Université Stendhal, Grenoble 3

Malcolm in the Middle:

A New Dysfunctional Family in the
American Television Suburbs

Mémoire présenté en vue de l’obtention de la

première année du Master Etudes Anglophones
par Jonathan Razzanti
Sous la direction de Mme. Donna Andréolle
Année 2008-2009
 Université Stendhal, Grenoble 3

Malcolm in the Middle:

A New Dysfunctional Family in the
American Television Suburbs

Mémoire présenté en vue de l’obtention de la

première année du Master Etudes Anglophones
par Jonathan Razzanti
Sous la direction de Mme. Donna Andréolle
Année 2008-2009
 Introduction 1

1. Malcolm in the Middle as an American sitcom 4

1.1. The tradition of American family sitcom 5

1.1.1. Humor and Sitcoms 5

1.1.2. Functional families and values 9

1.1.3. Dysfunctional families 11

1.2. Specificities of Malcolm in the Middle 14

1.2.1. Specificities about form 14

1.2.2. Importance of American culture and intertextuality 18

1.2.3. Satire, parody, and irony. 19

2. Social Environment in Malcolm in the Middle 22

2.1. Suburbia: Malcolm reverses the traditional image 22

2.1.1. Criticizing the traditional image 23

2.1.2. Meeting the neighbors 27

2.2. The Krelboynes 33

2.2.1. The Krelboynes and normality 33

2.2.2. Malcolm and the Krelboynes: partiality of stereotypes 38

3. Family Life in Malcolm in the Middle 43

3.1. Moral values 44

3.1.1. Justice and appropriate behavior 45

3.1.2. “Life is unfair” 50

3.1.3. Rebellion 52

3.2. Dysfunctions 54

3.2.1. A new kind of family 55

3.2.2. Dysfunctions versus dysfunctionality 58

Conclusion 62

Bibliographie: 1
 Introduction

On the 24th of January, 2000, The New York Times published an article beginning
with these lines:

Only a few months ago, the situation comedy was a fading genre on television. Television
executives groaned about low ratings, derivative shows, lazy comedy writing, the rise of hipper
cable-channel programs and the same old tired format set in an apartment or workplace.
Then came ''Malcolm in the Middle.''1

Malcolm's entertaining life was acclaimed less than two weeks after the release of
the first episode in the United States, and Malcolm in the Middle was almost immediately
compared to The Simpsons.

As a young television viewer, I had been a long time fan of some American sitcoms,
and fond of the different types of humor that could be found in them. Some of these
sitcoms were quite crazier than the others and I really loved their sarcasms and criticism of
some behaviors and ideas. Malcolm in the Middle came to be one of them, and when I
started watching it carefully, I realized that Malcolm’s family was not similar to usual sitcom
families, such as Step by Step, The Cosby Show, and so on.

There was in Malcolm a cartoonish exaggeration, which very often on television goes
with dysfunctions, and even if it had already been seen on television (Parker Lewis, or of
course, The Simpsons), Malcolm still has its own identity, and besides, this kind of sitcom
is too rare not to notice this one. Malcolm’s life interested me because of this “everything
can happen” impression it gives, yet without any profound immorality which would have
made it discomforting, but I especially liked it because of the realistic reactions of the
characters, with real imperfections and a bit of selfishness. Through its exaggeration and
parodies, the series was even more hilarious, it was hilarious to see how Malcolm mocked
people’s behaviors and drawbacks.

Generally, studying a sitcom, or any media fiction can allow to analyze the
tendencies of a whole period of time, and the way people saw some elements of the world,
or how media give us preconceived images of the world, and the mental images we have,
representing elements of the world. Fictions with parody and satire show something more,
the authors’, and potentially the viewers’ awareness of these mental images.

1Bernard Weinraub. "The 'Malcolm' Sensibility; New Sitcom's Early Success May Spawn Host of Imitators."
The New York Times 24 January 2000.
1
 Malcolm in the Middle is this kind of sitcom, Of course, the main feature of the sitcom
is humor, but it offers other peripheral things, which may not be so peripheral after all. As
the New York Times noticed, Malcolm renewed the sitcom genre, because of its
particularities, while it still kept some of the sitcom genre’s main features. This makes
Malcolm in the Middle a good subject for a study of a media fiction. Its standard sitcom
characteristics allow to compare it to standard sitcoms, while its particularities allow to
differentiate it from the others. This is particularly useful when we talk about the image of
suburbs and suburban life, as sitcoms are used to dealing with it. Malcolm keeps the
settings of the suburban middle-class family, but in a really special way. For these reasons,
Malcolm can be very interesting to study.

I will focus on some aspects of the American culture in Malcolm in the Middle, and
how the series deals with the standards of the sitcom genre, but also with the standards in
which people usually think of the American culture, especially the middle-class suburbs.

In order to make this study, I will have to analyze some scenes, and I will use a quite
natural mental process to analyze these scenes, described by John Fisk in Television
Culture ( Fisk, 222):

2
 The reflection process will go from level one to level three. That is to say, we will take a
look at the elements of the scenes, especially dialogues and behaviors, and from this
starting point, we will analyze the narrative and other elements that have to be interpreted
from the elements of level one, to finally try to understand what is behind these elements,
and the messages in Malcolm in the Middle (level three). Level one and sometimes level
two can be quite obvious to see, level three will require deeper reflections.

The guideline of this study will be to start from peripheral relationships between the
characters, in the suburban life, and then to enter progressively the family to come to a
study of closer relationships. First we are going to deal with some elements that constitute
a sort of context of this study. I will talk about the sitcom genre, with the presentation of
some of the humor mechanisms, then with some words on “traditional” families in sitcoms,
underlining the moral values issue, to finally come to the kind of sub-genre to which
Malcolm belongs, the dysfunctional family sitcom. Then we will look at Malcolm as an
American sitcom, talking first about the specificities that it implies concerning the form of
the show. Then we will see the importance of the “American” side of American sitcoms,
and finally we will discuss satire, parody and irony, as tools for humor, but also for
critiques.

After that, we will shift toward a study of Malcolm’s environment, focusing on his
neighborhood and on the place and relationships of the family with the other characters of
the series. First we will see how Malcolm uses the traditional image of the middle-class
suburbs, and how it presents its own conception of suburbia, then we will move to the
place of Malcolm in this environment, and we will see the concept of normality in Malcolm
in the Middle, and how the series deals with stereotypes.

Finally, we will enter the family to take a look at the relationships between the family
members. It will bring us to a study of values in the series, and the notions of justice,
fairness authority and rebellion. At the end, we will take a look at this new kind of family
that we can discover in Malcolm in the Middle, and some of its specificities, which will bring
us to an analysis of the use of dysfunctions in this series.

I will attempt to show what Malcolm says about the standards of American culture,
and how it establishes a criticism of these standards, in order to establish new standards,
and I will also try to show how Malcolm criticizes man’s social behaviors.

3
 1.Malcolm in the Middle as an American sitcom

Malcolm is indeed an American sitcom, and these two words define specific notions,
which may require precisions, especially to reveal the characteristics of these notions that
fit Malcolm in the Middle, and those that do not. As Steve Neale suggests in Genre, a
particular genre is not defined by some elements which would belong to this genre only,
but by the “weight given in any one genre to elements which in fact it shares with other
genres” (Neale, qtd. in Woollacott 284).

The American sitcom is mainly defined by several characteristics: its main goal is to
create humor, it is a half-hour show with a limited number of characters. The word sitcom
meaning “situation comedy”, in sitcoms we find two basic situations: at home and at work.
And most of the time, there is a laughter track, either recorded because the show was
performed on stage, or made up in post-production (“canned laughter”). On a narrative
level, we can notice that there is a lack of progression: almost all the episodes are
interchangeable: they end at the same point they started. (Woollacott, 284).

In this first part, I am going to deal with American sitcoms, then I will discuss the
place of Malcolm in the sitcom world. The first subpart will deal with both the sitcom genre
and humor. We will take a look at two categories of sitcoms: the traditional ones, that is to
say the more common ones, which constitute a reference, and those which deal
specifically with dysfunctional families, or dysfunctional relationships in general, because it
is the case of Malcolm in the Middle, and it brings several specific features.

Therefore, after that, the place of Malcolm in the Middle in the American sitcom
landscape will be discussed through an overview of its general tone, and by looking at its
specificities as a sitcom, either in front of traditional sitcoms or in front of those about
dysfunctional families.

4
 1.1.The tradition of American family sitcom

There is a long history of sitcoms produced in the U.S., and I would like to say a few
words about this genre, looking at specific characteristics in order to further compare
Malcolm to traditional sitcoms, but also to unconventional ones. As a situation comedy,
humor will mainly come from the situations the characters are in, as well as from dialogues
and visual elements. I am going to talk first about humor in general, some of its aspects
and the way it usually works. I will develop the main characteristics that usually constitute
the sitcom genre, and also try to define how humor works, in order to further deconstruct
the messages in Malcolm.

1.1.1.Humor and Sitcoms

• About humor

Janet Woollacott, in Popular Culture and Social Relations, says about the narratives
in fictions and situation comedies in particular that:

Most forms of popular fiction involve a narrative which is initiated through the signification of a
disruption, a disturbance, which the narrative proceeds to resolve. ... In situation comedies, the
viewer’s pleasure does not lie in the suspense of puzzle-solving nor in the suspense
surrounding the hero’s ability to cope through action with various tasks and threats. Rather, the
tension of the narrative to which the viewer responds revolves around the economy or wit with
which two or more discourses are brought together in the narrative. (286)

Humor is a matter of tension created thanks to the juxtaposition of two discourses

and its release through laughter.

If we go a little further, we can notice that as the characters’ personality is put into
situations, these situations allow their personalities to express themsleves contrary to soap
operas, where the situations come from the character’s personality (Jost, 106-7).
Therefore, if the sitcom is centered on situations, the creation of laughter then comes from
the encounter between the charactersʼ personality and these situations. Often, the
charactersʼ reactions are unexpected by the audience, because it is in contradiction with
his or her usual reactions2 . We can illustrate this with an example of Malcolm in the
Middle, taken from episode 11: The Funeral (from 19ʼ17ʼʼ on). The family was supposed to
go to their aunt Helenʼs funeral, but Malcolm did not want to go (neither did Hal), and

2 This concept is called “décalage” (Lapeyssonnie, 10-11)

5
because of that, the family was experiencing tensions, and no one cares about anything
else but himself. On the other hand, Reese wanted to go to their aunt Helenʼs funeral to
hide a toy he broke in the coffin, a toy that was supposed to be Deweyʼs next birthday
present.

Malcolm (on the phone with Francis): I swear, this whole family is falling apart.
Francis (angrily): Yes! I knew this moment would come. They don’t have their scapegoat
around, so everything goes to hell. No one realized that I am the one who held this family
together. Without me to blame everything on, they don’t know what to do with themselves.
Malcolm: A scapegoat... Thanks.
Francis: Mom thinks- (Malcolm hangs up on him)
Malcolm (to the camera): He’s right. This family needs a scapegoat. I started this, so I should be
the one to end it.
[...]
Malcolm (in front of the whole family, plus one unknown boy called Egg): I did a terrible thing
today. I tore this family apart, and I’m really sorry for that. But... It’s not half as bad... As what
Reese did! [Malcolm takes Reese’s bag, and takes the toy out.]

When watching this scene, one expectes Malcolm to put the guilt on himself, and
what Malcolm explains about the fact that his family needs a scapegoat was written to
make the spectators think this way. But, at last, Malcolm snitches on Reese, and finally,
the cold silent atmosphere that had come between the members of the family vanishes
and everything is finally nearly back to normal.

A tension is created, not the one in the family of course, but the one created when
the spectator is waiting for Malcolm to put the guilt on himself, taking the scapegoat role.
Taking this guilt is not usually Malcolm’s behavior, and this is what creates a “tension”. And
the release of this tension comes when Malcolm finally fits what the spectator expects from
him, finding a “smart” way to avoid being guilty but still making everything right.

Another way to create humor is when the spectator is to create an “anticipation of the
inevitable” (Woollacott, 286). In this case, the pleasure and humor in a scene is created
when the spectator knows what is going to happen, and the tension is then in the fact that
we are expecting this to happen. The release of this tension occurs when it finally
happens.

Generally speaking, humor is always a matter of duality. There are two different
discourses put together, either we are talking about what is normal for the spectator versus
something abnormal in the scene, or about what the spectator expects according to what
he knows of the characters, versus what the character does in a given scene. This is this

6
duality that creates humor. Humor necessarily involves a confrontation between two
discourses that exclude, or seem to exclude, each other.

• On a technical level

The sitcom genre fits some recurrent characteristics. It deals with the everyday life of
a family, or a defined group of people (e.g. a group of friends in Friends, in which the
friends’ relationships resemble family ties). Each episode usually begins with a stable
situation, and ends nearly as it began. Each episode can be followed by nearly any other.
On the level of the form, an episode is often twenty minutes long, and is filmed while the
actors perform the show on stage in front of a live audience whose laughter is recorded as
part of the soundtrack of the episode, sometimes with additional laughter, called “canned
laughter”.

The tools of humor are therefore submitted to some constraints. The initial situation is
disturbed by a problem, but the end of each episode must reach the same stable situation
as what we had in the beginning of the episode, for the next episode. We can talk of a
“circularity of the narrative” (Dickason 130). This is the first point I would like to mention in
this subsection: there is no place for durable instability if we consider an episode as a
whole (I am talking about traditional family sitcoms, of course).

The presence of a laughter track supposes a very direct effect of jokes and humor,
because these laughter tracks are closely linked to the laughter of the spectators that
remain in front of their television set (Lapeyssonnie 15). The immediacy of jokes are
fundamental, because it will create the laughter track, which will help the real laughter of
television spectators. Nevertheless, the laughter track helps create laughter for the
spectators who watch the show on T.V. only if the jokes are understood by the live
audience as well as by the T.V. audience, it implies enough cultural similarities so as to
understand jokes in the same way. This is the second point I would like to underline: the
immediacy of humor often supposes in this case a burst of laughter, which itself requires a
direct effect of jokes, especially verbal jokes. Therefore, it limits the construction of more
complex humor, or humorous narrative, and limits the possibility for the spectators to think
about jokes, because laughter is conditioned by the laughter track, which necessarily fits
the precise moment of the joke.(Lapeyssonnie, 15-16)

The laughter track also creates another effect. As we watch the show, we hear a
recorded audience, which sets us into a seat in front of the stage, instead of being alone in

7
front of the television set, and also instead of entering the story completely, either by
identification with the main characters, or thanks to some other tools as we will see in
Malcolm in the Middle. The relationship between the actors (and behind them, the story)
and the audience is not the same. It can be a close relationship, but the spectators will
wait for jokes as in front of a stand-up comedy. Therefore the jokes are obviously central,
with the story becoming a background for emotions and laughter.

