THE RISE OF DRAMEDY

THE RISE OF "DRAMEDY".

Even as I write the word, Blogger's auto correct underlines it in red, as if to politely say "I believe you've made a mistake", while unintentionally dating itself straight away.

For those of you unfamiliar, in recent years "Dramedy", a combination of features of drama and comedy, have risen in popularity, mostly in the form of television shows and "indie" films. Most notable example of "Dramedies" include "Ugly Betty", "Desperate Housewives", "Girls", "Weeds", "Little Miss Sunshine", "New Girl", "Glee", and "Juno", as well as arguably "Scrubs", "Misfits", and "Skins".

Common features and formats included (but are definitely not limited to);

• Between half hour and hour long 3-4 act structures.
• Usually Prime Time/Early Post Watershed hours.
• Featuring "Young" protagonists (young being anyway from late teens to mid-30's).
• Set in mundane or "poetic realistic" settings (for example, living in New York in the magical time of your 20s, or the world stopping troubles of high school, etc).
• Light-hearted approaches to formerly taboo or serious subjects (e.g. premarital sex, drugs, relationships, etc).

But why has Dramedy risen to pop culture awareness from seemingly nowhere? Here are a few reasons;

• Mainstream Media;
• In an attempt to please as many people as possible, TV has blurred the lines between drama and comedy, offering both in one easy to swallow show.
• Changing Tastes;
• With familiar formats being worn worst for wear, TV writers have become inventive to stay ahead of an audience that found laugh-track sitcoms and telenovella styled dramas redundant. How many times have you guessed what was going to happen next, only to be proven correct?
• "Drama" seems to now apply to darker, more plot driven stories such as "House of Cards", "Lost", and "Utopia". The term drama now attracts a much more "adult" and sophisticated audience, possibly even appealing to disenchanted cinephiles.
• "Indie" once meant a film that no one would ever see. Now it's just another film brought to you by one of the top five studios. With the rise in popularity of Indies came a taste for quirky, unique, odd-ball characters in heavy situations.
• Changing Media and trends;
• Comedy sketches are now left for Youtube, while cinematic experiences are enjoyed in the home. To compete, comedies had to become ongoing stories with plot rather than simply episodic.
• Popular precursors to Dramedies;
• "Friends".
• "Sex and the city".
• "Meet the parents".
• "Firefly".
• "Buffy the vampire slayer".
• "The Simpsons".
• "Different Strokes"

But now that it's here, or at least acknowledged as existing, where do we go? Is it a fad or the next step in structuralism? One school of thought is that, much in the same way "Alien" was a combination of horror and sci-fi elements, Dramedy may simply be the natural progression for televised stories. Another way of looking at it though is shows like Different Strokes and the Brady Bunch were dramedies by contemporary standards long before the shows we now watch today, which implies these things go in cycles. I doubt New Girl will go down the same route Different Strokes did with a child molesting bike shop owner.

Whatever your thought may be, Dramedies may very well be here for the meanwhile. So lets get used to it. Or not? Leave a comment about how you feel.