The Moving Image: Family Life as seen on TV

I will be looking closely at two particular programmes involving families: ‘The Simpsons’ (‘Homer Alone’) and ‘The Royle Family’ (‘Sunday Dinner’) both families have been labelled ‘dysfunctional’ yet both programmes have attracted huge TV audiences. I will be comparing the portrayal of family life in both these programmes and will try to account for their popularity.

‘The Simpsons’ is an American cartoon set in Springfield. The family consists of: Homer and Marge whom are married and parents to Bart, Maggie and Lisa. In the episode ‘Homer Alone’ Marge is feeling depressed because the rest of the family depend on her to do everything for them, she is feeling under a lot of pressure. After a while she decided she’s had enough of doing everything for the rest of the family, therefore, she drives her car across the motorway and remains inside the car when it is parked up. This results in other motorists having no access to the road. By doing this act Marge soon gets noticed. Police cars and reporters arrive questioning Marge about the event. Soon after Homer arrives announcing that he loves her and wants her to come home to her family. It works; she comes out of the car and goes home. After a long think she decided she needs a break to get away from everything for a short while, she needed to clear her mind. So the next day she goes away for a while, and leaves the rest of the family behind. Bart and Lisa went to stay with their aunties, whereas Maggie is left with Homer. During the short period of time when Homer was responsible for Maggie, he manages to lose her! He finally finds her just prior to the return of Marge.

‘The Royle Family’ is a British sit-com set in Manchester. The family consists of Jim and Barbara, the parents to Denise and Anthony. Norma, the mother to Barbara, Dave, Denise’s’ boyfriend and Twiggy a family friend. In the episode ‘Sunday Dinner’ the family is round at the Royle’s house for their Sunday dinner. Jim and Dave are late as usual due to them being at the pub. At the pub Jim invites Twiggy back round to their house to join them for Sunday dinner without consulting Barbara. They eat lunch and chat about usual family issues.

When an audience sit down to watch a cartoon, for example ‘The Simpsons’, they expect it to be funny and continuously revolving around a family or a group of friends. It is usually set in the same village or area. Cartoons are usually played on set days during the week and last the same period of time, it usually tends to be a short amount of time, ranging from 20-30 minutes. Cartoons have a very busy atmosphere, there are barely any moments when nothing is happening or no-one is speaking. The appearance of a cartoon character is often very different to human beings. In ‘The Simpsons’ the characters have yellow skin and hair that remains exactly the same all the time. ‘The Simpsons is a very typical cartoon. The characters are abnormal as they have yellow skin and are not real people. The colours are very bright and unrealistic, for example the sky is all blue apart from a few clouds which are just white. Music is used very frequently throughout cartoons. In ‘The Simpsons’ music is used to create an effect on the event or character to make the audience have opinions of the situation. For example, we see Bart in detention, therefore we automatically suspect him to be quite mischievous.  The beat of the music would fit in with the atmosphere of the event.

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When an audience sit down to watch a sit-com they would expect a television series usually lasting about an hour. It would feature the reactions of a regular cast of everyday, realistic characters to unusual situations, such as misunderstandings or embarrassing coincidences. ‘The Royle Family’ is a typical sit-com because it has people playing characters which relate closely to everyday life. The characters are involved in common situations and the language they use to speak to each other is very informal, they use slang words and occasionally swear. The cameras are hand-held which gives a real-life feeling and no ...

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