Norman Lear, the man who revolutionized television comedy in the 1970s, died this Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 101, according to his family. He was the man behind some of the biggest hits on the small screen in the ’70s and ’80s, including titles like All in the Family, Maude, Day by Day and The Jeffersons. In 2021, the Golden Globes honored him with the Carol Burnett Award and he has won six Emmy Awards throughout his career.
Lear was a pioneer in introducing political commentary and social criticism into sitcoms. Since he began working on television in 1954, he has proven that humor is not incompatible with tackling serious issues and that this combination could attract millions of viewers to the screen. His scripts combined reflections and comments on racism, abortion, homosexuality, war and the rights of minorities, topics that have not previously been addressed in television comedies.
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“Norman lived a life full of creativity, tenacity and empathy. “He loved our country deeply and contributed throughout his life to uphold its core ideals of justice and equality,” his family said in a statement announcing his death.
In 1968 he received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of the film My Wife’s Boyfriend. Shortly thereafter, in 1971, he premiered a television comedy based on a British series about a conservative middle-class man and his strange family, “All in the Family,” which became an instant success and aired to audiences for 207 episodes. An example of Norman Lear’s desire to include serious themes in his comedies was that two episodes of this series revolved around the attempted rape of the protagonist’s wife. All in the Family spawned seven spin-off series, a record in television.
The Jeffersons aired between 1975 and 1985 and followed the everyday life and difficulties of a black family. The protagonists of Good Times were also black and their actions addressed the poverty and discrimination they suffered. The central character of Maude, another of her productions, was a feminist woman played by the golden girl Bea Arthur. These are just a few examples of how Norman Lear brought comedy into the social and political reality of his time. “You can’t change people’s minds, but you can force them to think,” Lear said of his ambition to continue on his show, something that even landed him in the crosshairs of Nixon for his position against the Vietnam War and his actions with homosexuality in his series.
Another example is the comedy Día a día, which is about a Cuban family in Los Angeles. The original series aired between 1975 and 1984, and recently there was a new version on Netflix, also with Norman Lear at the helm of production, which aired between 2017 and 2020 and covered topics such as post-traumatic syndrome and the treatment towards retired military personnel, sexual identity, religion, racism or immigration. Lear died while several projects were underway, including remakes of his comedies “Mary Hartman,” “Mary Hartman” and “Good Times.”
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