From “Big Brother” to “Survivor to shows like The Bachelor Jersey Shore” and “The Real Housewives of (insert your city here) the quality of our television shows has greatly diminished. Ironically, what these reality” shows present to us does not seem to correspond with reality at all. For me it begs the question “What happened to the sitcom?”
There used to be a time when I would race to my television set to catch “Family Matters” or “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” because I knew that what I consumed was far more than entertainment. The sitcoms of the 1990s were built around family values and a host of other morally sound ideals. Shows like “Full House” taught young people how to care for and embrace their siblings. “Moesha” and “The Parent ‘Hood” addressed contemporary issues by providing an example of an imperfect yet astoundingly real household. “Boy Meets World” posited a unique perspective of the ins and outs of teenage courtship while teaching how to maintain friendships.
“Living Single” gave young women a blueprint on how to conduct themselves as professional independent women while at the same time conveying they could still “have fun with the girls.”
These shows provided models of family and friends for which to strive. By handling moral dilemmas that arose in an altruistic fashion they offered examples of how young people ought to become. With most sitcom viewers falling between the ages of 7 to 21 according to the 2005 book “The Sitcom Reader: American Viewed and Skewed positive examples are crucial. What influence can be expected now that lewd reality TV has replaced the classic sitcom’s daily moral?
What archetypes are now portrayed on television? Instead of positive influence youth are provided with examples that may guide them down a path of destruction. The every-weekend clubbing bar fights and promiscuous one-night-stands observed in shows such as “Jersey Shore For the Love of Ray-J” and “The Real World ” contribute to an unbearably thick veil of ignorance that the younger generations are now subject to wear. And when the brink of their adulthood comes to the forefront can young people be blamed if they establish this country’s future moral standards according to the example they received?
Over the past two decades the accepted moral standards upheld by the sitcom have deteriorated as they made way for the new so-called “reality.” Having both parents in the household is no longer an expectation as the number of single mothers increases. Young men like “Big Mike a DVD movie bootlegger in the South Bay of Los Angeles, no longer aspire to go to college and become successful professionals. Due to the examples they have been afforded, young people expect to hit it big with get-rich-quick schemes. Young women no longer expect men to respectfully sweep them off of their feet and join them in conventional marriage. Instead, they face the grim possibility of having to compete with 12 other women for the opportunity to marry a music artist for monetary gain on MTV.
Until morally sound television programming is reinstated young people will default to using the poor examples they grew up with as excuses to not demand better for themselves and the generations to come. I refuse to sit calm until the return of the sitcom.