By Natasha
C. Pratt-Harris, Assistant Professor & Criminal
Justice Program Coordinator
Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Morgan State University      

When I was a college student, I scheduled classes
around syndicated episodes of Good Times, a 1970s sitcom about the intact African American Evans
family of five who lived in a housing project on the south side of Chicago. Although
the show had been off the air for nearly 15 years and I had watched
every episode, I found myself running
back to my dorm room between classes to watch the show. 

I am sure that if YouTube or a smart phone were
around then, I would have had more ease in satisfying my Good Times fix.  While I
thought I was being purely entertained, I was an evolving sociologist who was
experiencing social problems on the tube. 
My near-obsession with the show made sense when I became a
professor.  When I teach social problems
in the classroom, I often discuss the Good
Times story lines. 
I had come to realize that what I once thought was purely humorous could
become a tool in an online class. 

I designed an online
section of social problems by integrating Peter
Kaufman’s “doing sociology” approach
and embedding YouTube URLs of the show into the course.  During the Society for the Study of Social
Problems (SSSP) conference in August, students described their online experience
and how they learned about social problems by watching Good Times on YouTube .  They used the show to  understand social problems, engaged in
analysis via online discussion, reflected on contemporary social issues, and took
action through journal writing.

For SSSP, I described how Good Times
the show, became Good Times the
teaching tool, through the process of social
constructionism. We analyzed the television show, which offers near
exhaustive examples of social problems within their social context.                       

During the conference, students described how
they defined social problems, based on the “Penny’s Christmas” episode.  “Penny” (a young neighbor of the family,
played by actress/ singer Janet Jackson) stole jewelry for her adopted mother,
after being pick-pocketed while Christmas shopping; this threatened the legal adoption
process.           

Emile Durkheim’s functionalist
perspective can help us understand the institution of the family.  The Evans family is a well-defined unit, an
urban lower class family that confirmed what poverty looked like for a family of
five in inner-city Chicago during the 1970s.  Their circumstances were portrayed as an inevitable
part of the social order.              

Symbolic interactionism
canbe applied by understanding the context of words, symbols, exchanges, and
the meaning of face-to-face interactions. We
used the “Sex and the Evans Family” episode to understand examples of gender bias.  In this episode, the father frowned upon his
daughter’s reading about sexual behavior, but lauded his son for reading the
same information..    

The constant struggle between the haves and
have-nots on Good Times relates to Karl Marx’s conflict perspective.  Change, a central facet of the Marxian
perspective, was described as on the brink. 
While the father character nearly landed jobs, offering significant
income potential, he consistently fell short. While the Evans family was
actively engaged in the political process, their needs were not met (especially
living in poor conditions of a housing project).  And while the youngest son on Good Times was notably very bright, there
were limited educational opportunities available to him.                                                                                             

Good Times
can help us understand social problems and their relationship to social
inequality, social institutions, work and the economy, crime, and global
problems. Social inequality was characterized by the existence of unequal
opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a
group or society. 

As an example of social inequality, I used the episode “The Dinner Party,” which featured
the character Gertrude Vinson, an elderly tenant of the housing project, who occasionally consumed dog food to make
ends meet.  This episode sparked
discussion and journal writing about the experience of poverty and isolation
amongst the aging population.  

Good Times
also teaches us about work and the economy within the institution of family. The
Evans family represents the nearly 20% of poor families who have a head of
household who works full-time (where the father character worked full-time at a
car wash), but lives below the poverty line.  The
family had poor health care, limited means to land consistent/ gainful
employment, lived in an impoverished/ disorganized community, with limited
opportunities, and experienced consistent poverty, while working in the
secondary labor market –all issues that still plague the working poor today. There
were numerous examples of crime.  Episodes including the eldest son being shot by a gang member, illegal
gambling, an attempted armed robbery, and the intimidation by loan shark “Sweet
Daddy Williams” take place in the series.

While defining social
problems, making sense of the sociological paradigms, and examining the
relationship to core topics, you can have Good
Times too.  What other television
shows—past and present—provide rich sociological lessons?