Deconstructing Funny

 I was switching channels tonight and thought I'd watch some news. So, I clicked on CNN. It wasn't news; it was something I had heard about, a documentary called The History of the Sit Com. 

To be clear, I did not watch the entire episode. Actually, I saw pieces of two episodes. For those unfamiliar with the format, the show identifies programs, shows short clips, and then an actor--sometimes an actor from the series itself, sometimes a tv expert, explains the significance of the program and what it depicts.

I am a very big Honeymooners follower. I went to the first Honeymooners convention held at CWPost in 1984.  The auditorium was jammed with people dressed as Norton or Kramden or some minor character. Everyone there, like me, knew every line from every show. When a character from an episode who appeared for less than five minutes in that episode, came to the stage at the convention, the thousands of attendees gave the guy a standing ovation.  His response, "You people are insane."  The crowd responded with cheers.

I'm not a follower of many other shows.  I watched Curb Your Enthusiasm and enjoyed that. In the seventies I did plan my Saturday nights around All in the Family. Watched a good deal of the Mary Tyler Moore show which, as I recall it, followed All in the Family on Saturday night.

The thing is I found the comments on the documentary, particularly from the pundits-as opposed to the former actors--off the money.  There were some claims that a show reflected societal values--which is not particularly profound. But the ones which I thought were off-putting were those that attempted to deconstruct the sitcoms as if the writers and producers of these programs were attempting to make social commentary with their story-lines. As if the Honeymooners was trying to make a comment about society in the 50s as opposed to reflecting a tiny piece of society in the 50s.  The Jeffersons and Alice were not intended to make social commentary as much as they reflected the times and, more significantly, were developed to get laughs.

The Andy Griffith show did not want to comment on the virtue of small towns. The writers thought that the vehicle would get laughs and win audiences, particularly with a character like Barney Fife--and to a lesser extent Gomer and Goober. I never thought the Beverly Hillbillies was all that funny, but that was the writers' goal

The segments I saw may not have been representative, but I thought that many of the comments about the meaning of particular sitcoms were meaningless deconstructions.