• On the level of the narrative

Another interesting point of sitcoms is of course the situations in which the characters
evolve. There are two recurrent situations: at home and in the work place (Woollacott 284),
which can be at school, in an office, etc. The first reason for having recurrent places is for
financial and technical reasons, because it is easier to build or arrange the settings if they
are the same for a whole season, than if there are different places filmed in each episode.
Furthermore, for the spectators, the regularity of the occurrences of a few places where
the events take place, and also of the characters linked to these places (e.g. workmates,
schoolmates, ...) lead to the possibility of viewing the episodes of the series and feeling
some close relationships to the different characters, as if we meet them each week.
Therefore, it allows the authors to include “private jokes”, with references not necessarily
to previous events (from previous episodes), but most of the time to the characters’
behaviors, reactions, and so forth, with which the audience is already familiar. As I focus
on the first season of Malcolm in the Middle, references to elements that were set up in
previous episodes can be a bit limited. Sometimes, it takes several episodes to really set
some characters’ personality (for example for Hal who was not supposed to be a main
character at the beginning), which means that this sort of “private joke” is not possible until
a few episodes were already made. We can pick up an example from episode 15,
Smunday (from 6’22’’ to 6’44’’), from the first season of Malcolm in the Middle. Malcolm,
Reese, and Dewey are stuck at home, because Lois is sick and she has slept so much
over the week-end that she thinks it is Sunday, whereas it is Monday. She forbids the boys
to go out. Malcolm thinks it is a good opportunity to skip school. But they do not want to be
caught if they go to the mall or do something outside the house, and, unfortunately, the
T.V. is not working.

Reese: Come on already, think of something!

Malcolm: I’m trying! All I’ve got are all the reasons this was a stupid idea in the first place. Even
if we manage to keep Mom fooled, we’re screwed as soon as Dad gets home. It basically

8
 means we’re going to sit there bored out of our minds for eight hours, and wait for Mom to top
our last punishment!
Reese: How could you be so stupid?! I could have done that myself.

From the very first episode, Reese is given the image of a slow-minded person,
opposed to Malcolm who is a genius. One of Reese’s particularities is that he often seems
to be unaware of implied things, unable to understand things that are not directly visible or
hearable, and unable to understand truly what is going on. The particularity of this scene is
that Reese is aware of his own stupidity, and even uses it to show that Malcolm looks like
him at this precise moment, and to show that this is not what should be. This is made as a
sort of private joke for the audience, because there is a reference to previous elements
that the audience had already noticed (Reese’s stupidity, and Malcolm’s usual genius).
This reference also throws the spectator off balance, creating an unexpected element.
Reese’s stupidity is used to mock Malcolm, and the “tension” created by the unexpected
element is counterbalanced by the humorous effect of Reese mocking himself, more or
less willingly. Laughter then releases the tension, and the joke works.

1.1.2.Functional families and values

The situations used in a particular sitcom are strongly defined by the nationality of
this sitcom. In our case, American family sitcoms are marked with the use of the image of
the traditional middle-class suburbia. These sitcoms are called “domesticoms” by Marc
(Marc, qtd. in Gray 49). There are numerous examples of these domesticoms. Moreover,
the American model of sitcoms will have an interesting way to deal with these “glowingly
optimistic and artificial, utopian versions” of the typical American suburbia (Gray 49).

• The situations:

In these sitcoms, the situation we called “at home” is not at any home. The family or
the main characters of the sitcom are essentially part of the typical white middle-class
suburban American part of society. Some exceptions exist though, for example black
families: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Cosby Show, ...

We can nevertheless focus on some elements of the American suburbs, noted in The
Suburb Reader by Becky M. Nicolaides and Andrew Wies. Different definitions exist for the
notion of suburbia, but we will skip some long description. Very often, it is said, a given
9
suburb is “a low density, residential environment on the outskirts of larger cities, occupied
by families of similar class and race, with plenty of trees and grass” (7). The notion of
property of the home in which the family is living is important. However, the authors say,
the white “color” of the surburbs and the fact that every family was coming from the
middle-class, are more a stereotype, a legacy of mass media communication than a
truthful reflection of all the suburbs.

Jonathan Gray in Watching with the Simpsons, recalls the assertions of the few
books dealing with sitcoms, about suburbs: “[These works assert] that the American family
sitcom has served as a prime huckster selling the American Dream and its related notions
of family, home, and suburb” (49). The other traditional situation is “at work”. In these
families, there are always children, so the situations “at work” are shared between at
school for events about the children, and usually at a middle-size company.

• How they deal with moral values:

The most important point to me is the way these sitcom deal with moral values. Most
of the time, there is a “ritual lesson learnt” at the end of each episode, which leads to the
reestablishment of the initial situation, a familiar status quo (Marc, qtd. in Dickason 130).
The disturbing element that occurs in each episode is quite always annihilated with the
reestablishment of this former stable situation and the moral lesson is learnt. Most of the
time the episodes have a happy ending, because the lesson is accepted by any or all of
the children of the family, and sometimes shared both by parents and children, and often
followed with a joke to avoid too heavy a sentimental weight for the spectator.

This is a fundamental issue, because it shows that traditional sitcoms do not usually
question traditional moral values, but only shows how they can be learnt, encapsulated in
humor and jokes. This is also closely linked to the situations. As written in The Suburb
Reader, suburbia represented a “new value system” (14), even a new conception of the
world. These sitcoms fit the moral values that can be found in the social environment they
present, or maybe the moral values established in the social environment of the targeted
audiences.

In general, parody and its hidden critics are put in the background, and devices that
can be used to criticize anything of the real world too, through the imagination of the
authors, contrary to most of the sitcoms about dysfunctional families that I will present
now.

10
 1.1.3.Dysfunctional families

There is no doubt about the fact that Malcolm’s family looks a bit dysfunctional. Hal,
the father is a bit irresponsible. Lois the mother is the opposite. The four children (four
boys) disobey their parents as often as they can (a tendency developed throughout the
episodes of the first season). The dysfunctional family in the sitcom world is not a new idea
that came out with Malcolm, yet I think it has not been the main type of sitcoms so far.
However, the way the themes are treated in dysfunctional family sitcoms are complex and
meaningful, therefore we can take elements from other works before entering the analysis.
Very quickly, we can pick up a simple definition of a dysfunction in a system as leading to
“a reduced level of functioning for at least one member of the system” (Gottlieb 19).

Sitcoms about dysfunctional families often reverse some trends of traditional sitcoms.
They use parody and satire very often. And most of the time, the pattern of a stable
situation disturbed by an event is kept, but the so-called “stable” initial situation is indeed
dysfunctional, and the disturbing event is often incongruous. Sometimes, for one episode,
it even leads to a reversed pattern: the initial and final situations are unstable, whereas
thanks to the disturbing event, the characters had reached a stable and happy situation.
However, the main thing that changes from standard sitcoms, to me, is the resolution of
the problems, how the characters deal with and manage to overcome the disturbing
events. Very often in this kind of sitcom, the characters’ reactions to try to re-establish the
former situation (or a better one) are unusual, sarcastic, crazy, irrational, or anything that
pushes them out of any “normal” behavior standards, out of the common way real people,
the audience, would react. The final situation coming out of those reactions is of this kind
too. We can easily illustrate this with an example taken from the end of the very first
episode of Malcolm in the Middle.

In this episode we discover Malcolm and his particular family, that he is a genius, and
that because of that he has to go to a special class called by the other kids “the Krelboyne
class”. He finally had a “fight” with a boy called Spath from his previous class, at school,
and Malcolm won, thanks to Stevie his black Krelboyne handicapped new friend, who
faked being hit by Spath, which provoked the indignation of all the other children. Here is
the last scene of the episode, Malcolm is seated on something in front of his house:

11
 Malcolm (to the camera): So then, the principal comes out and everyone's all talking at once. So
the story he puts together is that Spath attacks Stevie for his lunch and I'm like this hero that
stepped in to defend him. It was beautiful. Okay, it wasn't funny when Spath started crying. No,
wait, it was. [...]if a bunch of birds can make the best out of what they get then so can I.
Dewey (we hear him without seeing him): Malcolm?
Malcolm: Like having to go to special class. I can make it work out, right?
Dewey: Malcolm?
Malcolm (looking down): Not now! (to the camera:)Or my family. We're not the greatest family in
the world but we can get better. I mean, it's not impossible.
Dewey: Malcolm?
Malcolm(we see he is sitting on a trash can upside down): What?!
Dewey: Can I get out?
Malcolm: No, stop asking. (to the camera:)So basically, I think everything's going to be okay.
(Pounding)
Dewey: A bug went up my nose.
Malcolm: So what do you want me to do about it?
(End of the episode, music starts).

This final scene is a good example of the unusual endings I wanted to talk about. The
moral values are mixed with some unexpected and immoral elements. Here Malcolm is
talking about his optimism about life, that everything will be o.k., while he is keeping
Dewey under the trash can. He talks about how funny it was to see Spath crying, and how
beautiful it was to be a hero, although he was not really heroic.

There is an apparent contradiction between what he says and what he does. Actually,
it shows a distorted notion of what moral values and good behavior are. Malcolm appears
true to the spectators, for example when he describes the end of what has happened at
school, he does not embarrass himself with feelings that people usually have, like regrets
and remorse, but he just lets his lower instinctive feelings express themselves (like the
satisfaction for having gotten out of a conflict), without any interference of his
consciousness.

Then, he talks about his family, and how they can get better, while he keeps Dewey
under the trash can. It can be an illustration of human’s lack of cohesion between acts and
words, and of some of human’s lowest instincts. This is an example of the dysfunctional
behaviors and unusual elements in the narratives that characterize this kind of sitcom: it is
somehow a parody of human behavior.

12
 When talking about T.V. shows with dysfunctional families, especially when focused
on parody, we cannot fail to mention The Simpsons. The Simpsons can easily be linked to
Malcolm in the Middle, as Caryn James humorously wrote in The New York Times: ”If
Marge and Homer Simpson ruled the world, every family would be as funny, warm and
wryly inappropriate as the one in Fox's glowing new comedy, ''Malcolm in the Middle.” I
already mentioned a very interesting book on them, called Watching with the Simpsons. In
this book, Jonathan Gray presents the sitcom with a particular perspective on the
relationships between the audiences and the series, and he develops his point of view on
parody and intertextuality.

• Parody:

Parody can have a heavy weight in a humorous work, as Jonathan Gray recalls from
what Mikhail Bakhtin said:

Opposed to the language of priests and monks, kings and seigneurs, knights and wealthy urban
types, scholars and jurists - to the languages of all who hold power and who are well set up in
life - there is the language of the merry rogue, wherever necessary parodically re-processing
any pathos, but always in such a way as to rob it of its power to harm, ‘distance it from the
mouth’ as it were, by means of a smile or of deception, mock its falsity and thus turn what was a
lie into gay deception. Falsehood is illuminated by ironic consciousness and in the mouth of the
happy rogue parodies itself. (Bakhtin, qtd. in Gray 11)

The very title of the book shows the perspective taken by J. Gray: he took The
Simpsons as a way to watch with the Simpsons their television set, because through the
parody of T.V. advertisements, T.V. shows, and many others, the spectators look at the
world through the Simpsons eyes. He explains that parody involves intertextuality, citing
McLuhan, saying that parody is “Putting one space inside another space” (qtd. in Gray 45).
There is according to him a coexistence of two texts, the parody, and the parodied. He
notes that parody necessarily involves intertextuality (Gray 45).

As we noticed with the previous example from Malcolm in the Middle, in the world of
dysfunctional family fictions, the other “text” with which there is an intertextuality often
shifts to behaviors that the audience knows in real life, mocked at through parody. The
different behaviors and texts are numerous; so are the exaggerations and parodies
possible about them. I took a few examples from Malcolm in the Middle to illustrate some
elements, let us try now to analyze the specificities of Malcolm as a sitcom, before entering
later into the core of this analysis.

13
 1.2.Specificities of Malcolm in the Middle

If Malcolm in the Middle is part of the sitcom genre, it has some specificities that it will
be useful to summarize. Compared to traditional sitcoms, Malcolm in the Middle looks
different from the standard sitcom genre, especially because it belongs to the sitcoms
about dysfunctional families. The most obvious proof of that is what Ray Richmond
reported from what Malcolm’s creator Linwood Boomer said in an interview for the
Hollywood Reporter:

You know, we were told the mom is horrible; nobody's going to like the mom - and nobody's
going to like the kid. We were told we needed to have scenes where the parents are actually
helpful, and the kid learns a lesson and thanks his parents for it.

This shows how Malcolm did not fit the standards, especially about the moral values issue.

First I will talk about some of Malcolm’s specificities about the form of the show, that
will have an effect on the relationship with the spectators. Then I will move to the
importance of cultural references, and of the cultural context in the sitcom, to be
meaningful to specific audiences. Finally, I will talk about irony, parody, satire, and the
narrative tone of Malcolm in the Middle.

1.2.1.Specificities about form

In Malcolm in the Middle, there are some specificities about the form of the show, for
example, there is no laughter track (“canned laughter”), and the show is filmed using a
single-camera, making it look like a film, more than a play on a stage. The absence of
laughter tracks allows the show to have music playing, without any overweight in the audio
dimension of the show. I think that these elements allow the spectator to feel he or she is
part of the story instead of being in front of it. The relationship with the characters is then
closer than in traditional sitcoms. But the show goes beyond that.

The accent is put less on the jokes because our laughter is less defined by what is
recorded. Therefore the story regains some importance compared to the jokes. This allows
a greater dimension in the messages that can be hidden behind the narrative. This is
again a matter of weight of the elements relatively to each other.

In Malcolm in the Middle, as in other series like Parker Lewis, the narrator is the main
character. But Malcolm is often talking directly to the spectators, through the camera,

14
whereas in Parker Lewis for example, the narration and commentaries were made through
a voice-over. Therefore the spectators are again more inside the show, because Malcolm
seems to be talking to us, as if we were with him, with this stage technique called an
“aside”.

This technique comes from the theatre, and was already present in old Greek
theatre. An aside is defined by David Bain in Actors and Audience as “any utterance by
either speaker not intended to be heard by the other and not in fact heard or properly
heard by him.” (Bain, 17). The asides in Malcolm in the Middle are more specific, because
obviously, Malclolm’s words cannot be heard by the characters in the series. Bain calls this
type of aside “what might be considered the purest form of asides,” (15) or also a
“‘bomolochic’ turning away.” (91) Malcolm’s asides are outside the narrative, and only for
the audience. These asides give Malcolm in the Middle a new unrealistic dimension,
especially because in Malcolm in the Middle, every aside is “treated as silent
thought” (Bain, 8). Malcolm then seems to come out of the fiction to talk directly to the
audience. In this sense, the character of Malcolm is indeed “in the middle” in another very
special way. Malcolm is in the middle between the fictional world of the series, and the real
world of the audience.

We are a privileged confident of Malcolm, especially because we are able to see

things from a point of view nobody else in the series knows. As spectators, we have a
knowledge the other characters do not, this makes us superior to them, but, and this is
even more important, it gives the character of Malcolm a greater importance compared to
the others, and therefore puts him in a closer status to us. Malcolm’s status is very
particular, so let us take a closer look at this relationship between Malcolm and the
spectator.

In his Introduction à l’analyse de la télévision, François Jost defines five types of

fictions on television. The last three are those I am going to use:

En s’appuyant sur la typologie des modes fonctionnels de Northrop Frye, qui prend en compte
le critère aristotélicien de l’élévation des personnages, on pourrait distinguer cinq types de
fictions télévisuelles (cf. Frye, 1967 et Pavel, 1988);
• les fictions qui racontent des histoires sur des êtres supérieurs par nature aux êtres
humains et à leur environnement: ce fut le cas des Envahisseurs résistant à toute
maladie humaine.
• les fictions qui mettent en scène des personnages supérieur en degré aux êtres
humains et à leur environnement, tel Dan Westin, qui est un homme comme nous, mais

15
 qui, à la différence de nous, peut agir sur le monde grâce à sa faculté de se rendre
invisible (L’Homme Invisible);
• “le mode mimétique élevé”, qui fait le récit d’un héros supérieur en degré aux autres
hommes, mais pas à leur environnement, soit qu’il possède un sens de la déduction
particulier (Columbo), soit qu’il ait des qualités rare (L’Instit);
• “le mode mimétique bas” qui développe des scénarios à propos de personnages qui
sont à la fois égaux aux êtres humains et à leur environnement: cas de Martin Tupper,
que l’on voit dans sa quotidienneté et qui est partagé entre ses désirs et ses
contradictions... humaines (Dream on);
• “le mode ironique”, centré sur des personnages inférieurs en force et en intelligence aux
téléspectateurs, à la base de nombreuses sitcoms.
Ces modes fictionnels provoquent des sentiments différenciés chez les téléspectateurs:
émerveillement, admiration, projection ou rire (Jost, 107).

