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When watching the television show Gilligan's Island there are some features that are reminiscent of the Greek and Roman theatre. For example, the opening credits on Gilligan's Island explain the story of what events took place before the action of the show starts to kind of catch the audience up to speed and give them a little background to help them understand what the situation is when the episode begins. This is similar to the role that the Greek chorus played. They served, partly, as narrators to explain the action and background behind the play to help the audience understand what the play was about. The chorus was a very important part of the Greek theatre as is the theme song at the beginning of Gilligan's Island. They both allowed major portions of the plays / shows action to be given off stage so that the main plot could be focused on.
It allows the writer to get to the point of the play / show quickly without losing any important pieces and still giving the audience a full picture of the message that he / she is trying to convey. Another similarity is the use of stock characters in Gilligan's Island. The role of the protagonist is played by the Skipper and the role of the foil is played by Gilligan. The Skipper is strong and pretty smart and Gilligan is scrawny and not very smart at all. It is sort of hard to definitively assign the other character types because they seem to fluctuate from episode to episode.
For the most part, however, the Professor plays the role of the raissoneur or the confidence because he always seems to have the right answers for how to do things. The rest of the characters such as Ginger and the millionaire and his wife seem to be the stereotypes. Finally, the antagonist role changes the most from episode to episode. Sometimes, it is played by someone who comes to the island that they are on or sometimes, it is just the island itself because they are always unable to leave for some reason or another. Like in the Greek and Roman theatre, using stock characters allows the audience to relate to the characters that are being portrayed and gets the audience to feel like they are more involved with what is happening.
This makes the jokes funnier and the action more believable because the character types are familiar to the audience in contexts outside of the performance. The last major similarity is the continuity or lack thereof between the different episodes of Gilligan's Island. Each individual episode of the show has a beginning, middle, and end, and the characters never seem to get anywhere by the end of the episode. They at least never get off the island by the end of the episodes. This means that all of the episodes can be watched in no particular order and the events will still make sense because its just the action in the middle of the show that changes from episode to episode. This is similar to the way that the theatre festivals were performed in Greek and Roman times.
The plays were performed over several days and they all related to each other but they all didnt necessarily go in a particular order. This could be a good thing because if one misses and episode of Gilligan's Island or if one misses one of the plays being performed they wont be behind when the next show / play is on. Many of the modern television shows can be compared to the Greek and Roman theatre styles in this same way. There are probably even more elements that can be compared that arent as significant or as evident in our modern TV shows. What is evident though is the way that people entertain themselves today is very similar to the way that people entertained themselves in Greek and Roman times. The predominant themes and techniques are recycled over and over and are still just as effective as they were when they were first used.
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Research essay sample on Greek And Roman Character Types
