The dark side of American family life, a conference on television series in the Biblioteca Vila de Gràcia

The conference hall of the Biblioteca Vila de Gràcia will host a lecture under the title There’s no place like home: a journey to the dark side of American family life (Enlloc com a casa: viatge al costat fosc de la família nord-americana), by Iván Gómez, professor of Cinema and Television History, as part of a series of conferences entitled Parlem de sèries. 
 

From The Sopranos to Six Feet Under, the family has always been a feature of American television series writing. Far from the ideals portrayed in series during the 70’s and 80’s, the American family iconography has taken a radical about face with more seasoned, subversive products. Over the past years, many productions have chosen to reveal darker aspects of family life as a means of criticizing a specific societal model.
 

The dark side of American family life is given sarcastic treatment in series such as United States of Tara, Californication, Shameless, or Weeds, in which a widowed mother decides to sell marihuana to her residential district neighbours in order to maintain her lifestyle. The family is also a recurrent theme in the more dramatic series such as Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, or Mad Men, which deals with social unhappiness in New York during the 60’s.