A Modern Family: The Performance of "Family" and Familialism in Contemporary Television Series.

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the complexities inherent in contemporary television articulations of family life and organization that construct the discourse on the American family since the mid-1990s. In addition to surveying the history of a number of television genres, such as father-centered series, teen-oriented programming, multigenerational family series, and reality TV, the dissertation uses textual analysis to examine how television frames and constructs “the family,” while also attempting to locate this construction within larger political, social, and cultural contexts. I argue that the socio-cultural evolution and construction of parenthood, marriage, and childhood have led to alternative definitions of “family” in contemporary television programming; however, specific case studies indicate a seemingly resilient commitment to, or performance of, a particular familial idealism. Each chapter concludes with notable case studies that offer an in-depth examination of various depictions of families, the kinds of “family values” they promote, and the way they continue to perform familialism even as they depict modern-day familial realities. The goal of this dissertation was to provide a better understanding as to both why a mythic “ideal” family has inhabited our cultural consciousness for so long, and how recent television series offer a space to question the appropriateness, authenticity, and usefulness of the dominant familial ideology to the twenty-first century family. In the end, what it found was that even amidst a multitude of diverse sentiments and structures of families on television, the most successful images of family continue to be bound to a performance of familialism that reaffirms the values deeply rooted in the nuclear family.