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Film

In: English and Literature

Submitted By dev20elev
Words 1789
Pages 8
Devron Edwards
TV Analysis
Ian Peters
12/8/14
Community Today there are many shows that reflect American culture and issues that occur because of it. One of the shows that does an excellent job doing this is Community. Community is an American TV comedy created in 2009 by Dan Harmon. The show not only addresses social issues with a comedic approach, it also delivers great story telling. The show uses race and ethnicity to deal with serious issues, but in a comical way that makes it less controversial. Its use of the sitcom framework allows it to make light of situations and build upon them in the future. It is because of this use of the sitcom formula, that the show has developed a deep fan base that keeps the show alive. Community reflects American culture through its use of stereotypes, sitcom structure, and its development of a cult following.
Community’s main cast is very diverse in race, age, and culture. Though the 7 characters are all diverse, they fit into stereotypes sometimes. Troy the black male, was supposed to play sports for Greendale community college, this follows the stereotype of schools getting black athletes to come to their schools. Troy is also portrayed as unintelligent which touches on the stereotype that athletes are not smart. Though Troy follows these stereotypes, Dan Harmon challenges them by making Troy dorky. Troy becomes best friends with Abed, an Indian character that very weird and is only into movies and television. The two have a very strange, childish relationship. They created a best friend hand shake, play pretend in one of the rooms in their apartment, and once created a giant pillow fort throughout the community college. These are not actions that you would expect from a black athlete. They do not fit the stereotype. Dan Harmon is not the only person to do this.
Hitchcock challenged popular stereotypes in his movies. In the journal “Hitchcock and Race: Is the wrong man a white man ?”, Jonathan Cavallero analysis the use of race in Hitchcock’s films. Cavallero writes “Implicit in many of these films is the idea that perceptions, including those based in race, can be deceiving. Nonetheless, Hitchcock almost always upholds the dominant culture’s widely held beliefs of racial difference even as he questions them.” (Cavallero, 10). In the film The Man Who Knew Too Much, a woman is very suspicious of the dark skinned people around her, but the whiter skinned couple that she befriends kidnap her son (Cavallero, 10). Community does this as well but in a comedic way.
The show challenges the audience’s expectations with its characters. Ben Chang is an Asian character that was a foreign language teacher that spoke without an accent and taught Spanish. This is opposed to a lot of foreign language teachers that have heavy accents. It also defies expectations because he is nowhere close to being associated with Spanish culture because of his Asian race. The show does a good job of addressing race without focusing on it, just like The Cosby Show. Phylicia Rashad described The Cosby Show as “A show about human beings rather than about race”. Community can be seen the same exact way. With its divers cast, race is an obviously present element of the show, but it’s not about that, it’s about the characters and how they learn from one another. The show does a good job of promoting positive messages about race because of its sitcom structure.
Community is a sitcom because it creates comedic situations for the protagonists to deal with while also promoting positive ideals. A sitcom can also be defined as “Situation comedies are weekly half hour plays involving a recurring cast of familiar characters who face new adventures initiated and resolved in each episode.” (Newcomb, Horace) The characters in Community usually resolve the problems by the end of each episode, but some issues remain and linger through the series. Lawrence Mintz, writer of the journal Ideology in the Television Situation Comedy states that “In episode after episode of situation comedy, the threat of change—for better or for worse—is thwarted.” In community, no matter what happens to the protagonists, everything is always wrapped up and the group is back to the way it was at the beginning of the episode.
The show breaks the fourth wall on multiple occasions by addressing itself as a TV show through the eyes of one of its character’s, Abed. Abed addresses the fact that the school’s hijinks are always revolved around them, he brought up the type of episode they were in (“Bottle Episode”), and he has called out the main protagonist, Jeff, on how he always gives a heartfelt speech about the lessons learned at the end of every episode. These instances add a layer of Meta humor to the series, making it more personal to the audience because Abed is speaking directly to them. The Meta humor is one of the big reasons that the show has a cult following.

