Postmodernism in Community (Dan Harmon, 2009)Brett, Casey & Fereshta.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.