WHY THERE ARE SITCOMS

The 06 December 2010 New Yorker contains a profile of the sitcom writer and producer Chuck Lorre, by Tom Bissell. In closing, Bissell offers the following analysis:

"Films...show us who we want to be, and literature shows us who we actually are. Sitcoms...show us people we might like to know. Because of this, the sitcom is a medium designed to reassure... Most sitcoms are about families, and, for the millions who watch a sitcom, it becomes a kind of mental family. Week after week, your couch faces the couch of characters you feel you know, characters whose problems can never quite get solved.

A lot of sitcoms are [about loneliness, alienation, and self-hatred]. To laugh at these things with our mental families may allow us to cope with out own loneliness, alienation, and self-hatred. It may be that the sitcom’s constant avoidance of any final, dramatic catharsis is its accidental strength. If so, that would make this least lifelike form of entertainment the most comfortingly similar to real life."

Of course, devoting yourself to such reassurance and comfort means not addressing your expectations, and so never confronting the source of all human conflicts and fears. Comedy bestows upon us all a kind of solidarity, but at the cost of any change. Happy new year...