Semiotics and Symbolic Interactionism in TV's Urban Comedies When you watch the modern urban situation comedies on television, what stereotypes or depictions come to mind? Well whatever you just thought up in your head and much more was all written in the Journal of Popular Film and Television. They analyzed the modern day and early urban and suburban sitcoms that the American public has enjoyed over the years. The article confronted all the different aspects of typical television situations. By reading this one can understand that most of the earlier comedies used families to humor their audiences while modern day sitcoms use all other types of living situations. For example, Friends, portrays a group of adults in their mid-twenties while we see a single middle aged man living with his elderly father, a live-in maid and brother that stops by frequently on the hit show Fraiser. However if you look back at some of the long running shows of the fifties through even the eighties you will find The Brady Bunch, which portrays the typical good-hearted family just as many other shows entailed back years ago.
English: Looking south from Top of the Rock, New Y...
English: Bird's eye panorama of Manhattan & New Yo...
English: Ellen DeGeneres in 2009.The article starts off by giving us a rundown of how the hit sitcom Mad About You starts off.
The show begins with a black-and white photograph of the New York City skyline reminiscent of the opening moments of Woody Allen's Manhattan. In the same Allen style, there then follows a photomontage of the happy couple enjoying the city, strolling across a bridge in Central Park with the Dakota apartments behind them, hailing a cab in the rain, walking their dog past a churchyard, ordering food at a deli, browsing through a bookstore, returning from a trip to the corner grocery, buying flowers at a street stand, sharing wine and lunch by the Central...