Community

Community

·         A fascinatingly complex yet accessibly mainstream show, adored by critics but yet to find a wider audience.

·         A sitcom about sitcoms, Community deconstructs common narrative tropes, archetypes and representations and plays with the idea of hyperreality

·         The characters are aware of the show – its reception and the character’s persona/how they are perceived.

·         Community is also a ‘self-consciously’ postmodern text. It is aimed at an exceptionally media-literate audience, and expects viewers to be able to ably deconstruct the complex web of intertextuality, hyperreality and self-referential humour through which the show and its narrative is constructed.

·         Common conventions which remind the audience that what they are watching isn’t ‘real’.

·         Obvious cues of this in normal sitcoms: unrealistic sets, ‘canned’ audience laughter and the use of non-diegetic music are only the most obvious breaks in ‘reality’.

·         Contemporary media texts are no longer original, but simply ‘copies’ of texts that came before them e.g. it has referenced both Cheers and M.A.S.H. on several occasions to engage with the fact the show isn’t real.

·         30 Rock also 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 narrative – audiences then question the reality of their surroundings.

·         Community addresses this issue directly. One of its central characters Abed often operates as a substitution for the show’s writers.

·         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 e.g. bottle episode

·         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 - ‘Greendale College’ within the narrative was similarly strapped for cash.

·         Mocking/ humorous references to the show’s direct ‘competitors’, most notably Glee, including direct parody/pastiche of other texts.

·         The most complex and multi-layered narrative the show has constructed is the construction of a ‘text within the text’: an ongoing ‘web series’ called The Community College Chronicles – it exist within story, 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 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. It can be watched online as part of ‘Greendale’s Official Website’ – a paratext which also functions within the show.

·         This creates an audience hierarchy – some consume paratexts, some don’t. They also analyse the ways characters are presented.

·         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 hyperreality of the show itself – Chronicles just as unreal as the show itself.

·         Community shares a fair amount of DNA with Spaced, a British sitcom broadcast in the Noughties. The shows both use pop-cultural referencing to suggest that their characters' (and by substitution their audience's) experience and view the world through a lens in which all events are presented as if they were in films/ on TV.

·         Community goes further – e.g. 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 - the episode contains many references to The Terminator and the films of John Woo.

·         Intertextuality within the narrative of the show is an interesting commentary on the characters’ inability to experience their world as ‘real’, not popular references.

·         Narrative from the show expanded, explored and interactive on Social Media.

·         Community tells complex ‘background’ stories designed to be consumed separately from the original episode.

·         Characters from Community have appeared as extras in other sitcoms, suggesting that two unrelated shows ‘share’ a fictional world.

·         Both subverts and conforms to sitcom genre conventions and dissects the ideas behind postmodernism.