The feeling of the spectator about Malcolm is created by two forces, Malcolm’s genius
which makes him appear superior to the spectators, and his status as a child (with duties
implied in it, like obeying his parents) which somehow brings him back to the level of the
spectators, if we assume that the typical spectator is an adult with a notion that a child is
inferior in terms of authority, to adults. Even if the dimension of the conflicts between his
genius mind and the fact that he is still a child is far more spectacular than what it is in real
life, Malcolm still appears to be like us, with his downsides and contradictions, thanks to
the encounter of these forces.

Actually in the episodes I studied, it seems recurrent that the “mode mimétique
élevé”, and the “mode mimétique bas” work together. This is part of Malcolm in the
Middle’s specific humor. Very often, if not always, Malcolm’s cleverness makes him
superior first, then his environment brings him back to a more “normal” status, (the
“environment” being most of the time his parents, his disobedience, or even fate). Again
we find the duality required for humor, and again it somehow creates laughter. Moreover,
the circularity of the narrative, reversed because we are in a sitcom about a dysfunctional
family, is found again on another level here.

On the contrary, we can take the example of Reese. He is a character who fits the
“mode ironique”, because the jokes about him are often based on the feeling of superiority
of the spectator, who is expecting stupid reactions from Reese. For example, in episode
12, “Cheerleader”, Reese explains to Malcolm that he tries to seduce a cheerleader girl,
and we see flash-backs of what he did to try to make her like him. He thew a ball on her
head, he stole her books, and also splashed water all over her face. Then he adds: “I’m
toilet-papering her house tonight, If that doesn’t work, I’m out of ideas.” It is obvious to the

16
spectator that Reese is going the wrong way with Wendy, the cheerleader. These actions
can be an example of boys’ inability to seduce girls they like, but compared to Malcolm’s
maturity, for example, when he advises Reese to try something “that doesn’t make her
cry,” Reese finally looks like simple-minded to the audience.

Malcolm in the Middle shifts between different modes as defined previously. This is a
tool for humor, a quite specific humor, because the character of Malcolm shifts from
opposite status in front of the spectators. In standard sitcoms, the rise and fall of a
character, so to speak, in his or her environment, keeps him in the “mode mimétique bas”,
he or she succeeds or falls into a problem, like everyone sometimes does, and the fall or
the rise following (and consequently, laughter) is also part of the deception or happiness
the audience knows in real life. It remains somehow realistic. Malcolm in the Middle is
more extreme, and allows a wider range of status, especially for the character of Malcolm.
Actually, this gives the series an unrealistic, almost supernatural tendency, which is
another specificity of Malcolm in the Middle.

Another direct consequence of Malcolm being a narrator is the subjectivity in the

narration. But most of the time, the spectator is able to look at the events with his own
eyes while Malcolm is narrating or commenting them. The subjectivity is then all relative,
and above all, clearly visible and explicit. However, some scenes or feelings are only told
by Malcolm to the spectator. For everything that concerns these elements, we are forced
to rely on what Malcolm says. This allows the spectator to imagine the missing scenes
according to Malcolm’s comments, which are not necessarily entirely objective. For
example Malcolm’s comments are sometimes used to foretell what is going to happen the
next second. In episode 7, after the introduction, the episode begins with:

Malcolm (to the camera): Okay. I’ve been up for half an hour, I’ve had my cereal. It’s time for
mom to ask the same annoying question she asks me every morning.
Lois: So, Malcolm, What are you doing in your genius class today?
Malcolm: Nothing. It’s just as dumb and boring as being in regular class, except now I get
ostracized.
Lois: Ostracized? Oh, you’re learning such big words.

Here Malcolm is right, and his predictions are verified. The spectator is able to see that
Malcolm was right.

On the contrary, we can pick up another example in episode 1, Malcolm has an

argument with his mother about going to Stevie Kenarban’s, and he accepts it to try to
avoid a long boring moral lesson by Lois, but this does not work, he gets the “lecture”:
17
 Malcolm: Yes Madam, understood... (to the camera:) If I give up now, I won’t get the lecture.
Lois: You kids,...
Malcolm (to the camera): Dang!
Lois: You just take your legs for granted, ...

One of the funny things is to see whether his predictions will become true or not. There is
nothing certain about these predictions, which contrasts with Malcolm’s supernatural
genius (he is able to know the exact moment when his mother will ask him the same daily
question). His genius does not prevent failures.

On a more general level, we can discuss the place of instability and variations in
Malcolm in the Middle. As a “domesticom” about a dysfunctional family, the initial situation
of each episode is, if not unstable, at least dysfunctional. Actually, there is a stability, but
created by the collision of many opposite forces, which are not stable if isolated. This
creates the feeling that the “familiar status quo” can burst out at every moment. A short
example can illustrate that: in the introduction of episode 3, the family has a “pleasant
meal together”, humorously commented to the camera by Malcolm: “I did the math once. It
turns out every 17.4 dinners, my family actually has a pleasant meal together.” Then the
familiar stable situation is shown about to break, Reese threatens to throw food at Lois,
and Lois orders Reese to stop and everyone stops laughing, while Reese, defending
himself, says “I wasn’t going to, but if you think I would, then maybe I should!” Lois and
Reese start taking things seriously, leading Malcolm to call this an “interesting mood shift”.
And after an irrational attempt by Hal to calm things down which makes everyone laugh for
five seconds, the introduction ends up with Lois still ordering Reese not to do this, and
Reese still saying he “wasn’t going to”, while Malcolm comments: “Yep, this is a good
dinner.”

This shows very well the “stable dysfunctions” of Malcolm’s family. The fact that it
seems to us that the daily life of the family is ruled by conflicts, and that it is “normal” to
remain in a dysfunction. Now let us take a look at the context in which the family lives.

1.2.2. Importance of American culture and intertextuality

Malcolm in the Middle contains cultural references, which are presented in two ways:
either there is a parody of these cultural references which is part of the narrative, or there
is a parody which is part of the context, of the background of the events, with no direct
influence on the events of the story. What is more specific to Malcolm and satiric sitcoms is

18
this juxtaposition of elements which share only their presence in a given scene. I mean
when something happens in the foreground, something else happens in the background,
which is most of the time not even mentioned in the dialogues. The background elements
come from the context of the scenes, and the immediate context we can think of can be
the family’s neighborhood, the common suburban neighborhood, which we will see seems
to fit the common image. But now what are the specificities of Malcolm in front of other
sitcoms and domesticoms? We can link it to the Simpsons, on the way they criticize typical
cultural elements (not exclusively American culture though). For example, in episode 2 of
Malcolm in the Middle, Lois threatens the television set with an ax to obtain a confession
from the boys, saying: “Say goodbye to a cherished family member!”

Actually, most of the time the critiques of cultural elements are not in the middle of
the events of each episode, they are a sort of bonus. The effect of that is that the authors
do not take the risk of overweighing the show. We will later see in detail what Malcolm
says about these (American) cultural elements, because even if they are sometimes part
of the background of the series, it is obviously an important part of the messages of the
series.

1.2.3. Satire, parody, and irony.

We already noticed that parody and satire are very important in sitcoms about
dysfunctional families. Even the making of a sitcom, a funny T.V. program, about
something as grave as a dysfunctional family, necessarily involves the use of satire. I
would say that the graveness of the facts in real life requires a “stronger” satire, in order to
compensate it, and to try to search for laughter deeper in the spectator, breaking the
barriers raised by this inner graveness. Malcolm in the Middle conforms to this, but we can
look deeper at the tools that build the satire, among which are parody and irony.

In Malcolm in the Middle, parody is indeed targeting behaviors more than any other
“text” (see above, about intertextuality). For example in the episode 10, “Stock Car Races”,
Hal is looking inside the fridge, hesitates, and asks to Lois:

Hal: Honey, which juice don’t I like, apple or grape?

Lois: You don’t like either.

19
Hal’s behavior is an exaggeration of people whose tastes are defined by other people,
applied here in an everyday situation. The parody here is amplified by two steps in the
humor process. First we do not necessarily expect Hal to be so helpless in front of the very
common choice, then on top of this first joke, we do not expect that, according to Lois, he
does not like either of the two juices he was hesitating between. And this is just an
example among others.

As for cultural elements, irony is used mainly in two ways: it can be used inside the
series, when the things said and the things meant are both understood by the characters,
and it can also be used on two different levels: when something is said in the series that is
meaningful only for the spectator, for example, in episode 8: “Kreboyne Picnic”, We can
hear Hal saying:

Hal: You know, there are a lot of proven health benefits to the vegetarian lifestyle, in fact, I have
been seriously considering it myself. [he bites hungrily into sausage]

Hal’s words are not meant to be ironic, even if the scene could be ironic to the characters,
the purpose of the speaker, Hal, is not to create humor. The staging of the scene allows
the spectator to see the irony of the situation, where Hal is eating meat while saying that
he is thinking about becoming a vegetarian.

When irony is consciously used by the characters, there is some kind of pleasure
looking at the victims of this irony, especially since we are sharing the mockery thanks to
Malcolm’s commentaries made for us. When the characters are not willingly bring ironic
themselves, the mockery shifts to the speaker of the ironic words. In some cases, irony is
not meant to mock anyone, but to complain, especially since Malcolm’s character is
inclined to complain. The most famous example takes the lyrics of the song we hear at the
beginning of each episode, in episode 11: “The Funeral”, Malcolm says to the camera:
“Oh, yeah, life’s fair”, after having been forced to cancel a date with a girl, Julie. The
weekly sung lyrics of the song are simply: “Life is unfair”.

***

Malcolm has a very special status in the series. The series being called Malcolm in
the Middle, he is at the center of the stories. He is also in the middle of the three remaining
brothers in the house, since Francis was sent away to military school. But we have seen
here that he has another role in the series. He creates a particular link between the
spectators and the fictional world. The pleasure we get while watching Malcolm in the

20
Middle, as well as every humorous thing comes partly from what Malcolm shares in a
special way with the audience, and this is the great particularity of this series.

But Malcolm’s role goes beyond that, for his comments and the double vision he
brings to us about the events around him makes him a powerful and meaningful critic of
many visible and invisible elements that exist in his fictional world. Of course, many of
these elements, if not all, have their echo in our world, which means that the eyes of
Malcolm are not limited to the world of the series, as well as in many other satiric sitcoms.

This is why I am going to focus on him. I will now move to a closer analysis of the
relationships of Malcolm and his family with their neighborhood, suburbia, and by
extension other people such as schoolmates, but also generally an analysis of human
relationships. Then we will enter the family to analyze the relationships inside the family, to
see why Malcolm is somehow giving a truer vision of real families than many other
domesticoms.

21
 2.Social Environment in Malcolm in the Middle

As a domesticom, and a situation comedy, Malcolm in the Middle deals with

situations, and therefore with relationships around the family in these situations. In this
second part I will take a look at these relationships when they involve people who are
outside Malcolm’s family, who include the suburb inhabitants and the children Malcolm
meets at school. We will take the perspective of stereotypes and stereotyping, and we are
going to see in what way the series uses stereotypes.

We are going to see first how the suburb is shown in the series, the elements taken
from the traditional image of suburbia in sitcoms, and other fictions, how they are shown,
and then what the relationships of the family to this suburbia and to people in it are. In a
second subpart, we will look at the relationships between individuals focusing on Malcolm
and the “Krelboyne class”, the gifted program where he is sent. The relationships between
the different social groups will be studied too. The aim is to try to present the way Malcolm
in the Middle reverses the traditional pattern of social relationships and traditional
stereotypes that can be usually found in domesticoms.

2.1. Suburbia: Malcolm reverses the traditional image

According to Herbert J. Gans in The Levittowners people started moving to suburbs

in this state of mind: “the principal aspirations were for a detached house, home
ownership, and ‘outdoor’ living, adding too that it was single-family houses.” (286) On the
one hand we have these desires and expectations about living in the suburbs, and on the
other, the “mental image” people have about suburbs, even now, which is quite similar to
these desires, and which does not necessarily fit reality. Malcolm in the Middle hilariously
uses the mental image that spectators have of this American suburb, but not in a
traditional way.

First we will take a look at what Malcolm says about the traditional image of suburbia.
and how it shows a different image of an American middle-class suburbia, through the life,
house and environment of Malcolm’s family. Then, we are going to see what Malcolm
shows about behaviors and relationships in the suburbs. This will include my first approach

22
to some aspects of the dysfunctional characteristics of the family. The dysfunctions will be
back again later, in my third part, with an intra-family perspective.

2.1.1. Criticizing the traditional image

There are several elements of the typical traditional image of American suburbia that
are kept in Malcolm in the Middle. But some of them are not used in a traditional way,
compared to traditional domesticoms, because they are used with some exaggeration, and
used as a direct source of humor.

One element, purely material and visual, is simply nature. I have already stated that
suburbs were usually full of grass and trees, and nature is important, because it means
space, which goes along with single-family houses, and this implies low population density,
as well as a living environment which is not highly urban, and a certain quality in the life-
style, which itself implies money. It conditions the neighborhood, and leads to a different
kind of community than what can be found “downtown”. Therefore, the relationships
between neighbors seem strongly based on families, especially parents more than on
individuals or other social groups, and there are communities in these neighborhoods.
Within this perspective, we can take a look at an example from episode 4. Some scenes
deal with an old tree in front of Malcolm’s house. The characters, especially Hal, have
different points of view about this tree throughout the episode. We have a personification
of this old tree, when Hal decides to cut it down after Dewey hurts himself trying to climb it
(4’22’’).

Lois: You're going to cut down the tree?

Hal: Darn right. I'm sick and tired of raking leaves and hosing bird poop off our car. And seeing
that weird face in the bark that follows you wherever you go. And now it's going after the
children? No, Lois, it has to be stopped.
Dewey: Can I help kill it?
Hal: Sure, sweetheart. We’ll take turns.

Hal begins to talk about the tree using the common things associated with trees,
raking leaves, etc. but then he talks about the tree’s face, and the tree is personified. But
this “person” is not treated with respect or in a “normal” way, because they decide to kill it.
In Hal’s words, the tree goes from an annoying thing to a threatening person through the
process of Hal’s own thoughts. Then, once the tree is down, Hal smashes the branches in
a shredder, but when Reese and Dewey come, the three of them begin to smash other
things in the shredder, such as a launch box, a shirt, a basketball, a carpet, etc. After being
23
killed, the tree is put at the same level as other objects. Finally, later in the episode, Hal
misses this old tree, saying that the new tiny one has “no face”. The tree is personified
again.

These sentences show that nature, symbolized by this tree, is treated both like a
person and like an object in this episode. Nature becomes man’s property. In the middle of
the episode, the tree is an object, but in the end, as well as in the beginning, it gets its own
personality. It denotes a tendency of the characters to try to re-appropriate it in this
suburbia, or to possess it, in the middle of the episode.

