Sunday, November 2, 2014
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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The Norman Lear shows and The Mary Tyler Moore Show differ in many aspects. One important aspect is the production design of the shows. Lentz discusses specifically the differences between The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family. She describes the mise- en-scene of the two productions. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was shot on film and always featured very clean and organized sets, including Mary’s apartment and the news room. The sets are always brightly lit. This is compared to the drab set of All in the Family, which is filmed on videotape, is given an orange-brown look due to the props, clothes and actual colors of the house set. This all works to create a lower class environment for the Bunkers. These differences play into the argument of “quality” and “relevance”. In this sense of the argument “quality” takes on its literal meaning; The Mary Tyler Moore Show can be seen as a higher quality production through its miss-en-scene, While All in the Family with its low resolution videotape production does not look as well produced. On the other hand, the subject matter of All in the Family is a lot more relevant than The Mary Tyler Moore Show. All in the Family featured plot lines that had social relevance to the time. The episode of All in the Family, for example, that we watched during screening has Archie dealing with class and racial differences while trapped in an elevator. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, on the other hand, seemed to avoid discussion of any relevant topics other than gender roles, but this topic became the punch line and never a serious discussion with any sort of resolution.
ReplyDeleteKirsten Lentz explains how quality and relevance programming were two different discourses used to talk about television in the 1970s. She explains how quality programming “promised to improve the television aesthetically,” and furthermore explains how The Mary Tyler Moore Show and MTM productions in general can be defined as “quality” programming shows (47). She also explains how quality programming tended to focus on issues of feminism in relation to representing television and largely ignored issues of representing race and racism.
ReplyDeleteFrom my viewing experience of the Mary Tyler Moore show I find Lentz’s claims to be very true. While the show promotes alternative, liberal femininity through its depiction of the main character—Mary Richard—as a management professional in a newsroom that consists largely of men, the show largely ignores issues of race. The one black character in the episode “Thoroughly Unmillitant Mary” has a largely unimportant role and furthermore the fact that he is black is all but completely ignored. The claims of quality in regards to MTM are accurate as the show had sophisticated plot lines and stylistically had a chic production design showing Mary living in an upscale, well-lit New York apartment. Perhaps this aim of making a show that was focused on “quality” was to capture a demographic that was literate, well-educated, and upper-middle class.
In opposition to the shows of MTM productions were those of Norman Lear’s Tandem productions, which addressed issues concerning race head on. Lentz explains how Tandem production shows such as Maude and All in the Family were examples of “relevant” programming, which “promised that shows would become more responsive to the social and political milieu of the 1970s”(47). In All in the Family race is discussed through the bigot character of Archie Bunker. In a particular episode titled “The Elevator Story” Archie has to reconfigure his identity of whiteness after meeting an African American man who is seemingly more intelligent than him and is of a higher social class.
However, Lear productions didn’t only depict African Americans as wealthy in the nature of the “super negro” representations that led to the criticism of shows like Julia in the 1960s. Reflecting the aims of relevant programming,, shows produced by Norman Lear presented the audience with a multitude of representations of race that undermined the dichotomous representations of race in past decades of television.
All in the Family and Good Times have many different aspects in comparison to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. To begin, two different power dynamics are shown. Norman Lear’s shows represent a family where the male father figure is the bread giver and the head of the household. They are the money-makers and make it known that they take care of the family. However, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was one of the first television shows to display an independent woman making a career for herself and being able to support herself without a man’s help. Mary has a management job and is shown giving direction to men, something that was probably uncommon to see in that time. Her show provides viewers with a new and more modern outlook on independent living and could be very influential to its female viewers.
ReplyDeleteSecond, the overall appearance of the shows was different. All in the Family and Good Times especially showed disorder and chaos within the families. For example, in the in-class screening of Good Times, we saw the family’s apartment in a state of disarray: the oatmeal was burning, people outside of the family were continuously walking in and out of the apartment, and men were attempting to come in and begin to evict the family of their belongings. However, in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary’s apartment appeared orderly and the film studio was bright and gave off the aura of professionalism. I believe this is why “quality” is associated with The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The sets were meant to represent a well put-together lifestyle that was not accessible to the average person, but that a viewer, specifically a woman, would hope to someday acquire. All in the Family and Good Times, on the other hand, were given the title of “relevance” because the living conditions and situations of these families were similar to that of the working-middle class of two different races. These shows were seen as relatable and contained attainable family connections, making them popular with the viewers.
With Both Norman Lear's shows and the shows that were produced by MTM the main focus was on characters that in other Television programs would have been marginalized. A big example of this marginalization would be a character like Mary Tyler Moore. In her own series she was the main character yet in television before this era she would probably only show up as a male character's wife or daughter. The same goes for Lear's programs, in earlier programs such as Beula the titular character held a job that put her on the periphery. In Good Times most of the plot revolved around choices that Florida and her family would make.
ReplyDeleteThe Shows differ in the just how the represent these marginalized groups. Using the earlier example of the Mary Tyler Moore show, it was referred to as a quality show because it showed how TV was able to be progressive as far as women's rights. It also allowed Television to represent the diversity of women when it came to their roles in society.The Lear shows were labeled relevant because of their realistic representation of underprivileged groups. This is definitely the case for the show Good Times which focused on the live of a Black maid and her family life in the projects. That level of realistic representation and realistic issues made most viewers realize that the show was good. Lentz saw the shows as differing because he saw alot of Lear's work as being so representational that it was at the level of social commentary. In the reading Lentz talks about how the viewers would "participate in the discussions of race" presented in Lear's shows. Shows of his such as All in the Family really made audiences think about the moral implications of racism. MTM focused alot more on gender issues than it did problems with race. Lentz saw this and attributes the difference to the reason that the productions differ