Evaluate the extent to which The Simpsons follow the conventions of a typical sitcom.

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Evaluate the extent to which The Simpsons follow the conventions of a typical sitcom.

A sitcom is a situation comedy. In a sitcom there is usually a nuclear family, which involves there 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, and 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 life 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 rich and do go through money problems just like the rest of us. They are like a factual family to a certain extent.

The Simpsons begins with an opening sequence; we firstly hear the angelic singing of The Simpsons accompanied by soft music. Fluffy white clouds part to reveal a perfect blue sky and The Simpsons writing moves toward the screen. The font of the title and the music create an almost heavenly idea of the sitcom. This is perhaps to give the misleading impression that The Simpsons are yet another perfect television family depicted in a sitcom. Next we meet Bart for the first time. He is in school detention, writing lines on a blackboard. These lines change each episode, making it topical and also drawing people into the show, because they want to see what Bart is going to write. In this particular episode he is writing, “I will not sell land in Florida”, a reference to the scandal involving former president Bill Clinton selling land in Florida and is an example of one of the jokes only adults may appreciate.  He has almost finished writing and is looking rather grumpy when we first see him, then the bell goes for him to leave and his face changes to a grin as he races out of the classroom. He anticipates the bell, showing that this is a routine for him. The music here has altered dramatically compared to the opening and is now more upbeat and almost funny in its own right. The next character we are introduced to is Homer, the father, a large, over-weight man. From what we see of him, he acts very much like his son. He is wearing protective clothing and handling a radioactive substance, but as the sound goes for his shift to end he drops what he is doing and is out of the door, just like his son Bart has. This is despite the fact that he has not finished the work he is doing and is handling this dangerous material. We can see in the background that there is a “caution” sign next to a nuclear symbol, but even this does not stop him from simply taking off his mask and leaving. Although they are not the focus of this scene, we also see Homer’s boss Mr Burns and his assistant, Smithers in the background. From their appearance, we already get the impression that they are watching over the employees to make sure that no one is messing about or perhaps they are there to fire someone. The next member of the family we meet is Marge the mother. She is in the supermarket at the checkout with baby Maggie. While she is reading a magazine called “Mom”, Marge does not notice that Maggie is picked up and passed over the scanner with the rest of the food. Ironically “Mom” is probably about how to be the ‘perfect’ mother. Although I’m sure she tries to be, from what we see, Marge is anything but the perfect mother. When Marge does finally notice that Maggie is nowhere to be seen she looks about and seems worried. Luckily Maggie comes out of hiding in the brown paper bag she was put in and Marge sighs with relief before leaving the supermarket with Maggie in her trolley. From what we have seen of ‘the Simpson’ family so far, it seems that they are fairly careless. When we first encounter Lisa, she is playing the saxophone in the school band. The band is playing The Simpsons theme rather out of tune. We know that she is playing after school because we’ve already heard the bell go earlier in the opening, this suggests, that unlike Bart, Lisa enjoys school. As the band continues to play The Simpsons theme, Lisa breaks off and plays a small saxophone solo. Because of this, the teacher sends her out, but as she leaves she continues playing. I think Matt Groening might be trying to show his feelings about when teachers seem to punish children for being unique and individual. Lisa is easily the best member of the band, but because she is acting differently to the other children, she is punished. This is also a good way for Matt Greoning to show that Lisa is different from the rest of her family, because unlike the others who have so far only shown their careless sides, Lisa does care about her music and she is passionate about it that have she even breaks off and performs this solo. The whole family is rushing home to watch TV at the final part of the opening sequence. We see The Simpsons house, Homer drives in and parks his car outside the garage. Bart jumps on his skateboard, jumps over Homers car, almost landing on Homer. Lisa comes round the corner into the drive on her bike and also nearly hits Homer, this time he shouts his catchphrase “D’oh!” Next Marge and Maggie come up the drive in her car and the camera viewpoint changes to that of the front of the car as they chase Homer forward. Next we see the inside of The Simpsons house for the first time. Everything seems to be focused around the television and their houses, which like them, seems very unsafe and careless. This suggests that their lives revolve around watching TV and that this is the only time that they all spend together. Each episode, how they scramble onto the sofa changes, just like Bart’s lines and this is another part that people always like to watch for to see what they do this time. This is fairly ironic, seeing as people are watching TV just to see how they are going to watch TV. The music here builds up to the final moment when they watch TV; the music all dies down for the moment when they are getting to their places on the sofa. At the start of the opening credits the music was like heaven, but now it is more like hell, loud and furious. This could be a possible link to Matt Greoning’s first comic strip ‘Life In Hell’ which was later the influence for The Simpsons At the end of the opening credits for The Simpsons you are definitely left knowing that this is not just another idea family. No, this is The Simpsons.

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When the episode begins, we have our initial impression of the characters and the sitcom from the opening sequence. The Simpsons follow the traditional narrative structure to a certain extent. I will be analyzing the episode “Roosting on Open Fire” in order to confirm this. The Simpson’s episodes do follow a traditional narrative structure. The narrative structure has mainly four stages. The first one is orientation, an account when the story begins. The story starts with Homer, Marge and Maggie going to see Bart and Lisa in a school play. The second stage is that there is complication; this ...

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