2. Institutional Information
Country of origin – United States of America.
Number of seasons – 5
Number of episodes – 97
Original language – English (American English)
Created by – Daniel Harmon
Broadcast – NBC (Original channel)
Production companies – Universal Television, Russo Brothers Film and Dan Harmon productions.
Locations – Paramount Studios, Los Angeles and Los Angeles City College.
Running time – 22 minutes each episode.
3. Hyper-reality & Copies
Hyper-reality
It could easily be argued that the sitcom as a TV genre is inherently
postmodern; there are many common conventions which constantly remind
the audience that what they are watching isn’t ‘real’.
There are the obvious cues to this in many ‘normal’ sitcom texts; unrealistic
sets, ‘canned’ audience laughter and the use of non-diegetic music are only
the most obvious breaks in ‘reality’. Friends is not a documentary about life
among white middle-class New Yorkers on the Upper East Side, but a
simulacrum of that life, presented using the codes and signifiers which we as
an audience have come to accept. Community does something similar with life
at ‘Greendale Community College’, set in a typical Mid-American city.
This epitomises one of the key ideas defining postmodernism – that
contemporary media texts are no longer original, but simply ‘copies’ of texts
that came before them; many of which were copies of something else to begin
with.
Copies
For example, Community apes the conventions, characterisation and
narrative structures found in previous ‘workplace’ sitcoms like Cheers – itself
a riff on conventions developed during the previous decade by M.A.S.H. and
The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In fact this is true of almost all current sitcoms.
Whereas sitcoms of the past concerned themselves with attempting to
present their stories as ‘real’, Community engages directly with the fact that it
is not; indeed, it has referenced both Cheers and M.A.S.H. themselves on
several occasions to hammer this point home.
4. Pastiche
Amongst the most common forms of postmodernism in contemporary media are parody and pastiche
– using imitation of existing texts, a form of intertextuality, as a way of communicating ideas with
audiences.
In its use of pastiche and homage, Community shares a fair amount of DNA with Spaced, a British
sitcom broadcast around the start of the Noughties. The shows both use an abundance of pop-cultural
referencing to suggest that their characters' (and by proxy their audience's) experience and view the
world through a lens in which all events are presented as if they were in films and on television.
Community, however, has gone further with this than Spaced, in large part due to the higher
production values of American television. Thus, when a paintball game taking place on campus spirals
out of control, the cinematography, editing patterns and mise-en-scène (which have previously
followed fairly standard sitcom conventions and language) simultaneously switch genres, incorporating
the whip-pans, crane shots and dramatic slow-motion common in the action genre. Furthermore the
episode contains many references to specific texts such as The Terminator and the films of John Woo.
Critical comment has suggested that the use of intertextuality within the narrative of the show is an
interesting commentary on the characters’ inability to experience their world as ‘real’, instead seeing
everything through the filter of popular cultural references.
There are countless other fascinating case studies within Community. A few examples:
• Transmedia storytelling on Twitter; #AnniesMove, a narrative from the show expanded, explored
and interactive on Social Media.
• Background/foreground narratives; Community tells complex ‘background’ stories designed to be
consumed separately from the original episode.
• Inter-diegetic characters; characters from Community have appeared as extras in other sitcoms,
suggesting that two unrelated shows ‘share’ a fictional world.
These are but a few of the many ways Community engages with the sitcom genre conventions,
commenting on the ways it both subverts and conforms to them. As such Community goes beyond
postmodernism, dissecting the very ideas behind it. All this, and it’s funny as well.
5. Self Awareness
Community is not the first US sitcom to explore the artifice within its own narrative. 30 Rock uses postmodern techniques such as direct
address, non-continuity editing systems and meta-textual referencing, while How I Met Your Mother invites viewers to engage in different
levels of interaction with the show’s world by engaging with paratexts (websites, blogs, viral videos) originated within the diegesis. In this
way, viewers of the show are encouraged both to ‘interact’ with the narrative and similarly to question the ‘reality’ of their own
surroundings, and the extent to which their own consumption is of ‘simulacra’ rather than of reality.
However, Community is unique among its contemporaries in attempting to address this issue directly. One of its central characters Abed
often operates as a proxy for the show’s writers, commenting on the narratives that follow classic sitcom conventions.
The following scenes/sequences in Community show some of the ways in which the series refers directly to its’ own fictional nature:
• Direct reference to terms used in TV criticism to describe the narrative structures used in the episode (look up the term bottle episode
for an example).
• Characters apparently being aware of the extra-textual personae of the actors portraying them.
• References to the show’s reception by critics and audiences, and the production circumstances of the show itself; cuts in the show’s
production budget were included as part of the storyline wherein the fictional ‘Greendale College’ within the narrative was similarly
strapped for cash.
• Satirical references to the show’s direct ‘competitors’, most notably Glee, including direct parody/pastiche of other texts.
However, the most complex and multi-layered narrative the show has constructed in this sense is the construction of a ‘text within the
text’: an ongoing ‘web series’ called The Community College Chronicles.
6. Text Within A Text
The Community College Chronicles exists within the diegesis, shot and edited
by one of the characters. Presenting a ‘fictionalised’ version of the show, each
of the characters in the show is played by a different, minor character from
within the world of Greendale. Furthermore, several scenes of the episode
actually show the filming of scenes from the web series, direct reconstructions
of scenes the audience have already seen. The series can also be watched online
as part of ‘Greendale’s Official Website’ – a paratext which also functions within
the diegesis of the show.
The existence of these texts has a number of important effects:
• It creates an audience hierarchy, differentiating those who consume the
paratexts from those who don’t; and it encourages viewers to analyse the way
characters on the show are presented (or re-presented) as obvious archetypal
sitcom characters.
• It allows the writers to deconstruct their own narratives, presenting their own
criticism on their work and influencing its place in media culture.
• It encourages viewers to deconstruct the hyper-reality of the show itself,
since The Community College Chronicles is in reality no less real (and no less
accurate a representation of reality) than Community itself.
