The New Modern Family

The New Modern Family

Jaclynn Hanson

Never has it been more obvious that the days of Ward & June Cleaver are over than when viewing today’s typical television sitcom.  Yes, the vision of the All-American family is in our rearview mirror and our new favorite TV moms and dads are drunk behind the wheel on their way to pick up their illegitimate children from jail.  Popular television series today showcase a new normal of today’s modern family and they go about their daily endeavors in a shameless fashion.  In an attempt to keep up with a changing familial landscape, television series such as Modern Family, Breaking Bad, Weeds and Shameless exhibit, in varying degrees of intensity and humor, the changing tides of today’s family structure.  While this generates a much broader lens for viewers, it simultaneously leaves people without same-sex parents, a sibling in prison, or a drug addiction feeling as if they no longer belong under the “average American family” classification.  A new spin on the American family, and for most they are now the outsiders looking in.  Or, if framed in a true-to-life context: those damn nosy neighbors discovering the marijuana greenhouse operating next door. 

The recipe for a successful family-centered sitcom in the past was simple.  Same-sex parents with jobs, a couple kids and a pet would be presented with some type of dilemma or predicament and together they would find a solution and overcome it all as they hugged it out to with the background sounds of violins at each show’s end.  While to a certain extent this formula is still being utilized in today’s most popular television shows, several aspects have undergone a drastic transformation in an attempt to reflect and address current societal circumstances.  However, many hit television shows have exacerbated the dramas of the “modern family” to a degree that has turned what was once a family sitcom that incorporated small facets of advice and a structure to mimic into a how-to guide to manufacture and sell drugs, or on the lighter side, how to fashion a boxed-wine enema for the alcoholic in your family like Peter Gallagher convinced his son Carl to do for him on Shameless only before he continues on to give him advice on masturbation (“Simple Pleasures”).

 

            In his book, “Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio: Raising Standards of Popular Culture”, Steve Allen defends the old formula for successful television and expresses concern for the direction television programming is going.  He argues that, “clean comedy can be successfully marketed because it has been for a very long time” as he lists off successful comedians and actors dating back to Vaudeville days (Vulgarian 53).  While I think many people can agree that television may be a more dangerous venue of exposure to children for most of the shock and awe programs we have become accustomed to, it has become a far more successful strategy for television to push the envelope than that of clean comedy once enjoyed and reveled by previous generations.  To put it in perspective, there was once a time when a pregnant Lucille Ball raised eyebrows with CBS execs and the episode of Ellen in which Ellen DeGeneres came out to the public generated one of the highest rated shows only to get cancelled shortly after (Douglas 11).  These are topics that we are no longer afraid of, and the kinds of topics we don’t give second thought to.  Viewers today would tune in only if Ellen DeGeneres gets knocked up by Lucille Ball.

It has long been debated whether or not television viewers emulate or frame their thinking in synchronization with what they see as “normal” on the programs they watch.  If this is true, will we be seeing more middle-class suburban families facing financial difficulties seeking careers in drug trafficking or will we sympathize with the morally bankrupt schemers trying to get by in the inner city?  Or, in a less criminal generalization, will we not bat an eye when our grandfather introduces us to his Latin lover thirty years his junior?  Although it’s hard to prove to what extent our  culture reciprocates what we see on television, it is interesting to note what author Marvin Moore found in his study of the “American family” on prime-time television where he suggests, “prime-time network television tends to reinforce conservative to moderate models of family life while also presenting a diversity of non-standard interpretations of family which are, for the most part, comfortably framed in the non-threatening comedic form" (Moore 44).  The idea of diversity being presented in the non-threatening comedic form can be seen in many sitcoms showcasing a different take on the typical American family.  A prime example would be ABC’s award winning Modern Family, a show that thrives on awkward situations and satirical humor as opposed to gang violence and explosives.

Showtime’s Shameless incorporates all the ingredients for one majorly screwed up American family.  Drug use, alcohol abuse, close encounters with incest, frequent encounters with police and a mixed race infant who ingests cocaine under supervision of his older sister essentially define this south side Chicago family modern family.  One cannot help but wonder if there really is a significant population of families that survive (and maybe even thrive) in these kinds of outrageous situations.  Maybe the white, working, middle-class, same sex parents married with children structure might be evolving and changing before our eyes on the TV screen, but are they changing to that extent in real life or is this the only way television series can earn their keep these days?  While the problems familial sitcoms of the past faced were arguably cliché, mild-natured and relied more on cheesy one-liners than one night stands and drug benders, they drew a closer picture of the average American that most of today’s hit dramas portray. 

 

In turning away from the typical family setting, new television families are wilder and crazier than ever – often depicting a lifestyle of extreme highs and lows never before seen on television.  Even cable programming that not long ago featured the familiar faces of the Tanners, the Conners, and the Taylors has seen a shift in pushing the envelope with heavy drug and sexual references as well as a normalizing of criminal behavior never imagined by Danny Tanner or Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor.  Now, the families invited into our living rooms on a Wednesday night are the rebellious Whites and the conniving Botwins.  We used to watch Roseanne Conner flip pancakes over the stove and now we watch Walter White cook crystal meth to perfection in a pair of tighty-whities.  Our new standard for the American family in television has definitely reframed our idea of today’s normal, modern, shameless, and bad.  The majority may feel as if they are the nosy neighbors looking in on a wild and crazy family dynamic, but we sure do enjoy watching the chaos from the safety from our own front yards.