To a certain extent, this scene deals with private property in Malcolm in the Middle.
The neighbors say that the tree is older than Malcolm’s house. Trees, and, by extension
nature in this suburb are the only things that were not built by men. The personification in
the beginning can symbolize the independence of nature, which can escape from men’s
will. But the cutting down and crushing of it would therefore symbolize its appropriation by
men. In the end, Hal regrets the cutting down of the tree, and misses his “face”: nature
regains its independence, at least ideologically. The notion of excessive private property is
defeated by its own exaggeration.

We are in a place where possessions are important, but the circularity of sitcoms
may apply here, we have stable initial and final situations which show the importance of
nature without any man’s control. It can be understood as showing the limits of man’s
ability to reach material happiness, through material possessions, which is closely linked to
the growth of suburbs and individual housing.

About material and visual aspects of the suburb, I think the most relevant example in
Malcolm in the Middle can be taken from the very first episode. When we first see Malcolm
and his brothers coming out of their house, the camera shows us what the neighborhood
looks like. It is time to go to school and we see Malcolm’s immediate neighbors’ house. We
see two blond girls coming out of the house, followed by their mother while we hear
shoutings from Malcolm and Reese. The camera passes in front of a sign saying that
Malcolm’s neighbors’ house is for sale. The girls look like twins, they both hold flowers,
and as soon as their mother hears the shoutings, she urges her daughters to walk faster.
We understand that the neighbors try to avoid meeting Malcolm’s family. The camera
follows the girl and stops when we see Malcolm’s house, with Malcolm, Reese and Dewey
coming out.

24
 This scene obviously means a lot of things. First we can notice the differences
between the houses. The first house we discover is actually the neighbors’ one, and it
looks like a pretty typical house taken from the mental image people have of American
middle-class suburbs. But it becomes interesting when we shift to Malcolm’s house. If we
look at it in detail, we can see how the house is neglected. The garden is not cleaned up
and its colors are brown and green mixed up. This is particularly obvious in contrast to the
vivid green, perfectly cleaned-up gardens of the neighborhood. On Malcolm’s house, even
the vegetation seems to want to climb up and grab more territory on the family’s house,
whereas at the neighbors’ house, where everything is clean, the garden is clearly
delimited, everything has precise borders... Maybe too much? Malcolm in the Middle
obviously says such a thing, with this dysfunctional family, and we will later look at it in
detail.

The children’s appearances and attitudes are also different. The two girls look like
twins: they are both blond-haired, they wear the same clothes, and they hold the same sort
of flowers. Only their lunchboxes are of different colors. Flowers, clothes, backpacks and
lunchboxes are of fair tones of blue and purple that go well together.

And while these perfect little girls are walking in front of Malcolm’s house on their way
to school, we see the three boys coming out of their home, under Lois’ order not to ditch
Dewey. The boys are wearing casual clothes, with nuances of gray and blue, that is to say
not the most colorful or good-looking clothes. But at the same time, these clothes look
realistic. It shows how the boys of Malcolm’s family do not conform to the clothing codes of
their neighbors.

It shows a particularity of Malcolm’s family among this traditional imaginary suburb:

that they are unconventional, either in their clothing, or in their attitude, Malcolm, his
brothers, and even his parents are in opposition with the other families, and more than
that, their abnormality exists especially if we compare them to the other members of this
fiction, that is to say, compared to the elements taken from the traditional image of the
suburbs. Actually, Malcolm’s family is not stereotyped, in their way of life. They are freed
from the suburban stereotype that used to present suburbia as “a new democratic utopia
of family-oriented settings,” as Paul L. Knox says in Metreoburbia. (28-9).

This is used again several times in another episode from other seasons, when
Malcolm’s family is trying to prevent their new neighbors from fleeing, as previous other
families. Malcolm’s family is different from other suburban families, and therefore they are
25
rejected. There are two images of suburban life: the traditional image and the one carried
by Malcolm’s family. These two images are presented together in Malcolm in the Middle,
but they are in conflict: Malcolm’s family does not respect the “standards” of suburban life,
(Paul L. Knox talks about a “standard of living”, saying that “suburban life anchored [it].”)
Malcolm in the Middle uses this traditional image of U.S. suburbs along with a relatively
new image, which is the opposite of this former image.

The usefulness of the presentation of Malcolm’s house and clothing style exists only
because viewers have this mental image of a prefect idealistic suburbia. Malcolm breaks
the standards from the very first episode. Somehow, the show says: we are showing a
different family from what you have seen, a less idealistic family. But this family is not
extreme in its dysfunctions, as other series such as Married... With Children. Malcolm in
the Middle remains human, and kind, from time to time. The main characters being
children in season one helps the series to succeed. And this means that Malcolm in the
Middle remains moderate, which will bring it closer to a fiction that looks like reality. Of
course, it concerns the background of the series, because we cannot say that the events
and behaviors in this series are “moderate”.

Actually, Malcolm in the Middle does not present directly a new kind of suburb, but a
new kind of family inside an existing suburb (at least in the spectators’ mind). We can take
a closer look at this scene. The sign saying “for sale” and the reaction of the girls’ mother
both give some clues about the relationships with the neighborhood. It gives clues about
how the family’s abnormality is received by the neighborhood, especially their direct
neighbors. In episode two, “The Red Dress”, a neighbor called Ed comes while Lois and
the three boys are having an argument about who burnt Lois’ new red dress (14’39’’). Ed
complains very gently:

Ed: Hi Lois.
Lois: Look, Ed, uh, it’s nine o’clock, I’m a little busy right now.
Ed: Well, you see, there is the problem. It’s nine o’clock at night and I keep hearing screaming.
Now this didn’t sound like your normal screaming, it was more like killing screaming. I’m not one
to complain -
Lois: That’s why we like you. [she shuts the door.]

The exaggeration of the family’s attitudes, and of the neighbor’s comments (“it was more
like killing screaming) is used in these scenes to point out the attitudes of the other
members of the neighborhood in front of “different” or abnormal people. And in Malcolm in
the Middle, being different is not a matter of skin color, but a matter of behavior and

26
communication codes. The breaking of the traditional image of American suburbs is not
limited to visual elements, but it goes way further when we look at behaviors. This is why,
we are going to see deeper in detail what Malcolm in the Middle says about the
relationships of the family with their neighbors.

2.1.2.Meeting the neighbors

There are few scenes where Malcolm’s family explicitly meets their neighbors, but
they are meaningful. They develop the fact that people tend to avoid being in touch with
Malcolm’s family. We will take a look at what message the series gives about these
neighbors. But first I would like to mention the role of stereotypes in fictions; this part of the
study will necessarily go through a look at it.

There is an important distinction which is made between social types and

stereotypes, which we will take from Orrin E. Klapp, quoted by Richard Dyer: “Klapp
defines social types as representations of those who ‘belong’ to society [...] whereas
stereotypes are those who do not belong, who are outside of one’s society.” Dyer adds:
“Who does or does not belong to a given society as a whole is then a function of relative
power of groups in that society to define themselves as central and the rest as ‘other’,
peripheral or outcast.” (Klapp, qtd. in Dyer, 248). I would mention that the word “society”
has to be understood as a group of people sharing characteristics: these definitions of
social types and stereotypes can correspond to any dominant group: for example in the
case of suburbia, the group more inclined to define themselves as central would be
Malcolm’s neighbors. Malcolm’s family would be outcast.

In Malcolm in the Middle, we see the social environment of the main characters from
their own perspectives, therefore the “society” becomes Malcolm’s family and from time to
time his classmates, whereas the good-looking family we saw in the example of episode
one are outside the “society” we focus on. The “society” refers here to a group of people
sharing characteristics. So in Malcolm in the Middle, as well as in other domesticoms
about dysfunctional families in an environment of “normal” families, and contrary to classic
domesticoms, the standard good-looking families are those who are outside the
foregrounded society described by the authors, which means that they are also outside the

27
spectators’ relationship of identification to the main characters. They become the
stereotypes and people with dysfunctions are the social types. Let us see what it implies.

If we take Malcolm’s family in contrast to other families, they are the ones that are
placed in a position of power, in front of the spectators, and in terms of legitimacy, because
they are the society we focus on, where the others are “peripheral”. They seem to have
more legitimacy simply because we share their point of view, as opposed to the others,
whose point of view is less developed and not shared directly with spectators, therefore we
have fewer chances to adopt those other points of view. Of course there is no distinct line
between the inside and the outside, but stereotypes make the drawing of this line possible,
as Dyer says about the stereotype of drinking: “it is notoriously difficult to draw a line
between harm-free and harmful drinking. But stereotypes can.” (Dyer, 250)

In the case of Malcolm, it can be used to justify the behaviors and dysfunctions of
Malcolm’s family, as being standard behaviors, inside the society, whereas the “good” , or
at least traditional behaviors of the typical U.S. suburban neighbors are on the outside, we
cannot identify ourselves with them. It makes them strangers to Malcolm’s family, and by
extension, the spectator. Because of this, and, as we saw, Malcolm’s family and their
behavior being more moderate, less extreme in terms of stereotyping than in traditional
domesticom families, Malcolm in the Middle seems to be more flexible for identification by
the spectators, than traditional sitcoms and domesticoms, despite the multiple
exaggerations that are seen first when looking at the series. As an example, we can take a
look at some peripheral elements inherent in the American suburb, among other social
environments of course, which will help us analyze behaviors in Malcolm.

A powerful element which we can take here is television. The first and more
meaningful mention of television is in the first episode, when Malcolm learns that Stevie is
not allowed to watch T.V.:

Malcolm: You wanna watch T.V.?

Stevie: Can’t. Not allowed.
Malcolm: What? You mean, ever?
Stevie: Mom says T.V. makes you stupid.
Malcolm: No, T.V. makes you normal. [to the camera:] How can they do that, he’s in a
wheelchair!

28
The fact that this sentence: “T.V. makes you normal” is said by Malcolm (to the spectators)
necessarily implies a hidden reference to the spectators, who are watching T.V. when they
hear this sentence, because they are watching Malcolm in the Middle. Malcolm then talks
to the spectators, and this is probably meant to make the spectator share the idea of an
injustice in forbidding a boy in a wheelchair to watch T.V. Malcolm then appears to the
spectator as part of the same “society”, or the same social type, because his sentences
somehow protect the spectator from being accused of being “stupid”. The purpose of the
authors is not to put in Malcolm’s mouth a universal truth about television, because the
drawbacks of television for children have been discussed for a long time now, but on the
contrary, we see how Malcolm and his family are presented closer to the spectators than
the stereotypes we can see elsewhere, by admitting his addiction to television.

Malcolm’s sentence is then a reflection of the spectator’s own point of view. Even if
we can suppose that the spectators are more or less aware of the potential futility and
dangers of television for children, we can easily assume that they still watch television, just
because they like it. We can suppose that the series aims at showing this paradox,
especially because it is spoken by a child: he brings some kind of truth to the foreground,
against the trends of moderation in watching T.V., that the spectators surely know but do
not necessarily apply in their life, and their children’s lives; when Stevie mentions that his
mother says T.V. makes people stupid, Malcolm says no, and replies “T.V. makes you
normal”. It does not necessarily mean that T.V. makes us clever: it just makes normal,
which means it makes us look like the others. Then, beyond humor in Malcolm’s sentence,
because we do not necessarily expect a child in a sitcom to say such a thing, the spectator
can make his or her own critique about what Malcolm says, and about the role of T.V.

In fact, the character of Malcolm is denouncing the spectators’ behavior in front of

T.V., to himself, especially suburban spectators who can feel even closer to Malcolm’s way
of life. This can help these spectators to think about it. Herbert J. Gans takes an example
of a suburbanite: “although he had been telling me endless and angry stories about being
exploited by his superiors and about corruption among high-ranking officers, he could not
see the similarities between his position and that of the Cuban peasant under Batista, and
argued strenuously that Castro should be overthrown. His opinions reflected those of the
media, but their content did not interested him enough to relate it to his own experiences.
[...] the media helped him belong to the national society[...]” (192, 193)

29
 The difficulty of having a critical mind in front of T.V. messages, as we may have in
front of events of our real life can be overcome within Malcolm in the Middle, as here,
where Malcolm says explicitly what is implied in our behaviors. This is a sort of confession
inside T.V. of the spectators’ addiction to T.V. The stereotype or social type of T.V. addiction
has this effect of saying something by being shown explicitly. And now that we know the
implied effect and importance of stereotypes, social types, and the different perspectives
they offer, we can take a closer look at the aim of this use of stereotypes: “The role of
stereotypes is to make visible the invisible”, Dyer continues. (250) It is used to order
society, to classify people into categories.

Another example here could be found in episode five: “Malcolm Babysits”. Malcolm
tries to make money babysitting children of a rich family. When he arrives at the new
family’s house, they really look like a stereotype of the perfect rich family: they have
money and are generous when paying Malcolm, they are clever, but most of all, their two
blond children happily obey, without having to be told anything: their father just asks: “okay
kids, what time is it?”, and they shout “bedtime!” and rush to their bedroom.

The stereotypes used allow us to make a distinction between Malcolm (and his
family) and this family. It is made hilariously explicit with Malcolm’s language when he tries
to say something kind to this family: he cannot speak properly anymore, and his language
becomes some sort of primitive language: “This job... Me... Like!” He adds that in his
family, he had no training in saying kind things to people. Malcolm and his family appear to
be primitive compared to this perfect rich family. But, of course, these happy moments
cannot last, partly because of the sitcom pattern of circularity, which Malcolm in Middle fits:
almost every episode ends the way it began, and Malcolm cannot obviously stay with this
happy family for the following episodes.

But let us see how it happens. It becomes interesting to study how the clash between
Malcolm and this family occurs. The last sentence the parents say to Malcolm is that he
has become a member of their family. Then while he is watching television, trying to use
the four remote controls, Malcolm unexpectedly found a channel on the big T.V. set, where
he sees himself. He finally finds a camera spying on him, a videocassette recorder called a
“nannycam”, and some video tapes of himself in various and ridiculous situations.

So this perfect stereotyped family appears to be not so perfect anymore. What we

can understand from this is that we cannot rely on stereotypes, because they can be
misleading and they hide part of the whole. And the fact that Malcolm found the trick
30
through T.V. is much more meaningful. The stereotypes widely broadcasted on T.V. for
decades will finally reveal to be a hiding another truth, which is worse than reality, and
because a stereotype cannot be reliable in everything concerning a subject: it has to be
reduced to a certain amount of characteristics, therefore omitting others.

When back home, Malcolm talks with his father and after being comforted, he says to
the camera: “See, that’s what I’m talking about! This family may be rude, loud, gross, and
have no shame whatsoever,... Anyway, with them, you know where you stand. And when
I’ve a problem, they’re always there.” Malcolm’s family does not fit the stereotypes of
people living in the suburbs, but the conclusion is that they are far better than any of these
stereotypes, at some levels, because they have other qualities. And the authors may try to
show that people who tend to appear like perfect stereotypes, or stereotypes of perfect
people, are only untrustworthy. We see here that in Malcolm in the Middle, dysfunctional
families can face the traditional stereotypes of the “good” family, and still appear to the
spectator to have some kind of value.

