Sunday, November 3, 2013
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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A major difference between Norman Lear’s shows and The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the portrayal of stereotypes in society. MTM portrayed Mary Tyler Moore as a strong independent woman who was focused on her job more than finding a man to take care of her. She was often one of the smarter people in the room on her show and was successful in most aspects of her life. On the other hand, Norman Lear’s shows leaned heavily on race, ethnicity, and sex for laughs. Characters from his show either had negative views towards minorities like Archie Bunker in All in the Family or played into racial stereo types like the Evans family in Good Times.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why Norman Lear’s comedies were considered relevant instead of quality television like The Mary Tyler Moore Show was because of a couple reasons. The first reason was that his shows dealt with modern day issues like abortion, racism, homosexuality, and the Vietnam War among many other real life issues that other shows never had dealt with before. Another reason why these shows were not labeled quality television programs like MTM was because Lear’s shows played into several stereotypes about different races and classes of people instead of using the shows as a base to create characters that thrive in situations not normally portrayed on television like Mary Tyler Moore in her show. This was the biggest reason why The Mary Tyler Moore Show was seen as redefining by many critics, whereas Lear’s shows were simply seen as fun family entertainment.
After viewing “All in the Family”, “Good Times” and the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” I believe that Norman Lear's shows are different from MTM's because of their overall focus and content in their shows. As described in Kirsten Lentz's article, MTM's shows were made for “quality purposes”. Lear's focus brings more attention to social issues concerning society at the time and highlight solutions and sometimes ways into handling them. Though this is said, MTM's shows are credible and great for entertainment, but they were constructed to appeal to the larger entertainment audience without so much focus on social and economical topics.
ReplyDeleteThe term quality was often lined to MTM's shows because of their story plot and characterizations. They were easy to lock-on to an occasional viewer and it was made relevant as well. MTM's shows allowed its characters to redefine their position in society and change it according to character, such as The Mary Tyler Show. Relevance was used closely to Lear's programs because they acted as reminders about issues that aren't easy to talk about. By creating programs that had this focus, it allowed viewers to gain knowledge and become more involved in their own communities. Lentz goes on to explain how these words “relevance” and “quality” differ by using particular shows and analyzing what was best to to focus on in her article.
I like the way Logan breaks down the differences between the culture of The Mary Tyler Moore show and that of Norman Lear’s shows. By building up women and looking to shape positive stereotypes, it makes sense as to why the show became such a success. Historically, we think of the 60s and 70s as critical periods that dealt with racial, cultural, and sexual inequality. Movements occurred across the country to bring equality amongst groups. Taking this into account, we see why The Mary Tyler Moore show gained more acceptance.
ReplyDeleteLear’s shows blatantly pointed out the inequality, sometimes in uncomfortable ways. While watching All in the Family, Archie Bunker reveals his predjudic against the black community as well as the Hispanic. His comments and racial profiling point out the issues of the time in an uncomfortable way. By using a laugh track, Lear makes it seem as though the humor is understood.
Quality is referenced with The Mary Tyler Moore Show because it was widely accepted, while relevance was termed with Lear’s shows because he pointed out the reality of the world. Both serve a purpose. Mary Tyler Moore spread inspiration and set goals. She shows how the world could work. Lear, on the other hand, showed what we needed to move on from.
The Norman Lear empire of television shows differed from the Mary Tyler Moore brand by being classified as “relevant” opposed to “quality”. Part of this that hasn’t been addressed by the above posters deals simply with the technical presentation of the programs. Lear’s shows look, simply, cheap. The production design is usually rather simple and the cinematography is overly bright. This gives off the cheap aesthetic; one can always tell the show is being filmed on a set. Moore’s shows upped the technical quality of television by having fantastic cinematographic qualities. Images looked film-worthy and possessed a crispness to them that Lear’s programs lacked.
ReplyDeleteThe other component , that has been touched on by the other posters, deals with Lear’s head-on tackling of sensitive social issues. He used his shows as a vehicle to explicitly deal with racism and sexism, as well as taboo-at-the-time issues like abortion. The dialogues created in the show were there to convey all sides of an issue, using whatever character was deemed appropriate to be a vessel. Moore’s shows possessed a sophistication, perhaps because the characters tended to be more upper-class. Lear used characters lower on the socioeconomic spectrum because this allowed him to explore more social issue based topics.
Part of Lentz’s discussion considered the visual, stylistic, and aesthetic differences between The Mary Tyler Moore Show, an MTM production, and All in the Family, a Norman Lear/Tandem/TAT production. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was associated with “quality” partially because it was nicer to look at: it had “sunny” lighting, “tidy” mise en scene, and high contrast that made the picture clearer and characters distinct from the sets (63). On the other hand, Lentz describes All in the Family as “visually muddy” with brown tones and low contrast, more in line with the show’s consideration of a working-class family as opposed to The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s concern with the professional middle class (64). These visual and stylistic differences were glaring during the screenings, and before I had read Lentz’s article, I wasn’t sure why two shows on in the same decade on the same network would have such dissimilar visual-based qualities. I wonder how the perception/reading of All in the Family would be changed if it were just recorded on film rather than video tape; I wonder about the extent to which these visual differences affect the preferences/interpretations of casual viewers.
ReplyDeleteFrom my viewings of these three shows, the major differences in these discourses lied within content and aesthetics. These two discourses manifested themselves in ways that ascribed them terms, as Lenz labels them, "quality" and "relevance". The Mary Tyler Moore show was considered a "quality" show. Dissecting its content, it clearly promotes positive new aged traits for a women (self sufficient, independent, no need for a man to take care of her), it vitalizes an ideal that maybe is true in the 70s in an alternate universe but in our universe, not particularly accurate. The show doesn't pride itself on realism but makes a world for ideals for society to strive for.
ReplyDeleteThe Normal Lear shows on the other hand, strive through realism. They live within the "relevance" discourse that bring subjects of race, gender, and classism to the forefront. They attack these issues, sometimes in manners more gracious than others. For instance, in All in the Family, Archie Bunker's character is extremely candid and shockingly abrasive at times. He is a realistic white man at this period in time with realistic prejudices so when they openly are discussed, there is an awkwardness and discomfort. This is purposeful, and causes the viewers (typically white people) to confront their own beliefs, prejudices, and behaviors in correlation to the characters. Normal Lear's shows are also relevant because they deal with issues that arise as social and politic events change our society.
As for stylistic makeups of the shows, it is clear that by the terms themselves "quality" and "relevance" show how they are going to be composed.The Mary Tyler Moore show has a sharp image, pleasing lighting, and a decorative stage. Good Times on the other hand is rough around the edges, has soft lighting that makes the images unclear and motley decor with mismatch furniture. The contrasts set to enhance the aspects of these two discourses. They purposefully simulate the middle-class ideal versus urban realism.