of trouble and he might be the troublemaker of the family. When we see a girl out playing the other members in the music group we think that she is going to be bright and intelligent. When we see the father being careless we gather that he is going to be stupid. On the other hand we see the mother and daughter doing a normal sitcom thing, ...

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