Lippman describes the usefulness of stereotypes with these words, among others:
“They are the fortress of our tradition, and behind its defenses we can continue to feel
ourselves safe in the position we occupy.” (Lippman, qtd. in Dyer 245) The use of
stereotypes in Malcolm in the Middle therefore plays on our comfort vis-a-vis these
stereotypes, and therefore on our place within the stereotyped pattern of our own society.
And the series shows that the stereotypes we were used to being familiar with are not so
comfortable and safe anymore. The stereotypes of families for whom all goes well in the
end is replaced by another social type of the dysfunctional family, which can partly fit the
drawbacks of real people, of the spectators and any suburbanite.

Malcolm in the Middle reverses the traditions of domesticoms: in this series the
traditional stereotypes are criticized instead of being asserted, but at the same time,
Malcolm may set a new kind of social type which the spectators can feel part of: this “rude,
loud, gross” and shameless family, but which we can rely on. Not that every spectator’s
family is rude, loud and gross, but it symbolizes the imperfections that we necessarily meet
one day or another in everyone, that do not necessarily appear in traditional social types
and stereotypes.

If we consider that this is a social type, then it appears to be a more accurate social
type: the complexity of the characteristics of this social type makes it more suitable for the
spectators to identify to this type, because spectators, human beings, are necessarily
31
more complex than any stereotype, and have many characteristics that define them. Of
course, the multiple exaggerations of everyone’s behaviors in the series do not seem to
resemble our behaviors, but behind the exaggerations, the family and this new social type
may look more realistic because television audiences were used to the traditional
stereotyped families and series which presented some ideals either about solving personal
problems or achieving economic or social goals. With Malcolm in the Middle, it is not some
ideals which are presented, but maybe it is the entertaining presentation of some of our
drawbacks, without any blame on them. As Frankie Muniz said when he was fourteen,
playing Malcolm in season one: “This family is just more real than normal television
families.”3 Linwood Boomer is a little more precise: “The family is [...] an extreme version
of a real one.” 4

A last example in this subpart will conclude our glance at Malcolm’s comments on
suburbia. In the episode four, “Shame” (16’50’’), Malcolm visits his neighbors to try to
make them pledge money for a charity marathon. We see every neighbor refusing to
pledge money, until Malcolm uses Stevie’s wheelchair to make them think he is crippled.
Then, everyone accepts.

This scene hosts a great mockery of the apparent charity of some people. It
satirically shows that charity in this context is conditioned by the immediacy of the image of
suffering. People give money only when they see the need on their threshold. But beyond
that, Malcolm wanted to make people pledge money because he felt guilty after beating
another child. But then, he has no shame in pretending that he is disabled to make people
pledge money. This is an unusual and hilarious presentation of his partial guilt: Malcolm
has an idea of guilt which is quite subjective.

Malcolm in the Middle therefore presents other aspects of real life people that the
series does not share with many other sitcoms. This is another example of the reverse of
the traditional characteristics of American suburbs broadcasted on T.V., its inhabitants and
their values in Malcolm in the Middle. The values are imperfect, just as it would be for real
people, even if almost no one would act like Malcolm, his partiality just fits more reality
than if his guiltiness was too extreme and complete.

3 quoted by Bernard Weinraub, “COVER STORY; A Warm and Fuzzy Family, But the Brady Bunch It Isn't”,
The New York Times, January 30, 2000.

4 ibid.
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 2.2. The Krelboynes

We saw how Malcolm in the Middle was different by reversing the points of view
about suburbia and its inhabitants. The sitcom genre basically adopts two main
“situations”, and we looked at the relationships outside the family in the situation called “at
home”, so we are now going to analyze social relationships in the other situation, “at work”,
in the case of Malcolm, at school. We will be back into the “at home” situation in the third
part, but this time within the family, the core of the series.

At school, Malcolm has a special status from the very first episode, because he is a
genius, and the consequence is that he is put into a special class for gifted children,
nicknamed the “Krelboynes”. This nickname is pejorative, and the first mention of it is
made by Reese, we can assume that it has its origin in the point of view of the other
children on this genius class in the narrative. We are going to take a look at the place of
the Krelboynes confronted to other social groups, and then the relationships of Malcolm
within the Krelboynes.

2.2.1. The Krelboynes and normality

The use of social types and stereotypes becomes more complex because of
Malcolm’s inability to stay in one “society”, “normal” people or the “social misfits”, as he
calls them in one episode. Malcolm says he “used to be normal”, but he was put into the
Krelboyne class against his will in the first episode, because he was too smart. His
character then exists in two different societies. Some scenes show that he is still part of
the “normal” one, but most of the scenes when we see Malcolm at school show him as
part of the Krelboyne group.

The Krelboynes are rejected by other children, as Reese notices when Malcolm is
about to be put in this class: “Mom, seriously, Krelboynes gets their butts kicked.” But what
becomes interesting is that these Krelboynes also accept it, and even use this nickname
for themselves, as we can read on the background of the stage where the children do their
stunts in the episode “Krelboyne picnic”: it is said to be an “academic circus”, and what is
written is “Cirque du Krelboyne”.

We can suppose that these gifted and “different” children know their differences, or at
least their being outside of the rest of the school. They are victims of these normal
children. In episode eight, “Krelboyne picnic”, Reese, coming to the picnic, says to himself
33
that he is “going to kick so much Krelboyne ass today”. Later, they are chased by Reese
with the metaphor of a predator hunting a target. Reese says to himself before jumping out
of a bush, roaring: “A small pack of Krelboynes has ventured out of hiding to bask in the
afternoon sun. Their defenses down, they’re an easy target for nearby predators. They
sense danger, but it is too late. Their hesitation is fatal.” This is a parody of an animal
documentary, where the Krelboynes are hunted by a predator, making the victimization of
the Krelboynes a natural phenomenon.

In this case Reese is also a stereotype which does not fit the stereotype of normal
people: some sort of school bully, or, more explicitly, a predator hunting a target. In
episode eight it is already known that he is not very clever, and is good at hitting people.
He is the exact opposite of the Krelboynes, very clever but incapable of being superior or
equal to other people, except with clever remarks that only other Krelboynes understand.
This is the case for example in the same episode just after Reese manages to block one of
the Krelboynes and prepares himself to kick him. The tall brother of this Krelboyne
appears behind Reese, dressed the same way as his brother, and catches Reese. The
Krelboyne then says to Reese: “Kafkaesque, isn’t it?” Reese asks: “Huh?”, and the boy
responds a bit offended: “Never mind! Kick his butt Alphonse!” The reference to Kafka was
not understood by Reese, and this is not even necessary for the spectator to understand
this reference, because if this is not understandable by the spectators, the Krelboyne
would even appear more outside of the standard social codes of communication.

It is the nature of the Krelboynes not to be able to be part of the norm. Each of the
two worlds cannot understand or cannot use the codes of communications of the other.
But the exclusion also works in another direction too. In episode twelve, “Cheerleader”,
Reese appears ridiculous because he tries to be a cheerleader, and there is this dialogue
in front of the cheerleaders’ dance:

Lloyd: Hey Malcolm, you think your brother will lend me his corset? [laughing]
Malcolm [to the camera]: When a Krelboyne makes fun of you, you know you’re in trouble.
Lloyd: See, that comment was playing off the concept that we all have specific notions of
gender-appropriate roles. [laughing]
Malcolm [to the camera]: At least he’s no good at it.

Lloyd mocks Reese, and Malcolm’s comments underline how his jokes are “private”, in the
way that their appreciation is limited to Lloyd’s social group. And we find again this notion
of the perspectives in stereotyping, as for the positions of spectators within the stereotype
pattern I mentioned previously. Lloyd mocks Reese because he does not fit the “normal”

34
characteristics at this precise moment. He joined the cheerleading team, whereas it is not
a usually a characteristic of “normal” boys to be cheerleaders.

Another example in episode one shows the attitude of the other Krelboynes when
Malcolm first appears in this class: they all stare at him, and Stevie notices that it is
because Malcolm is new. Again, the Krelboynes also mock people, but they appear to take
as a target only people that are also outside the “normal” stereotype, at least temporarily.
The notion of what is normal in the series does not shift to other social groups, but it
seems that the characters still focus on the “normal” group, to which they do not belong
anymore, to define normality; therefore we can deduce that in Malcolm in the Middle, the
characters accept their being outside the norm without any question.

These examples show that the attitudes of the Krelboyne world, which symbolizes
“different” people, in front of the “normal” world, are basically the same as the attitudes of
normal children in front of the Krelboynes, each fighting with their own weapons. Only
these weapons are fundamentally different. By extension, it shows how we can make no
difference between different groups of people, because somehow all social groups have
the same dysfunctions. But it also suggests that the notion of normality does not change
whether you are in a social group or in another. This is what allows us to see humorous
scenes like the previous example I mentioned, where the “normal” group rejects different
kinds of people who will reject each other too.

Nevertheless, there is a sort of hierarchy that is set between these groups, as

Malcolm says in episode 12, Cheerleader (11’43’’) in a humorous dialogue with Reese:
“Guy cheerleaders are the lowest of the low, worse than band, worse than Krelboynes.
The only thing lower is that guy that never takes his hand out of his butt.” Malcolm here
details a sort of hierarchy of value for boys which includes: “normal” boys, Krelboynes, guy
cheerleaders, and the “guy that never takes his hand out of his butt”. This hierarchy
somehow reflects reality, in the sense that similar hierarchies exist, and that spectators
may have experienced it. Once again, the quality of Malcolm in the Middle is to say
explicitly what is implied in the spectators’ behaviors. But even if there is a sort of
hierarchy that overcomes the borders of the different societies, it is limited to the belief of
the members of these societies who accept this hierarchy, for various reasons: the series
suggests that none of the different groups is superior in fact, but they are superior because
of subjective prejudices.

35
 The dysfunctions that can be found in each social group are not the same, and the
Krelboynes’ are particularly interesting. In the episode 14, “The Bots and the Bees”,
Malcolm and his Krelboyne friends have this important discussion about a competition of
killer robots:

Malcolm: Killer robots? [to the camera] I can’t believe it! Finally something cool about being
smart! [to himself and the others] I wish we could do that.
[All turn their heads towards him]
Lloyd: we were hoping you’d say that. Here’s the deal: we want to enter the competition. We’ve
got the designs, we’ve got the desire, and we’re not distracted by any kind of social life.
Eraserhead: The problem is that our parents will never allow us to build something that
dangerous. That means, we need a place with a total lack of caring adult supervision.
Malcolm: ... That’s my house! But... These things are really expensive.
Dabney: No problem, my father tries to buy my love.

Eraserhead seems to be a reference to a film by David Lynch, probably because of his

hair, maybe also because of the gap between the characters’ minds and reality, in this
case because of the inner dysfunctions of the Krelboynes. The name is never mentioned
in the series, it is only credited in the end of the episode. This name can be a reference to
the unrealistic characteristic of this dialogue. The social dysfunctions are presented as
almost “normal”. Eraserhead is the one who brings Malcolm to have the idea to build the
robot in his house, and then to allow the “dysfunctional” children to enter the house, which
will lead Hal to threaten everyone will a killer robot loaded with bees.

There are a lot of important elements in this dialogue, like Malcolm’s comments on
his house. And I want to focus on two sentences, the one said by Lloyd and the one of
Dabney. Lloyd notices neutrally that as Krelboynes, they do not have any social life, which
certainly provokes a comic and ironic effect on the audience, because of the décalage
between the way he says this and the inner seriousness of this dysfunction. But he does
not focus on that, it is only a reason to prove that they can build killer robots. Actually this
seems to be part of some unchangeable destiny. In the other sentence, Dabney even goes
further, he says that they can use the fact that his father tries to buy his love to get enough
money for their projects. The Krelboyne characters appear to be able to use the
dysfunctions of their lives to take advantage of them, even without any moral
considerations. They have no shame in using the social and emotional dysfunctions to get
what they want. This reference to personal and emotional dysfunctions shows humorously
one of the tones of Malcolm in the Middle. Dysfunctions have their place in the show, and
they will be mocked, and become a matter of humor, and even a tool to develop the

36
events. Contrary to traditional domesticoms, Malcolm in the Middle does not show these
dysfunctions solved with an easy solution, a lesson that kids learn at the end, which would
take away a great particularity of the show. Malcolm in the Middle appears more honest to
the spectators and things are not too easy in terms of solving problems, especially on
emotional and social levels. These kinds of problems are not always solved, nevertheless,
they do not “darken” the atmosphere of the whole series thanks to the fact that they are
the direct source of humor and jokes.

Now if we take Malcolm’s perspective, we can say that the two worlds in which he
evolves are finally equal in terms of value, if this is possible to evaluate, but Malcolm still
prefers one of them, which appears as more “normal” to everyone. But we can see that the
stereotype of normal people, if it is possible to define this stereotype, is not so absolute.
The spectators are able to see how subjective this notion of normality is, and how
subjectively the character of Malcolm prefers one of these groups, denying his own nature,
which does not mean that the audience could not approve this choice, but the spectators
can see that it is not a universal pattern. More generally, Malcolm in the Middle questions
the pertinence of a definition of normality in American society through the questioning of
the pertinence of easy stereotypes in fictions.

The moral limits are somehow broken in both cases, both groups reject other groups,
and both have dysfunctions, and the hierarchy between the different groups is subjective,
reversible, and fundamentally does not exist. According to Janet Woollacott, stereotyping
is “part of the way in which the media define and reinforce the deviant status of particular
groups”. (288) In Malcolm in the Middle, the heroes are shown as deviant in some aspects,
and therefore the deviation is not the one which is shown through stereotypes, but I would
say that the normal status and its subjectivity are shown through stereotyping.

We can see that in Malcolm in the Middle, there is no idealistic figure in one
character or the other. It reflects the diversity and complexity of reality, more than other
idealistic and idyllic sitcoms, because the borders of the different categories of people
which are set up by stereotyping are less clear. As Richard Dyer says, stereotypes
“separate what is in reality fluid and much closer to the norm than the dominant value
system cares to admit.” He gives an example: “if alcoholism is not so easily distinguished
from social drinking, can we be so comfortable in our acceptance of the latter and
condemnation of the former?” (Dyer, 250)

37
 As Jonathan Gray notices about traditional domesticoms, in Watching with the
Simpsons, usually (and ideally for producers) domesticoms have to operate “in a safe
world that all can relate to and appreciate”. (54) But Malcolm does not present this kind of
world at all, as Malcolm’s last sentence of the first episode introduction testifies: “You know
what the best thing about childhood is? At some point it stops!” Instead, Malcolm presents
a world with imperfections, more realistic.

2.2.2. Malcolm and the Krelboynes: partiality of stereotypes

Malcolm is the closest link between the Krelboynes and other children, and it seems
interesting to look at his relationships to the Krelboynes assuming that he was formerly
part of the “normal” world.

If the Krelboynes was an existing social group of American society, it would be the
geek and nerd community that are often depicted in today’s sitcoms, such as The Big
Bang Theory, nowadays, for example. They are asocial and they lack social skills, while
they are obviously cleverer than the rest of the population. Unfortunately, this intelligence
is of no use in their relationships with the rest of society.

We obviously saw how this rest of the society, crystallized in Reese, acts in front of
them, but what about Malcolm? Malcolm becomes part of this Krelboyne class in the first
episode, but he does not seem to resemble his Krelboyne classmates. The fact that the
first episode shows him before he goes to this class allows the spectator to see how
conflicting the situation is to him. Malcolm is a Krelboyne according to his intelligence, to
his belonging to this new class, also according to the attitude of the others calling him a
Krelboyne sometimes. But he does his best to be “normal”: for example this dialogue with
Stevie in episode 8: “Krelboyne Picnic”:

Stevie: You are what you are, accept it.

