I Love Lucy
The impact of Sitcoms on American Culture
By Amanda Noll
As America was learning how to be a world superpower in the 1950s, it was also attempting to
maintain a cultural foundation that would support a strong American society at home. After World War
II, the middle class population surpassed the working class in America, making it the first post-industrial
country in history. This transition paralleled a nation-wide ideological shift towards middle class values
including religious morals and a male dominated family structure. The growth of television and the
popularity of I Love Lucy also coincided with the rise of the middle class in American. I Love Lucy helped
create a culture that revolved around television, sitcoms, and the values they supported. The American
values that were marketed by these sitcoms, however, excluded the lower classes of society and created
apathetic attitudes to crucial social and political problems of the time. Though easily seen in hindsight,
comedian Mort Sahl was one of the few who criticized the cracks in the foundation of American society
as they developed in the 1950s. While sitcoms like I Love Lucy used comedy to support the social trends
of the affluent society, Mort Sahl used comedy as dissent in attempts to change society. By looking at
the cultural values sitcoms both helped create and support in the post-war period, along with the also
influential trends of comedic dissent, one can gain a broader understanding for the beginnings of the
counterculture and new political movements that would irrupt in the following decades.
As one of the earliest sitcoms, I Love Lucy is essential to the understanding of sitcom’s
influence on American society. An early version of the show, My Favorite Husband, was on the
radio in the late 1940s, and transitioned to television by bringing many of the comedic tactics of
radio and combining them with a vaudeville flare. Television was becoming an increasingly
important source of entertainment for Americans as I love Lucy was emerging. In 1949 only 3%
of Americans had televisions, but by the premier of I Love Lucy in 1951, the percentage had
jumped to 24% (Manning 63). The six-year span of the sitcom paralleled another rapid growth of
televisions, where the number owned grew from thirteen million to forty-one million by
1957(TV History). The luxury of owning a television moved quickly from a privilege to the
norm. This norm mostly encompassed the middle class, and excluded portions of the working
class and the majority of the lowest social strata. The popularity of I love Lucy was undeniable,
making the show the most watched sitcom four out of its six years and catapulting Lucille Ball
and Desi Arnaz to the first television millionaires. The importance of the show historically is also
undeniable as shown by the forty-four million Americans who tuned in for the birth of Little
Ricky on I Love Lucy compared to the twenty-nine million Americans who watched the
inauguration Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first widely televised inauguration, the next
day(Manning73).
I Love Lucy also exemplifies the mid-century concern with morality and the censorship that
dominated the 1950s. With the beginning of the Cold War and McCarthyism in full bloom,
censorship was not only tolerated by many Americans, it was seen as necessary to protect the
purity of American culture. In 1952, the National Association of Radio and Television
Broadcasters created their own censorship guidelines in fear that Congress would otherwise
implement government controls. The stated goal of these guidelines was “to foster and promote
the commonly accepted moral, social, and ethical ideals characteristic of American life” (History
Matters). The guidelines were also implemented to protect the youth of America from crime,
violence, and sex on TV. As an example, Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds for the first two
seasons of the show in order to maintain a pure image. After the birth of Little Ricky, their beds
were pushed together under one headboard to create a more realistic image of a marriage, but
their separate blankets remained tightly tucked into their respective sides. I Love Lucy, and the
early sitcom censorship guidelines as a whole, aimed their values at educated, religious, wealthy
and middle class Americans while excluding the lower strata of American society, especially
minorities. Comedians like Mort Sahl and intellectual movements like the Beats saw a flaw in
this system of censorship. They felt America was more then a single set of moral values and saw
television and mass media as restricting individual intellectual, spiritual, and artistic freedom.
Though this censorship was widely supported in the 1950s, by the 1960s more Americans began
to question the monopoly middle class America had on the creation of an appropriate American
cultural model through their control of mass media.
As the post-industrial period brought new technology to the middle class, the American
social structure was also yearning for stability, which it had not experienced since before the
Great Depression. The role of Lucy in the sitcom displays the mid-century belief that familial
stability was based on a housewife and a working husband. Lucy, however, was not satisfied
with her role as a housewife and dreamed of Hollywood and life far away from daily chores. The
show paralleled many women’s position, having ambitions for what the new stage in American
history would mean for them, yet having no jobs and little education to translate those ambitions
into reality. This ambition to break free from the confines of an apron drives the comedic plotline
of the show. Lucy is always trying to find new and exciting things to do, like entering show
business, and finding ways to sneak around Ricky. Inevitably Lucy fails and “domestic harmony
is restored, but not in compromise.” Ricky, as the patriarch, forgives his wife for her silly
mishaps while remaining the authority figure, as Lucy is again confined to her duties as a
housewife. In this way, I Love Lucy “simultaneously legitimizes the yearning of women for fuller
lives and assured them that they would be better off keeping their dreams in their head”(Manning
68-69). The comedic plotline of I Love Lucy is an example of how social unrest was lurking very
close to the surface of American society during the 1950s. The women’s movement, however,
would not radically question the role of women as confined to housewives until influenced by
the other political and social movements of the 1960s.
Another defining social aspect of the 1950s was the migration of the middle class to the
suburbs. William Levitt built the first mass produced housing development, known as Levittown,
on Long Island in 1949. Levittown and its protégés reinvigorated the housing trend of suburbia
to levels never reached prior to WWII. With this increase of housing and the G.I. Bill providing
cheaper mortgages for veterans, a rush to the suburbs swept through America. This new housing
movement sparked intellectuals such as David Riesman, who wrote Lonely Crowd in 1950, to
criticize the new social patterns of mass society. Riesman and other dissenters like Mort Sahl
saw the rise of suburbia as diminishing individuality and supporting a mass society, which did
the same. Lucy and Ricky felt no reservations for joining the rush to suburbia in their final
season in 1957. I Love Lucy was affected by the migration to the suburbs, as the writers felt it
was appropriate for the Ricardo family to move away from the city in order to follow the
national trend. The Ricardo’s move also helped solidify this version of the American dream by
reinforcing the concept of the family friendly suburbs for its millions of viewers. I Love Lucy
followed this pattern throughout its seven years pertaining to many social and cultural trends of
the 1950s. The show imitated many of the cultural fads of the 1950s but also helped define the
specific qualities of these trends and solicit them to millions of impressionable viewers.
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