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Television as a Cultural Forum: An Analysis of "Dharma and Greg"

© Amanda Wilson

Social issues can be ignored or examined under television's microscope, and historically, television has left issues, such as elitism, sexism and segregation, unchallenged. But the TV sitcom Dharma and Greg successfully represents television as a 'cultural forum.' First, because Dharma and Greg dissects and magnifies socioeconomic divides, it can discuss class structure. Second, the show combines both elitist and counter-culture lifestyles into a broad comedic schema. Comedy makes the show less offensive to both the hippie and the aristocrat that it represents. Finally, the show has a broad target audience, and in turn, diversity.

Dharma and Greg is a fairy tale of how the wealthy prince charming met and married the beautiful, hippie Cinderella. Dharma and Greg's marriage works, but the sitcom often focuses on the quirks of their unlikely combination and the class clashes between the in-laws. Greg's parents are very wealthy. Kitty, the mother, dresses in designer daywear and contributes to ineffective charities. Dharma's parents are the stereotypical hippies. They dress in tattered, loose fitting clothing and have remained unmarried yet faithful partners throughout the tenure of Dharma's life.

Each social group, the hippies and the wealthy, have been reduced to their stereotype. They are vessels of the general connotations that the words "hippie" or "aristocrat" evoke. The two classes' polarity makes conflict inevitable and conflict prolongs their polarity. This duality of class representation cultivates an atmosphere ripe for discussion. In Episode 43, an embarrassed Greg, forced to participate in a mother-son charity fashion show wearing sailor's garb, confronts his mother about her prolific charitable contributions to obscure causes and labels her as selfish. Greg says his mother's lifetime work is motivated by vanity. He rips open the divide between mother and son and exposes her naive perspective of poverty, specifically, by pointing out that her favorite charity is Habitat Tap, an organization that teaches homeless people how to tap dance.

Here, Kitty and Greg's differing perspectives of the issue of poverty indicate that this television show works as a cultural forum. Television as a cultural forum is based on the idea that "conflicting viewpoints of social issues are, in fact, the elements that structure most television programs" (Newcomb and Hirsch). Many times, these conflicting viewpoints are resolved through dialogue. Conflicts can also be accentuated by stereotypical representation of the social divide that provides "meaning through difference." Borne of the structuralist concept of meaning through difference, Greg and Kitty's juxtaposition of middle class and rich, enlightened and naive, male and female, provides a binary context for the discussion and interpretation of class structure.

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