Malcolm: Not without a fight.

It shows a conflict between the Krelboyne world and the “normal” world, which finally
exclude each other. I talk about exclusiveness in the sense that you cannot belong to both.
To a certain extent, we can see how Malcolm in the Middle shows the difficulty of finding a
place among multiple societies or social groups to which we partly belong, and therefore
the difficulty of using stereotypes to define these categories clearly, and to define

38
individuals. Malcolm is never entirely belonging to one or the other group, therefore he
does not fit entirely one of the stereotypes applied to the others.

There are several examples that allow us to see how incompatible the two worlds
are. One of these examples can be found in episode nine: “Lois versus Evil”, (9’30’’).
Malcolm is chatting with Stevie on the playground, and Julie, his friend from his former
class comes. Julie asks: “Hey Malcolm, do you wanna split lunches?”, and Malcolm
answers “What?” hesitates, then says “sure!”. Both Malcolm and Julie stare at Stevie. After
a few seconds, he rolls his wheelchair away while nobody says a word. Of course, in this
scene, the exclusion of Stevie is also due to the fact that Julie is a girl Malcolm likes, not
only because she comes from the “normal” group of children. But we can notice that she
is actually belonging to the “normal” group, and in these episodes, she is the one Malcolm
likes. And nowhere in this season we find Malcolm acting the same way with a Krelboyne
girl. Julie represents the quintessence of the normal world, because she is the feminine
figure in Malcolm’s social environment, of course at the level of children. We see that any
“norm” remains something exclusive, and the quest to fit one norm passes through a
rejection of what is not this norm.

Another short example can be found in the introduction of episode twelve,

“Cheerleader”. During the class recess, the Krelboynes sing as a choir, until the bell rings.
Then Malcolm enters with a basketball. Caroline Miller, the teacher, says to Malcolm:
“Malcolm, I think you should say something to your classmates. They stayed inside while
you were out playing ball with your friends.” Almost everybody looks at Malcolm who
simply answers: “Thanks!” This scene shows two things, in our perspective: firstly,
Malcolm is still in touch with his non-Krelboyne friends which means that he was not
rejected because of his belonging to a new class, and secondly, Malcolm has no remorse
leaving this Krelboyne class while the others are working, or at least practicing music, but
he had to let them down to play basketball with his “normal” friends.

This is another particularity of Malcolm in the Middle, and this is why the characters
appear more sincere: they are often less subject to being excessively animated by “good”
feelings and behaviors, they tend to act the way they want, and therefore they appear to
be bad persons, but at the same time, less hypocrites, making the series less “aseptic”
compared to other domesticoms. Here, Malcolm does not care about doing what he wants
instead of what the others expect from him, especially adults and authority.

39
 I think that here, the authors play on the spectators desires to break with the
conventional and politically correct behaviors and desires that the society, the American
society here, and media fictions impose. Through the behavior of a gifted child who is
sometimes able to have adult-like reflections, the series humorously shows the possibility
of acting as our desires dictate at least by identification with the characters, yet without
grave consequences, because what we see in Malcolm is still a child’s life, and most of the
adventures and situations do not imply grave consequences. Almost everyone has
moments of childhood, or even adulthood when he/she was a victim of the others’
judgements and decisions, and Malcolm uses this common knowledge of these kinds of
situations to create humor, therefore allowing the spectators to identify themselves to the
characters in the series, and maybe to feel close to the characters and share the events of
the narrative.

Just as the Simpsons are not “anti-family” while attacking the domesticom version of
the family (Gray, 58), some “good” behaviors in the American society appear in Malcolm in
the Middle as some kind of enemy for the characters’ desires, while the series remains
light because some of these “good” behaviors are not criticized or reversed. The series
shows some drawbacks and qualities of more than one point of view, that is to say, of
more than one group, and Malcolm symbolizes this.

The character of Malcolm tries to keep his former links with this normal world and its
codes, because he does not entirely resemble a Krelboyne, but this is a little more
complex. Malcolm does look normal, in the sense of the appearance: no glasses, no
braces, casual clothes for example, like some of the other Krelboynes. But concerning
social abilities to establish relationships with the other (especially those belonging to the
“normal” stereotype), Malcolm often has problems, just as his classmates do.

A good example of this is his relationships with Julie, in episode nine, “Lois versus
Evil”. In the beginning of the episode (after the introduction), Malcolm comments school
life, on the playground:

Malcolm (to the camera): I know a lot of kids say they like school, but honestly, I just find it
exhaustive. I mean, when I am in school, I’m either bored, terrified, (he sees Julie), or confused
about Julie Houlerman.
Julie (quite distant from Malcolm): Hi Malcolm!
Malcolm (to the camera): Perfect example, what does she mean by that? Is it just “hi”, is she
trying to say she likes me, is she just being nice, and now I have to figure out a secret way to
answer her, without A: acting like I like her, B: acting like I don’t like her, or C: acting like I’ve

40
 never even thought about A or B. (to himself:) Just be pleasant and noncommittal. (to Julie:) Hi
Ju...
(He sees Julie already far away entering a building.)

Malcolm’s long speech about this little word “Hi” spoken by Julie is a perfect example of
what I wanted to say concerning Malcolm’s problems communicating. It is quite funny
because it plays on the inability of boys and girls to understand each other, but Malcolm’s
final words to Julie, when she is already gone, symbolizes the gap between himself and
her.

So, can we say that Malcolm is part of the Krelboyne stereotype, or of the normal
stereotype? I would say both. He is both alternatively, and lives in both, at least from time
to time. He fits the gifted socially unadapted type against his will, because of his inner
capacities, and he sometimes fits the “normal” stereotypes because of his behavior and
his will. The character of Malcolm has this duality facing him. The series here shows the
conflict of what we want against what we are. The problem is that Malcolm, as the other
children, still applies the pattern of social types and stereotypes (and normality), even if he
is now on the other side of these stereotypes. In the first episode he says to Stevie: “I used
to be normal”. When we see for the first time the Krelboyne class, Malcolm is stared at as
“the freak of the freak show”, by the others.

But in episode eight, “the Krelboyne Picnic”, Malcolm has a great success in the
Academic Circus, because of his intelligence, even superior to the other gifted children. He
is acclaimed by the others, even by the others’ parents, but his only preoccupation is how
strange he will be to his family, and if he is going to be rejected. Here, Malcolm goes
further in the Krelboyne stereotype, therefore going further from his family, and what he
considers to be “normal”, at least he believes it. His inability to change his notion of
normality prevents him from appreciating his success at the academic circus.

I believe the series here points out the inability of people to release themselves from
a given system of values that they were told to be normality for too long, and their inability
to have an objective appreciation of themselves and others. And Malcolm does it
hilariously: after his stunt, he asks Stevie:

Malcolm: Was it as bad as I think it was?

Stevie: Man, you killed.
Malcolm: That’s what I was afraid of.

41
Malcolm’s sentence shows that he evaluates what he did with a system of values derived
from the “normal” group which he belonged to, whereas Stevie uses a system of values of
the Krelboyne group based on people’s intelligence, as it is the main quality of this social
group. Here, these sentences are very humorous because the dialogue is built with the
two points of view juxtaposed, and even understanding each other without any
transposition of the communication codes. Both Malcolm and Stevie speak within their own
pattern, and understand each other. By doing all this, Malcolm comments what Richard
Dyer says to be a problem with stereotypes (he takes Lippman’s perspective about them):

“[...] the need to order ‘the great blooming, buzzing confusion of reality’ is liable to be
accompanied by a belief in the absoluteness and certainty of any particular order, a refusal to
recognize its limitations and partiality, its relativity and changeability [...]” (246)

By showing Malcolm still conforming to the norm of his previous social group, the
series reveals how relative these social norms are. Therefore it attacks the predominant
system of values and patterns of stereotypes of standard sitcoms, within which conformity
to the norm was underlined and approved. Of course, Malcolm still uses stereotypes and
social types but its exaggeration allows the spectator not to take the character’s behaviors
as directly applicable to reality (contrary to the “ritual lesson learnt” at the end of traditional
domesticoms),because the characters do not fit the spectator’s reality, but, especially
through Malcolm, the comments that the series makes on stereotypes give us a fresh new
perspective.

***

If traditional sitcoms gave the spectator a particular pattern, Malcolm and other
similar series make us look differently at this former pattern. And its favorite target remains
the middle-class suburb, its inhabitants and their model of society, including at school, that
is to say the traditional domesticom. Now that we have looked at how Malcolm in the
Middle commented this standard ideological domesticom pattern, we will go deeper into
the analysis of Malcolm’s family’s inner relationships, especially with the comments on
moral values.

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 3. Family Life in Malcolm in the Middle

The other situation of the two basic situations in domesticoms is “at home”, and there
is much to say about Malcolm’s family life. This final part will lead us to take a look at the
deepest and most complex interpersonal relationships that are depicted in the series,
Malcolm’s family life. First, I would like to note that traditional sitcoms, especially in the
50s, 60s and 80s, were dominated by fictions about nuclear families, thus making it the
norm, as Jonathan Gray says in Watching with the Simpsons: “nuclear families were by no
means ‘normal’ in any statistical sense (Carter 1995:186), but television, with the family
sitcom at the forefront, has somehow managed to convince us that they are so.” (54)

Malcolm in the Middle keeps the nuclear family at the center of the narrative, and
without questioning the “nuclear” side of this family, just as The Simpsons, and it remains
one of the “last bastion[s] of the nuclear family on sitcoms” (Gray, 61). Nevertheless, it
does not show a family fitting the norm: we saw it concerning the neighborhood image in
Malcolm, now we are going to see that it is also true about family life. We are going to see
how Malcolm in the Middle makes fun of the traditional value and moral systems, and what
message the series and its authors gives about conduct disorders and dysfunctions, inside
the family.

Malcolm lives in a nuclear family with two parents, but with some specificities. There
are four brothers in the house, no girls, and the characters all have specific and unusual
behaviors according to their places and roles in the family.

First I am going to talk about an fundamental issue, which is morality and justice
inside the family. This is going to be divided into three subparts, one on moral values in
Malcolm in terms of behavior, the second on how Malcolm deals with the notion of justice
and authority in the house, especially with his parents, and the third on rebellion in
Malcolm in the Middle. Then, it will lead us to Malcolm’s family dysfunctions in the series,
with a first subpart on the creation of a new family pattern in the series, then a second
subpart on the use of dysfunctions in Malcolm in the Middle and their usefulness in the
narrative.

43
 3.1. Moral values

We can assume that American values, or at least those which are shown on T.V. and
media contain idealized values such as these, quoted from American Ways, by Althen,
Doran and Szmania: “The list offered below has eight entries, each covering a set of
closely related values and assumptions commonly held by Americans: individualism,
freedom, competitiveness, and privacy; , equality[...]” and so on. (Althen, Doran and
Szmania, 5)

Some of these values have been set up since the 50s in American sitcoms, and
Jonathan Gray notices: “The traditional American family sitcom, with little respite, worked
to re-set and re-tell the neoconservative myth of the ultra-happy suburban nuclear family
life from the 1950s to the early 1990s.” (Gray 60) Then, with The Simpsons, and a few
others before and after, many values are challenged, instead of being re-set, they are
questioned and broken.

I want to talk about the notion of justice, which englobes two parts: judgements in
terms of qualifying something as “good” or “bad”, or something in between, and the choice
of an appropriate behavior toward people, how to act with them, in a given situation. These
two definitions are somehow linked, but the situations in which they apply are quite
different. The first implies a notion of authority, official or not, which allows someone to
make a judgement, to say who is right and who is wrong for example, which will be the
situation of parents in front of their children, but not only. The second can follow the
judgement, but not necessarily, with a focus on the behavior: is it appropriate of not? This
is not necessarily a matter of right and wrong.

It is this second side of the definition that I will develop first. I will focus mainly on
Malcolm and the children’s reactions to their situations at home and at school. The notion
of justice from a parental point of view will be discussed in the second subpart. The
notions of fairness and unfairness, and how they are presented in Malcolm in the Middle
will be mentioned.

Finally, the third subpart will be on rebellion and deviance, which is linked to the
second subpart as a kind of result, especially in Malcolm. This will lead us to the next part
with the creation in Malcolm in the Middle of a new type of family, and therefore to the core
of Malcolm’s family dysfunctions

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 3.1.1. Justice and appropriate behavior

We can begin with a quote about domesticoms found in Watching with the Simpsons:

Family or domestic sitcoms were perhaps the bedrock of broadcast television. They were what
you grew up on, gently and amusingly teaching two important skills: how to watch television
(media literacy); and how to live in families with tolerant mutual accommodation, talking not
fighting (life skills). (Hartley, qtd. in Gray 54)

With few exceptions, these two skills are not present in Malcolm in the Middle. Very often
in the introduction scene of each episode, especially in this first season, we see interesting
scenes about Malcolm and his family’s fighting skills. The introduction of episode 9
remains a famous one because of its spectacular summary of the family dysfunctions, and
therefore also of the reasons why Malcolm does not clearly teach these life skills that the
quote talks about.

First, Hal appears to be working just in front of the house, in the garden, and he
walks to the backdoor of the house and enters it, as we hear Dewey repeating: “I hate my
brothers, I only like me” hitting his own head on the washing machine, while he is lying on
it. Hal then enters the kitchen, and Reese and Malcolm are fighting and rolling on the floor,
shouting. Hal opens the fridge while Lois waters them, shouting at them to stop fighting.
Hal goes back to work, where we see that he is actually doing a crossword puzzle.

Malcolm in the Middle entirely contradicts the “talking not fighting” skill. And the
behavioral responses to situations where moral questions are at work will go the same
way. In this scene, almost all of the dysfunctions of the family are presented here. And
what we can bring out of this scene is that the main type of relationship in the family is
conflict. The characters are mainly either trying to win the conflict, or to escape it.

If we pick up an observation of Vladimir Propp and its application to the sitcom genre
by Jonathan Gray, the basic sitcom plot is based on typical roles which are: the ‘hero’,
most of the time a child of the family, the ‘donor’ who questions the hero, and the ‘helper’
who guides the hero, either parents or siblings, and the ‘villain’, someone or a force from
outside of the home that goes against the hero. (Propp, qtd. in Gray, 57) Again, Malcolm
differs from every traditional family pattern in American domestic sitcoms because of these
conflicts. The roles are not used in the traditional way, and this does not lead to a “moral”
solving of the problems.

45
 For example, in episode 10, “Stock Car Races”, Malcolm and Reese have been
caught by a police officer because they entered a forbidden area. Malcolm said to Reese
that they will be “Clyde” and “Kevin”, but it ends up with Reese kicking the officer to try to
runaway through a door which was finally locked. Holding the boys, the officer waits for
their parents at the end of the stock car races. Hal talks to the officer, but finally he kicks
him on the leg, takes Dewey in his arms, and shouts to Malcolm and Reese: “Clyde! Kevin!
Get to the car!” and they run away. This scene underlines Hal’s irresponsibility as a father,
and his lack of responsible behavior in front of the deviant behavior of his children, making
him look like Malcolm and Reese, by the use of the same false names, Clyde and Kevin.

The following scene shows Malcolm in the Middle view on sitcoms moral lessons:

Hal: All right men. Well, I hope you’ve all learned something today, huh?
Malcolm [to the camera]: I learned my dad is actually capable of doing something cool. I’m not
saying that violence is cool, but that was cool! I always wondered where we got it from.

