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Category Archives: Television

The Sheldon Cooper Theory: Why we all love the awkward know-it-all!

09 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by Yoga Panther in 'Reasons to be Beautiful' articles, Arts, Psychology, Television

≈ 2 Comments

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Big Bang Theory, geek, genius, nerd, Sheldon Cooper

Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D, Sc.D, has an IQ of 187. He’s a theoretical physicist focusing on quantum mechanics and string theory. He enjoys comic books, sci-fi and online role-playing games.

There is no doubt he is the king of the nerds.

He’s convinced he’s more intelligent than anyone else (and probably is), so he constantly shows off his knowledge and points out other people’s faults whenever the opportunity arises. He’s rigidly logical, extremely stubborn and completely asocial.

And yet, he steals almost every scene of Big Bang Theory as he absolutely hilarious. Why do we find him so likable?

A pragmatic analysis of Sheldon

The reason we love this unlikely sitcom hero can be partly answered by some of my own linguistic research. For my English Language degree, I studied how the characters in Big Bang Theory create humour by breaking the social conventions of language. To do this, I compared Sheldon’s geeky, socially unaware character with Penny’s, as she is his polar opposite.

To demonstrate this personality clash, I used a pragmatic approach called Grice’s Theory of Implicature (1975). This is the idea that we have a framework of conversational expectations, and that when they are broken, we look for the implicature (a different meaning).

Grice suggests that we all abide by certain conversational rules or ‘maxims’, but they can be broken in different ways to create different implied meanings. I aimed to find out how this varied between Sheldon and Penny in order to create humour.

I found that Sheldon unintentionally breaks Grice’s maxims as he doesn’t understand the rules of conversation and therefore doesn’t realise that he is:

a) Speaking too much
b) Taking something literally
c) Going off on a tangent

Penny however intentionally breaks conversational rules by being sarcastic and rhetorical – the former involves saying the opposite of what you mean, and the latter involves being blindingly obvious. This often confuses Sheldon as he can’t quite grasp sarcasm or rhetorical speak.

According to Piazza, Bednarek and Rossi (2011), linguistic deviance can be used in television discourse, not only to create humour, but to create an interpretation of a character as ‘abnormal’. It seems that both types are in action in Big Bang Theory – Penny breaks rules on purpose for comedic effect, while Sheldon deviates from the norm, signifying his eccentric personality. This creates further humour.

However, I also found that on some occasions Sheldon tries to change his behaviour. We all know that Sheldon has difficulty keeping secrets. In one episode, ‘The Loobenfeld Decay‘, Leonard lies to Penny about his plans for the evening so that he doesn’t have to see her performance in an amateur version of Rent (he doesn’t think she can sing very well).

Sheldon gets roped into this lie and feels very uncomfortable about it. In one scene, Leonard tries to teach Sheldon how to tell a white lie. Sheldon comes up with “When we played chess earlier you were terrific and I can’t wait to play you again” – which, under the circumstances, just sounds like he was being sarcastic as he was obviously lying.

We can also see that as the series progress, Sheldon starts to get better at identifying sarcasm and human emotions.

The lovable robot

So even though Sheldon is an unapologetic genius who avoids human contact and is confused by people’s feelings, he still tries to function normally. Seeing Sheldon’s soft side can be quite heart-warming. Like when he gets sick and needs Penny to sing the lullaby ‘Soft Kitty’ to him. And it’s a big moment when he hugs Penny for the first time. He even manages to get a girlfriend later in the series.

It’s also hard not to laugh when he gets into situations he’s not used to, such as when he gets drunk from only one sip of alcohol, or when a woman asks to sleep in his bed, only for him to assume he had to sleep somewhere else.

Not only that, but I’m sure a lot viewers can identify with some of Sheldon’s behaviours. Everyone has a slightly nerdy or eccentric side. I’m sure many people have difficulty coping when they are interrupted, when they have to keep a secret or when they hear arguing. It’s hard to put on a smile when someone else succeeds and you don’t.

