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The Simpsons Essay

Decent Essays

The Simpsons

A sitcom is a situational comedy television series. Sitcoms usually use comic devices to make them funny like puns, violence and exaggeration. They use satire, farce, parody, jokes, gags and slapstick to entertain the audience. Sitcoms usually last 30 minutes if shown on commercial TV and they involve chracters having problems which they try to sort out. "Leaver it to Beaver" was about a typical, white middle-class 1950's family that had problems and worked together to work them out. They had the same sort of characters as "The Simpsons" but they didn't have the same controversial issues. When "All in the Family" aired in the 1970's it was a different story. A black family was …show more content…

We have pollution and crime.

We are then shown the school where Bart is writing on the blackboard. A clock shows it is after school and he is doing a detention. This showns he is mischievous. Next we go to the power plant where Homer is working. He is clumsy as he unknowingly drops a nuclear rod. We go to Lisa who is playing the sax. This shows that she is gifted. Marge is shopping. This reveals that she is a housewife and a good mother, but then she forgets her daughter, Maggie, which indicates that she may not be as good as we imagined. We are shown quick little images of all the characters, e.g. Krusty the clown, Moe, Barney, Police Wigam, who live in Springfield. Our expectations of this are that the town is full of normal people covering a range of different personalities.

"The Simpsons" follows a narrative structure that has been used in many other sitcoms. Each episode starts with a problem that threatens the values of the family. The family searches for a resolution to this conflict and as a result of their course of action they solve the problem. The characters then learn from this experience. The fact that there is this narrative sequence shows that "The Simpsons" is a typical sitcom. The episode, "The Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" follows this narrative structure. It starts with it being

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