This is a clear parody of the too easy moral lesson given at the end of traditional U.S.
domesticoms. Malcolm and his brothers do not really learn something at a moral level in
this episode, but the spectators can learn, through these parodies, to decrypt the
mechanisms of standard American domestic sitcoms.

Even the characters’ advice to each other is deviant from the ones we find in the
standard U.S. sitcoms. A short example of that can be taken from the first episode. Dewey,
Malcolm and his friend Richard are going to school, and they see another boy on the
street, Dave Spath, who is used to beating other children. Malcolm takes the role of the
donor/helper for Dewey, but his advice, already well-known by Dewey, is quite unexpected:

Malcolm: What do you do if he catches you?

Dewey: Roll in a ball.
Malcolm: What if he starts kicking you?
Dewey: Stay in a ball.

This kind of dialogue is quite common in fictions to show that the advice is already learnt,
but here the funny part of it is that the Malcolm’s advice is not meant to help overcome an
uncomfortable situation, or improve it, but it is meant to pass through as painlessly as
possible.

This is an example of the behavior we can find in Malcolm in the Middle. When facing
difficulties, the behavior of the characters will be to run away. There is no quest for an
46
unreachable fairness, or moral improvement, and for an appropriate behavior. More than
that, giving advice is not always listened to in Malcolm in the Middle, but where the
traditional U.S. sitcom shows a caring parental helper who will try lovingly to make the
children accept this advice, Malcolm and the Middle characters will have a totally different
behavior, as Malcolm’s words to us in the episode 12, “Cheerleader” (7’55’’), when he tries
to tell Reese that he should join the football team instead of the cheerleader team: “I tried
to help him, I gave him advice,I tried reasoning with him. There’s only one thing left to do:
sit back and laugh my ass off. [to Reese:] Good luck!”

Malcolm appears more moderate in the role of helper than traditional helpers. He is
no stereotype in this role, and does not hesitate to take advantage of the situation, here to
laugh. There are limits to these roles in Malcolm. A character will not be ideally patient and
helpful, and the hero will not necessarily come to listen to the advice in the end. By
extension, Gray says that the standard American domesticom tends to assert the “strength
of the nuclear family unit in overcoming all obstacles”. (57) The plots of standard American
domesticoms are made of children violating “some form of implicit or explicit interdiction”
and as there is nothing to be gained, they finally accept the advice of parental figures and
apologize.

In Malcolm in the Middle, at least in the first season, the family is barely all united
against a common obstacle. On the contrary, the members of the family are opposed to
each other, following two main patterns: the children versus authority, or the children
opposed to each other. Among other reasons it comes from the fact that the original idea
of Malcolm’s creator Linwood Boomer was to make the series focus on Malcolm’s
relationship with his mother only. Later, the other characters gained more importance in
the show, as Boomer admits:

The Hollywood Reporter: It's fortunate that you've had such a talented acting ensemble.
Boomer: That's very true. "Malcolm" was originally conceived to be about this boy named
Malcolm and his mom, but right off the bat, we discovered how funny Bryan (Cranston, who
plays the father, Hal) was, and so we had to change the dad character a lot. He was so
hilarious; it just changed the whole dynamic for the show. 5

And we can say too that in Malcolm in the Middle, no one is spared from facing a
conflict. The brothers rarely unite, but when they do so, this is for their own sake, at the
expense of anyone who would stand against their desires, and without many limits in the
way they would escape threats.

5 Richmond, Ray. “Dialogue: Linwood Boomer”, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 Feb. 2004.
47
 The last point I want to underline is the moral lessons that are shown in the rare
scenes of complicity between Lois and Malcolm. Few scenes contain these dialogues, but
they seem like a real traditional moral lesson. Of course, once again, the moral lesson is
not that traditional: they are not exactly the moral lesson any caring mother would give in
reality, and they are hilarious because of this. For example in the end of episode 4,
“Shame”, Lois and Malcolm have this dialogue about conscience, when Malcolm is torn
with what he did to a seven year-old child:

Malcolm: I feel like I have a monster inside of me.

Lois [after a while]: Oh, for crying out loud, Malcolm, that’s no monster. That’s your conscience.
[...]
Malcolm: But I can’t stop thinking about this!
[Lois presses on Malcolm’s sore]
Malcolm: Ow!
Lois: Were you thinking about it just then?
Malcolm: No!
Lois: See? I promise: you will feel bad about Kevin only as long as you’re supposed to. Now go
to sleep.

The way Lois manages to prove what she says is quite brutal, and definitely unusual but
the episode ends on this, as if it was the voice of “reason”, and the traditional final moral
lesson of the week appears to be rougher than usual.

This is a mix of some true moral lesson with the particular exaggeration of Malcolm in
the Middle, and it almost disappeared in the other seasons of Malcolm in the Middle, as
the characters grew older. But in this season, these scenes exist, and remind the viewer of
Marge Simpsons’s moral advice, always containing some amoral part, as noticed in the
New York Times: “[Lois] adds lovingly, ‘Any kid who makes fun of you is a creepy little
loser who'll end up working in a car wash.’ It's hard to imagine anyone other than Marge
Simpson getting away with such common sense comfort.” 6

Actually, it seems that Malcolm in the Middle aims at deconstructing the inner
morality and behavior of the typical American suburban family in sitcoms, in order to
destroy the mental image of the family value system. It does not mean that the new value
system is necessarily better than the old one that can be found in traditional sitcoms, but it
is less idyllic therefore less unreal. Gray talks about the “moralistic simplicity of the
domesticom”. (Gray, 53) It is not less unreal because the situations and behaviors are

6 James, Caryn. “TV Weekend; Thereʼs not a Brady in this Bunch”, The New York Times, 7 Jan. 2000.
48
realistic, but because it is not a blind happiness, as some kind of modern fairytale (Gray,
52).

For example, we have this question that Reese asks to Lois when she is so ill and
sleepy that the boys can ask her whatever they want and she answers in episode 15,
“Smunday” (8’55’’):

Reese: I was really adopted, wasn’t I?

Lois: No... You’re ours... And we love you...
Reese: Damn!

Reese’s question and reactions show the underlying disunity in the family, and its melting
with an underlying kindness, symbolized by Lois’ words. This is the same for Malcolm
saying “I want a better family” in the first episode. They both feel like they belong to
another family, or that the family in which they live is no good at all. Francis has the same
kind of reaction, for example in episode 5, “Malcolm Babysits” (13’17’’):

Malcolm: [...] Do you ever feel like you don’t really belong in the family?
Francis: Dude I’m in military school. I think that question’s been answered.

The fundamental dysfunction of this family is basically that its members do not wish they
belong to it. Humor definitely comes from the opposition of these two forces: the status of
children which forces them to stay in the family (and probably some affective attachment
after all), versus their will to have some independence, to do whatever they like, and to be
freed from any kind of authority.

The emotional structures and behavioral models of the domesticom family are
deconstructed, and necessarily a new model is established, taking into account some
selected dysfunctions, as factors to make the series different.

In episode 10, “Stock Car Races” (at 13’40’’), Lois is cleaning up the house while
Caroline Miller, Malcolm’s teacher comes to Malcolm’s home because Malcolm has
skipped school for the whole week. Lois then explains to her how boys behave, and when
seeing this scene, it really seems to be a folk wisdom against the theoretical social study:

Caroline: Anyway... This week we have been doing a lot of work on folk movement, and I... I
think that Malcolm may be ditching because he is afraid that... Well that he may not seem
graceful.
[Lois laughs, then suddenly becomes serious:]
Lois: Oh, you’re serious?
Caroline: Yes, I’m serious, I think he may have body issues.

49
 Lois [laughs again]: Look, honey, you’re probably very bright, but you’ve got a lot to learn about
boys. First off, they're able to think maybe three minutes into the future, and it's our job to make
sure that future comes crashing down on them within the time limit. Otherwise, they never learn
anything.

However exaggerated Lois’s “wisdom” may be, the scene presents very well two opposite
points of view. Caroline the teacher appears to have some sort of theoretical knowledge,
which according to Lois does not apply to reality. On the other hand, Lois has four boys,
and talks from experience more than thanks to specific studies. And finally Caroline says
later in the episode to Lois: “You know, I have learned more in two hours with you than I
have in six years of teaching.”

It can basically symbolize the position of inferiority of Malcolm’s family compared to

the rest of a given social class (the middle-class here) in terms of studies and recognized
knowledge, but also some superiority in terms of life experience, of the family onto the
“others”. This other issue makes Malcolm not only a sitcom about a family which is not
typical at all, but perhaps it also gets rid of the standards of the U.S. middle-class culture,
to present to the spectators a form of family also based on life more than on a traditional
image, or knowledge which is not accurate enough.

Now that we have looked at this unusual morality we find in Malcolm in the Middle,
we are going to see how the notions of fairness and unfairness are shown.

3.1.2. “Life is unfair”

The core of Malcolm’s life is his complaints against unfair events of his life, and
Malcolm in the Middle provides us with a family life where the parental figures are not
necessarily fair, but do not fit the “making mistakes, learning lessons” pattern. In Malcolm
in the Middle, things can be unfair without any re-establishment of any kind of fairness.
The series somehow creates humor using this distorted justice which is part of real life, but
the authors also use it to give to the series this fatalistic tone which influences the standard
circularity of sitcoms which Malcolm fits, in its own dysfunctional way. We can say that in
Malcolm in the Middle, moral and justice do not really influence the development of the
plots.

50
 For example, in episode 10, “Stock Car Races”, Lois cleans the house, and takes
things such as toys, cigarettes, false identity cards and everything she finds under or
inside any furniture of the house, and classifies them into four categories, according to
whom she thinks they belong. Her way of reacting to her children’s irresponsibility is not
typical: she seems to enjoy classifying the things she finds and preparing punishments.
This leads us to the specific role of one of the parental figures, Lois, and to the way she
exercises her authority. Her intentions are not fundamentally bad, but the way she tries to
succeed could be discussed on a moral level.

A great example of that is the plot of episode 11, “the Funeral”. Malcolm and Lois are
opposed, but there is no point in saying that one of the two contradictory points of view is
“better” than another, because both sides have good reasons. Lois wants the family to go
to her Aunt Helen’s funeral, and Malcolm wants to go to a concert with Julie. Even if the
concert seems less important, we learn that Lois did not like her aunt at all, and she even
says to Francis that she did not tell him about the funeral because she did not want to
bother him for “nothing”. On the contrary, Malcolm first tells Julie he will not go to the
concert, but then decides to lie to try to avoid being forced to go to the funeral. This is an
example of how Malcolm does not show a clear distinction between a “good” choice, and a
“bad” one, like in traditional domestic sitcoms. Often, the situations in Malcolm cannot be
placed in a “good” category or a “bad” one, because everything is put together into the
characters and situations.

The same problem appears when the application of authority nearly becomes an
obsession, as in episode 2, “The Red Dress”. Francis comments on his mother’s behavior:
“That is exactly what you should do, let it go! But you can’t ‘cause you can’t let anything
go!” The result is that the boys have no punishment, neither for burning Lois’ dress (it was
Hal who burnt it), nor for having destroyed their room (this was their fault). After having
tried all forms of punishment to make the boys talk, Lois finally comes to the other
extreme: let it all go. It symbolizes how Malcolm avoids showing perfect and easy
judgements, like traditional domestic sitcoms.

All these notions of justice, whether fair or not cannot exist without the character of
Lois. She seems to fit one of the dysfunctional roles we find in Adult children, written by
Linda D. Friel: the “Do-er”. This member of the family “provides most or all of the
maintenance functions in the family” (Friel 54), including almost all of the authority in the
house. Lois’ authority is based on not totally irrational to the audience, but, as always, it is

51
mixed up with exaggeration, and the result is a seemingly hilarious exaggeration of the
spectators’ behaviors, or situations in which we find ourselves. Malcolm avoids being too
simple in the messages it gives.

3.1.3. Rebellion

In response to this unusual and sometimes unfair “justice”, the series uses
abnormality. As for authority, rebellion appears to us as a mix of understandable reasons in
these situations, amplified by exaggeration, which gives again a funny caricatural picture
of some of our own behaviors. If the caricature of authority is crystallized in Lois, when we
talk about rebellion we can look at Hal. His character is not a rebel in the sense of
provocation (which would be Francis or Reese), but, because of his deviance from the
parental figure he is supposed to be according to family traditions; as the father in the
home, he symbolizes the continuity of Malcolm’s rebellion against the sitcom standards.
Just like Homer Simpson, Hal has some infant-like behaviors (Gray, 58). And just like
Homer, he still has to learn, he is like the children characters in sitcoms.

We can oppose then the conception of adulthood in Malcolm in the Middle to the
concept of childhood. Usually, in domestic sitcoms, the former represents authority and
reason, for the sake of the family, and the latter the deviant but learning character. Here
these two notions are brought together, and the definition of each notion is not so clear:
Malcolm is a child but a genius, he makes plans and anticipates events, and is able to
comment what happens on a social level and to learn by himself. On the contrary, Hal is
the paternal figure but he is often trying to escape Lois’ authority, just as in the introduction
of episode 16, “The Liquidator”:

Hal (rushing into the boys room): Who wants to make five bucks?
Malcolm: How?
Hal: I need someone to take the fall.
Lois (in another part of the house): Oh, my God!
Malcolm: What did you do?!
Hal: I can’t tell you, yes or no, no questions asked.
Lois (shouting): Oh my God!!
Malcolm: Make it ten!
Hal: Done!
Lois (shouting louder): Oh my God!!!
Hal (to Malcolm): You’re a good son. (To Lois:) I got him honey! I got him, don’t worry!

52
Not only is Hal not the responsible adult that the sitcom tradition requires, but he is even
selling his safety for ten dollars. It is not expected from a parental figure in a domestic
sitcom, but more than that, it is not expected at all, either selling someone’s guilt, or finding
a buyer. We do not know what the guilt is about, neither does Malcolm. The guilt is just
sold as a product, and everything is done on purpose. There is no real stability in the
characteristics of each of these characters: parents, children, women, blacks, are not
locked in the characteristics they usually have.

If traditional sitcoms were full of a “ ‘family values’ glow that permeates every
scene” (Gray, 62), Malcolm in the Middle is full of human drawbacks, humorously
exaggerated, as an distorting mirror that reflects scenes of our real life, distorting,
therefore funny but also zooming on these drawbacks, and still a mirror after all. Especially
here, the series is criticizing self-interest, by showing it explicitly and hilariously
exaggerated.

Interest is the keyword of conflicts in Malcolm in the Middle. And this quest to satisfy
each character’s interests results in a new pattern of roles in the series. In these conflicts
the distribution of the roles is totally new in Malcolm in the Middle, because none of the
characters is totally a hero, helper, donor or villain. Whatever their motivations may be, the
choices they make cannot be classified into good or bad choices, as it is easily done in
traditional domestic sitcoms, and the path that the characters follow in each episode is not
one of learning and growing through making mistakes, even if learning happens in a few
episodes. Therefore, these roles are obsolete.

The plots being centered on conflict, I would say that the new roles in Malcolm in the
Middle could be the “cop”, the robber, and very often the profiteer. The cop would be the
authority figure, mainly Lois, who tries to sets up things as she thinks it is the best, always
for the sake of her children, but almost always without listening to them. In response to
that, the robber would act as he wants to, knowing very well that the cop will not permit it,
and very often he will try to escape the cop and the punishment that goes with what he
does. Very often in Malcolm in the Middle, there is another role in the conflicts, the one
who will take advantage of the situation between the cop and the robber, just as passersby
who would pick up banknotes fallen on the ground during a bank robbery.

