As this paper will demonstrate, situations used in these situation comedies were often adaptations of lesser known British television programs (as is the case with Norman Lear’s long-running series All in the Family and Sanford and Son ), or of landmark films and plays pointing to new social norms (as with Robert Gutchell’s Alice or James Komack’s The Courtship of Eddie’s Father ). This was done through a restaging of the political and social ills of the generation as comedic teleplays, thereby using laughter as a vehicle towards social awareness and unwitting change or personal growth, and by recycling popular (and un popular) clichés and stereotypes (the bigot, the racist, the bleeding-heart liberal, the closed-minded conservative, the touchy feminist, etc.) so as to undermine them while appearing to reinforce them. When looking back at the popular American situation comedies of the 1970’s, one notices a vast network of programs aimed at framing social discourse and at helping America come to term with its own, changing image.
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