This is why we love Sheldon. His oddities make us laugh and his sensitive side brings a tear to the eye. Although we know we aren’t as intelligent, bizarre and socially awkward as he is, there are things that do make sense to us. He points out the absurdities of life and questions why we act the way we do. He’s not afraid to stand up for himself, even if he is at odds with others.

However I think I’m right in saying that there some people out there who know a lot about something but will refrain from going on about it as they don’t want to appear geeky.

But I think we can all learn a lesson from Sheldon. Don’t worry what people think of you. Speak your mind, even if you think people won’t agree with you. And if you’re passionate about something, embrace it and be proud of it…just don’t go as far as mixing hydrogen peroxide and saturated potassium iodide with dish soap and deploy it in your rival’s lab for foamy vengeance…

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Titanic TV Series review

11 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by Yoga Panther in 'The Badger' articles, Arts, Television

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drama, entertainment, james cameron, julian fellowes, sinking of the rms titanic, stories, Titanic, tv miniseries

15 April marked the 100th anniversary of the most tragic maritime disaster in history. A century on and we are still fascinated by the sinking of the world’s largest ship, the Titanic. Shortly after the disaster in 1912, it was written in The Times that, “What moves us in this matter of the Titanic seems to be the massiveness and at the same time the unexpectedness of the blow”. After all, when the Titanic was built, it was considered to be practically unsinkable.

Of the 2,223 passengers and crew on board, 1,517 perished after the ship struck an iceberg at 11.40pm on 14 April 1912 and slowly sank below the freezing waters of the Atlantic at 2.20am the following day. Countless tributes have commemorated the 100th anniversary of the catastrophe, from a 3D version of James Cameron’s Titanic to, disturbingly, a real-time Twitter account so you could follow the events as they happened a century ago (people genuinely tweeted telling them to turn the ship around!).

Most interestingly, ITV created a costume drama, simply named ‘Titanic’. This four-part miniseries written by Oscar winner Julian Fellowes, tells the human stories behind the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Similarities can be seen between the tales of this series and Cameron’s 1997 film; however the miniseries doesn’t primarily focus on two star-crossed lovers. ‘Titanic’ features a wide range of characters, real and imagined, from every class. During the first three episodes their narratives are developed and intertwined, with each episode ending in a cliff-hanger as the ship begins to sink.

In the first episode, which focuses mainly on the first class passengers, we meet a family similar to that of Rose’s in Cameron’s Titanic. In this case, we have Lady Manton, a snobby woman who looks down on the lower classes and expects more of her rebellious daughter, Georgiana. Sound familiar? And it wouldn’t be a tale of Titanic without a love story; we witness romance blossoming between Georgiana and Harry, the handsome son of an American millionaire. The second and third episodes focus on the perspectives of the second and third class passengers. Two Italians, Mario and Paolo, manage to board the ship at the very last moment to go to New York a start a new life (not unlike that of Jack Dawson in the film). Paolo, working as a waiter falls for stewardess Annie Desmond and impulsively asks her to marry him in the third episode. The fourth episode, aired on the anniversary of the sinking, brings these narratives together and the story unfolds as we find out who survives.

Throughout the series we see a constant clash between the social classes, showing the division was significant in those days. This was most evident by the fact that first class women thought that they should get to board the lifeboats first. In actual fact, it didn’t matter who you were, as there were numerous casualties at every level of society. The struggle to safety in each episode does bring a tear to the eye as families and couples are separated. You really feel for the characters, and you believe that there were people like this on the ship that sank 100 years ago.

Producer of the Titanic miniseries, Nigel Stafford-Clark said, “The Titanic story is one of terrible tragedy. A whole cross-section of Edwardian society died – everyone from noblemen and millionaires to Italian waiters, Irish emigrants, servants and ordinary working people and their families. We’re telling what happened through the lives – and deaths – of both real and fictional characters on board, and viewers will be taken on a heartwrenching journey as it’s revealed which of the characters they’ve got to know survive or perish. We hope it will be a fitting tribute.” If you missed it you can still catch up on ITV player.

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Sam Graham Yoga Teacher

I'm Sam Graham – a yoga teacher and content editor with a love of Japanese culture.

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