For this week’s post, I will analyze an article from VOX written by Emily Todd VanDerWerff, which reports on the tremendous success of the TV Special – Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family and The Jeffersons, which aired on ABC on May 22, 2019.
I chose a story covering this TV special, because it is one of the most recent examples of an effort taken by a major network to not only bring classic shows into the limelight again, but to prove to audiences of 2019 that these shows are timeless, and that they still resonate today. I chose this article because I enjoy Vox’s entertaining explanatory writing style. VanDerWerff’s reporting in this article is very laid back and also quite personal, yet it overall gives the reader a comprehensive idea about the special and it’s performances.
Although I am overall entertained by the article, I do feel confused as to what it’s purpose is. Though VanDerWerff reported on the ratings success of the special, and gave facts and in-text links to support her statements (including links to a page detailing the show’s ratings, as well as a previous VOX interview with Norman Lear), it is also written solely in her perspective. Because much of the article is sprinkled with opinion-based commentary, there is definitely a large amount of bias in it. Given the title and subtitle of the article, one would expect more of an informative piece of journalism. It is instead, a mix of an informative piece and a personal review. Though this mix can seem quite unbalanced, it does provide quality insight, and gives the reader a curiosity to want to watch the special if they hadn’t done so already.
Even with the article’s semi-biased tone, VanDerWerff incorporates several different writing approaches that make her article very interesting to read. She opens the article by asking the reader questions, she shares a personal story that compliments her positive feelings about the special, and she takes a moment to recognize Norman Lear as a pioneer of TV sitcoms. She goes on to do her own analysis of the program and explains it’s significance in it’s attempt to bridge the gap between the 1970s and 2019. She notes that we are still facing many of the same social and political issues that were displayed so prominently in these shows from the 1970s. This especially shows in the special because the source material was virtually unchanged, and not modernized at all for today’s television audiences. She then talks about the performances of the actors and how well they portrayed the original series’ iconic characters. Afterward, she gives her own consensus on the special, reports on the power of nostalgia in recent years, and what Live in Front of a Studio Audience’s success might mean to the future of revisiting classic TV sitcoms live. The article ends with a link for the reader to view the special on Hulu.
One thing that rubbed me the wrong way when reading the text was that VanDerWarff contradicts herself a couple of times. She says in the beginning of the article that she loved the special, but near the end, she states that it is a “clumsy” 90 minutes, and laments at the fact that in this day in age, we are constantly seeing remakes of every TV show and movie. She also goes into depth over the significance of the shows’ social commentary early in the article, yet she later she claims that the special only seemed to serve as a vehicle for nostalgia and celebrity cameos. That being noted, it is difficult to understand what conclusions her biases led her to.
I can make my own conclusion that the goal of the article was to report on Live in Front of a Studio Audience’s success, and how the nostalgia and cultural impact of All in the Family and The Jeffersons made it a ratings winner (and now a 3-time Emmy-Award nominee). Did VanDerWerff achieve that goal? In my opinion, I would say both yes and no. It was uneven in many areas, but I commend the effort she took in taking her personal perspective and applying it to facts to create a piece that could give a reader a comprehensive idea of what makes this unique television tribute a special one.
