From Manhattan to Mayberry: How CBS Perpetuated Dominant Ideology Through I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show Open Access
Freedman, Sofia (Spring 2025)
Abstract
CBS captivated American audiences during the 1950s and 1960s as they mastered the emerging television genre, situational comedy. Two of the network’s most highly rated sitcoms, I Love Lucy (1951-1957) and The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), while seemingly opposite in their representation of middle-class American life, soared in the ranking and were beloved by households nationwide. Through compiling research that explores the intersection of CBS’s internal leadership, American social attitudes, and current events, this thesis will expose why, in just a few years, the network’s most successful show went from portraying an urban multi-ethnic household with a female protagonist to an ethnically homogenous rural environment with a male protagonist. At its core, the content reflected in these sitcoms demonstrates the network’s intrinsic motivation to maintain cultural relevance by telling stories that alleviated the current social anxieties through a depiction of human life that reassured mainstream American audiences. Current events inherently impacted the topics requiring reassurance in the 1950s and 1960s, such as World War II, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights movement. These historical events altered how American audiences perceived race, gender, economy, and nationality, evident through the angle CBS employs when depicting American middle-class life in each of these programs. My process will begin by discussing the network’s history and values, providing an idea of existing patterns that correlate with content produced and how that content reflects social attitudes impacted by current events. After providing this context, I will discuss I Love Lucy from the perspective of 1950s current events, social attitudes, and the internal social and operational dynamics within the network's staff. I will then apply those same avenues of thinking when analyzing The Andy Griffith Show. This comparison will demonstrate that the network’s shift in top-grossing sitcoms suggests that the identities represented in CBS sitcoms result from each decade’s underlying social tensions rather than a drive toward thinking through those tensions using innovation or creativity. In the 1950s, social and political tensions related to immigration and the role of women, but the changing social climate of the 1960s provided new diffused social tensions, non-nuclear families, and the glamorization of white rural America. Recognizing the impact current events have on shaping the attitudes of network executives and American audience members is imperative as this notion is not unique to the mid-twentieth century but is a universal truth consistent amongst all mainstream sitcoms.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: DEVELOPMENTS FOSTERING CBS’ CAPITALISTIC FOUNDATION FOR ENTERTAINMENT
CHAPTER 2: I LOVE LUCY, THE PRODUCT OF MOLDING CREATIVITY WITH COMMERCIAL STRATEGY
CHAPTER 3: THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, PROMOTING ESCAPE THROUGH HOMOGENY
CONCLUSION
About this Honors Thesis
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Primary PDF
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From Manhattan to Mayberry: How CBS Perpetuated Dominant Ideology Through I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show () | 2025-04-11 18:36:17 -0400 |
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Supplemental Files
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/concern/parent/qj72p889b/file_sets/n583xw67n () | 2025-04-11 18:34:44 -0400 |
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