Over the past 5 years, Community has developed a very strong cult following. The show was even ranked number fifteen in Entertainment Weekly’s “25 best Cult TV Shows in the Past 25 years” (Franich, Darren). Community can be considered cult TV because its fan base is small, but powerful. The contemporary definition of Cult TV is industrial strategy to target fans/ encourage participation. The series has always done a good job at communicating with fans. In the episodes there are hashtags for the audience to use on twitter to start discussion. This fan base is actually the reason that the show has continued to run for half a decade. About every year that the show is up for renewal, it is always in a bad position for not getting high ratings on NBC. The show always looks like it is about to be canceled, but it always received a renewed season thanks to fans writing in (Franich, Darren). Recently, NBC finally cancelled the show on its 6th (and last) season, but the show will be revived through Yahoo.
The reason why fans love Community is because of its Meta humor and ambitious plots (Franich, Darren). One of the highest rated episodes is “Modern Warfare” which is very concept heavy (IMDb). In the episode the college is turned into a big paintball battlefield. The aesthetics of the show change slightly. The tone is the same but the show becomes part action movie. This episode was so popular that in every season there was a paintball story similar to the one in the season. Most shows do not change up their aesthetics completely just to do an episode, but Community does. Community even did an episode that was completely done in Claymation. The episode was called “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” and it was unlike anything the show had ever done before. Community dares to push boundaries and take risks, this is why the fans of the show love it so much. Each of the ambitious, high concept episodes would not be possible without the guidance and vision of the show runner, Dan Harmon.
The show runner is the visionary, they are the captain of the ship. Show runners keep the whole world of the show in their head. They know what to add to enhance the show and what doesn’t fit in to the overall design. Without the show runner, a series can take a significant dip in quality. Dan Harmon is proof of how important a show runner is. In season four of Community, Dan Harmon was not a part of the show because he left at the end of the third season. (Rose, Lacey) The fourth season was not as good as the previous three. The quality of the episodes were just not as strong as they were before Harmon left. Joel McHale, Jeff the main character in Community said “The show is in Dan's brain, and he's by far the only person that can do it” (Rose, Lacey).
Dan Harmon’s style is close to Joss Whedon because it blends humor and drama very well. Whedon is more drama focused than humor, vice versa for Harmon. The two both have a very “quirky” style that is appreciated by their fans. The two also encourage fan engagement. Dan Harmon even has a podcast that he uses to give info on his newest endeavors. Harmon is not really that similar to Michael Bay but has parodied Bay like work in some episodes of Community. The paintball episodes are the closest Harmon comes to Bay’s flashy action style. Bay’s movies are filled with big explosions and flashy imagery. Dan Harmon focuses on deep creative storytelling. Harmon, Bay, and Whedon all have different showrunner styles, but each does a good job at keeping their work consistent and cohesive.
Community is a show that is very complex. The series uses stereotypes and race as key elements of the show. Though Harmon does reinforce popular stereotypes about race in the show, he also challenges these stereotypes by defying the expectations of the audience. Though Community does a good job approaching race and stereotypes are common topics in the genre of sitcoms. The show is a sitcom series, it follows the same rules that most sitcoms have. Though it falls in the sitcom category, its Meta humor makes it differ from a lot of other shows because it acknowledges its own presence. Its use of Meta humor is also one of the reasons that the show has a cult following. The series pushes the boundaries of the genre by crafting stories that are very ambitious and high concept. These feats were all possible because of Dan Harmon. His vision for the show is what keeps it fresh and original. It has been proven that without him, the show does not have the same impact. All of these elements combined make Community what it is. A Meta comedy with a lot of heart.

Citation
Cavallero, Jonathan J. "Hitchcock And Race: Is The Wrong Man A White Man?." Journal Of Film & Video 62.4 (2010): 3-14. Film & Television Literature Index. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
Community." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2014
FRANICH, DARREN, et al. "25 BEST CULT TV SHOWS FROM THE PAST 25 YEARS. (Cover Story)." Entertainment Weekly 1218 (2012): 36-43. Film & Television Literature Index. Web. 9 Dec. 2014.
Mintz, Lawrence E. "Ideology In The Television Situation Comedy." JSTOR. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.
Newcomb, Horace TV: The Most Popular Art. Garden City, NY:
Rose, Lacey. "The Rise And Fall (And Rise) Of Dan Harmon." Hollywood Reporter 25 (2013): 43-47. Film & Television Literature Index. Web. 9 Dec. 2014.

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