This third component is an important tool for humor, and also an important potential
comment on the other two roles. It is the case of Hal, for example, in the previous example
I mentioned. The profiteer is the one who will have no real shame to benefit from the
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conflict, and this is where the main critique rests: this is where the critique of self-interest
remains.

As Jonathan Gray quotes from Mittel: “the act of mixing two genres ‘creates a site of
heightened genre discourse’ (2004, 256), whereby ‘the conventions of both genres are
made manifest and explicit”. (Mittel, qtd. in Gray 55) Jonathan Gray adds a quote from
Ryan and Kellner, which says that with parody, “the signifiers themselves increasingly
become signifieds” (Ryan and Kellner, qtd. in Gray 55). By confronting the codes of
conduct with Malcolm’s and Malcolm in the Middle comments and making explicit the
reasons and mechanisms of these codes, the spectators’ codes of communication and
behavior become the signified of the elements of the series. Therefore, parody and
exaggeration make manifest the other text that comes into this parody: the spectators’ own
experience. With these two sides of the conflicts, the authoritarian side and the rebel side,
Malcolm in the Middle is able to give a whole caricature of the family model in American
homes, as well as its influences from the traditional media family image. Malcolm seems to
take a harsh delightful look not only at the sitcom models, but also at the real life patterns,
bringing the family dysfunctions to the foreground, through exaggeration. The series
therefore uses dysfunctions as tools to build a new model which we will analyze in the next
part.

3.2. Dysfunctions

In her Handbook of Relational Diagnosis and Dysfunctional Family Patterns,

Florence Whiteman Kaslow gives a list of diagnostic criteria for conduct disorders. (212)
Among those are:

• 1. Often bullies, threatens, or intimidates others

• 2. Often initiates physical fights

• 9. Has deliberately destroyed othersʼ property

• 11. Often lies to obtain goods or favors or to avoid obligations

These are the dysfunctions which suit the characters of Malcolm in the Middle. In this
book, these dysfunctions are followed or preceded by cruelty, the use of weapons, or
forcing someone into a sexual activity. These dysfunctions in Malcolm in the Middle are not
usual in a sitcom, even if they have already been encountered. The dysfunctions are not

54
inherent to the situation of the family, but they are inherent to the characters’ personality.
For example, the family situation is still nuclear, but as I said, the characters often wish
they belonged to another family. Nevertheless, dysfunctions in Malcolm in the Middle are
strangely useful. This is why this part will be divided into two subparts, the first about the
new kind of family set up in Malcolm in the Middle, and the second subpart about an
analysis of the character of Malcolm’s ability to make things right in front of dysfunctional
events and situations and about the usefulness of dysfunctions in Malcolm in the Middle.

3.2.1. A new kind of family

Malcolm in the Middle, cannot only criticize the American domestic sitcom, it has to
set up a new kind of model, even if the term “model” can imply an inappropriate recurrence
here. Malcolm in the Middle deconstructs something, but in order to do this, has to build
something else, at least for the process of parody and for the narrative, and we are going
to see what this new family contains. I think that the most important point is to find what
the foundations of the family are. In this dysfunctional stability, in a never ending conflict,
there must be some elements that maintain the family together.

Conflicts are often counterweighed but also amplified by another element deeply
present in Malcolm in the Middle, which is brotherhood. The brothers, with or without
Francis, often unite to fight against the parents or any potential threat, but in exchange
there is a sort of code of conduct, as Malcolm mentions in the last episode of the series:
“The Liquidator”:

“You crossed the line, Reese. [...] You sold me out to Mom. It would've been different if I had
done something to you, but that was totally cold-blooded. What you did to me was an act of war.
And believe me, I will get you back. You won't know where or when, but you're gonna pay.”

The brotherhood has its rules, and its punishments if someone breaks the rules, even if it
causes a “war”. Reese’s betrayal started from a small thing, but which has to do with
Malcolm’s image in public and his potential shame. The reasons for this conflict are maybe
understandable, as well as we understand the exaggeration in Malcolm’s words, with
“war”, “pay”, “cold-blooded”... Again, it makes clear the behavior that spectators are
familiar with, through exaggeration. The intertextuality makes real family life the target of
parody and exaggeration.

55
 On the other hand, the brotherhood has its limits, and it is quite common to find the
brothers accusing each other of something wrong in the house, when it is time to save
oneself at the others’ expense. For example, in the first episode, Lois tries to tell the family
that Malcolm is a genius, but the boys reacted before she could have explained anything:

Lois: It’s about Malcolm.

Malcolm [quickly]: I didn’t do it!
Reese [quickly]: He did it, I saw him!

Without even knowing what it was about, Reese accused Malcolm of something, lying in
telling he saw him. This is part of the game, and putting the guilt on someone else often
shifts it from ourselves. This is the mechanism of the scapegoat. The scapegoat is another
of the roles in families identified by Linda D. Friel (55). In her book, after having told a
basic story about an unhealthy family and another healthy family, the author says that “the
unhealthy denial of problems reverberated down through the system [...] ending in what is
called the scapegoating of little brother.” (52)

Of course, Malcolm in the Middle is a fiction, but the scapegoat still functions, and it
is part of the “normal” system of the family. This comes from the conflictual situation of the
members of the family, because it is an easy way to escape the guilt that the others put on
us. We can say that Malcolm in the Middle makes things clear about the use of
scapegoats by making it a recurrent element in the episodes of the first season. The self-
interest of the characters combined with the use of scapegoats give the perfect
commentary on this point in every real family with a little bit of dysfunction.

The manipulation of guilt, especially to make it shift from one character to another is
recurrent in Malcolm in the Middle. This is the plot of episode 4, “Shame”. It is also the
case in the episode 11, “the Funeral”, with this dialogue between Lois and Malcolm:

Lois: Well, Malcolm, I’m sorry that my mother’s sister, the woman who took care of me everyday
after school, had to die, and inconvenience your social life.
Malcolm [aside]: She does it on purpose, I could have made up a million different escape plans,
but now my brain is filled with Mom guilt.

Malcolm underlines that the guilt is not his own. This is an element for the authors to
humorously show that the family is not a completely destroyed family. It shows that the
dysfunctions which are in this family are somehow moderate, beyond the apparent
exaggeration and the seriousness of behavioral disorders. The parents still have an
influence on their children, and the children still have some sort of conscience. It fits the

56
humorous tone of the series: though the dysfunctions are important, the series remains
human, therefore we can easily identify ourselves with some aspects of the characters.

The impression that comes out of these elements is that in Malcolm, the dysfunctions
only find their limits when they are in conflict with conscience, whether this conscience
comes from the feeling of loyalty to the brotherhood against authority, or from a personal
moral judgement. This is an important element because in Malcolm in the Middle, it is
admitted that law and the question whether something is legal or not cannot be a limit. The
law, or any manufactured limits are replaced by conscience, even if this conscience is at
best partial.

The last point I want to mention concerning the new family characteristics or identity
is its relationship to consuming and owning. Buying and owning are very important
underlying elements of sitcom history, as Gray notices: “Everyone in the idealized sitcom
world is either a happy American consumer and one of “us”, or suspicious but (and
because they are) one of ‘them.’” (61) Gray says that the sitcom tends to show “what ‘a
normal family’ owns”. (61) Beyond the differences of Malcolm’s house compared to the
neighbors, we can look into the house.

Malcolm still has this “middle-class-ness” that Gray talks about. But money problems
are a real issue in the series, and we are often told that the family is living on the edge. It is
also an opportunity for other peripheral critiques, such as about social policy in U.S.
society, of course with a little exaggeration, like when Lois explains why she cannot get
unemployment benefits, in episode 9, “Lois vs. Evil” : “I only worked 38 hours a week, they
consider that part-time.” So Malcolm is also critical about money issues and if we put this
along with the nonconformity of Malcolm’s family, we see that they are again pariahs
compared to their perfect neighbors or friends, because of their relative poverty. And this is
underlined by the way Malcolm takes the others’ pity. When the school gives them food
after Julie heard Malcolm saying they were poor, Malcolm’s and Reese’s reactions are
clear: “Don’t you even care how humiliating this is?” and “We’ve done can drives. This is
just crap people find when they clean out the garage.”

Money and wealth are treated the same way as the traditional American sitcom
stereotypes I mentioned before: they are part of the “outside”, the others, but they are what
the characters wish they had, and they want to look wealthy. Malcolm in the Middle shows
the consequences on the characters of the mental creation of an image of a “good
situation” (having money) and on the other hand a “shameful situation” (not necessarily
57
being poor, but looking poor). The episode will end with Malcolm strangely trying to
straighten out everything with Julie by being rude to her (she was the one who had the
idea to give food to Malcolm), saying to her that he does not want anymore of her “stupid
pity.” The series then shows how these mental pre-constructions can modify reactions.

More precisely about consuming, a recurrent joke can be found in episode 12,
“Cheerleader”, with Dewey and television. Dewey watches the television, and during an
advertisement, he sees and hears a doll talking to him directly, saying that if he owns it,
many things in his life will change, and then that he will die if his parents do not buy it. This
time the criticism is quite clear: advertisements, and generally the notion of consuming are
explicitly parodied and shown to the spectators. The characters in Malcolm are not
consuming to show the norm to the spectators, they are consuming while being presented
as victims of this consuming process, contrary to the tradition American domestic sitcom.

Sitcom and television standards are not the only standards to be questioned, and
which mechanisms are explicitely shown in Malcolm in the Middle. Social disorders are
foregrounded in the series, and their cause in Malcolm in the Middle is mainly the mental
construction of prejudices, and of mental categories. By showing explicitly its characters
with their dysfunctions, Malcolm in the Middle also shows where these imperfections come
from. The new kind of family resulting from this is a family in which every character has his
or her own dysfunctions. These dysfunctions are not strictly useless or negative. In this
last subpart I want to point out the usefulness of dysfunctionality.

3.2.2. Dysfunctions versus dysfunctionality

As a sitcom, the plot of every episode of Malcolm in the Middle is composed of a

problem and a solution. Being in the middle of the series and the family, Malcolm is often a
medium that will help find and apply the solution. But in Malcolm in the Middle the solution
is often as dysfunctional as the problem. Most of the time it is Malcolm who finds the
answers to the problems of the plot, and there are many examples of Malcolm trying to
make things right, through a disordered conduct. And as the circularity of sitcoms requires,
it works, and everything is back to “normal”. The circularity of sitcoms is used to make the
family, especially the boys face a new dysfunction of their family, or of people outside, in
every episode.

58
 Here is a great example from episode 15’ “Smunday”. Lois is mad at Francis partly
because of Malcolm, Reese and Dewey, and they find an solution to “save Francis”. The
least we can say is that it is an unusual solution.

Malcolm: Oh my God! You guys, we can save Francis!

Reese: What?
Malcolm: Think about it: every time Mom gets mad, she forgets about everything else in the
world except for the thing she’s mad at! That focus is the key to her power.
Reese: So?
Malcolm: So, Mom won’t care so much about sending Francis to a work farm if she’s busy being
mad at someone else, like at us.
Reese: We can do that
Dewey: Yeah!
Malcolm: You don’t understand, we’re going to have to get in real trouble. More trouble than
we’ve ever been in, in our entire life. And we can’t make it look like we’re doing it on purpose. I
just want you to know what you guys are in for.
Reese: We owe it to him.

There are many dysfunctions here, the first dysfunctions being Francis’s problems in the
episode, and probably Lois’ reaction, who wants to send him from military school to a work
farm. But what Malcolm proposes is almost as irrational as Francis who put a backhoe in a
swimming pool in the same episode. It illustrates too the brotherhood feeling that pushes
the brothers to take the guilt on themselves, in order to “save Francis”. The boys plan to
act a little dysfunctionally, through the vandalism of their parents’ possessions, to be
punished willingly: in the next scene, they put the things their parents like together on the
roof in order to make them crash down on the alley. Then Reese comes with paint:

Malcolm: Paint?
Reese: Yeah. That way, we not only destroy the stuff, we take out the driveway, splash on the
house, and with any luck, get some collateral damage to the neighbors. What a waste. For any
other reason, this would’ve been the funnest thing ever.

During this scene, the music we hear is composed of snare drums, like military
music. This and the use of the words “collateral damage” gives the impression of a sort of
mission which is prepared here. Reese notes that doing it on purpose somehow wastes
the fun of it, as if it was wasted as soon as we give it a goal. Therefore we can suppose
that Malcolm in the Middle makes the difference between some dysfunctional behaviors,
which are goalless, except for fun purposes, and the same dysfunctional behaviors but
which are done for a given purpose, therefore not being fun.

59
 Linda D. Friel talks about the “inability to play, have fun, and be spontaneous” as one
of the potential characteristics of dysfunctional families. (74, 75) But in Malcolm in the
Middle fun is entirely part of the conduct disorders and dysfunctions. The dysfunctional
characteristic of a behavior is placed at another level. This scene shows that the children
are not innocent in what they are doing. Therefore, the dysfunctions are not inherent to the
characters, and, even if their behaviors do not fit the norms, the problem is not a problem
of conduct disorder, but a matter of giving an appropriate response to the situations. This
is why the boys act like this: perhaps it is an appropriate response, a dysfunctional
response, to a dysfunctional problem.

Beyond the plots of the various episodes Malcolm in the Middle shows that the
misbehavior can be a matter of choice. And it humorously shows how conduct disorders,
or dysfunctions in a family can help reach an equilibrium against other dysfunctions. Of
course, it is again hidden behind Malcolm typical exaggeration. The scene I took as an
example is followed by the last scene of the episode: Malcolm, Reese and Dewey are on
the roof of their house, at night, hours after what they have done.

Malcolm [to the camera]: Well, I guess it’s mission accomplished, I don’t think Mom even
remembers she has a son named Francis.
Lois (down on the ground): Boys? Just come down.
Reese: We’re not coming down until you tell us what you’re gonna do.
Lois: Not going to tell you what I’m gonna do until you come down.
Malcolm: What don’t you just tell us?
Lois: Why don’t you just come down?
Malcolm: Tell us!
Lois: Come down.
Reese: Just tell us.
Lois: Come down.
Malcolm: But if you tell us, we’ll come down.
[end of the episode]

Their plan worked, and it even had an influence on Lois’ attitude, she starts to enter the
boys’ game, playing by their own rules, with the childish verbal argument in the end, with
“Come down” versus “Tell us”.

Lois seemed significantly different from the boys and Hal, who are all irresponsible.
In this dialogue, she comes to act just like the them. The episode humorously ends on a
scene where no compromise is reached, and therefore an unexpected stability within
these dysfunctions is met. This is the symbol that nothing is going to change, but the funny

60
tone of the scene and of the music suggests that there is no worry to have after all. This is
just the way things are in Malcolm in the Middle.

***

Malcolm suggests that everyone has dysfunctions, but no stereotypes can be made,
because they can all shift from some dysfunctions to others. Therefore, we can think that it
suggests too that there is no “good” family, and no entirely good figure in sitcom families.
Then, Malcolm in the Middle gives a fresh new look at the U.S. codes and models, by
showing a less perfect view on the family, and by using dysfunctions as well as standard
moral lessons to make things right, beyond the exaggeration that shows how dysfunctional
these solutions are. Malcolm also gives a new image of the family in sitcoms, following
The Simpsons, with a kind of family that keeps few of the standards, breaks all the others,
but remains traditional on some points, like the “nuclear” characteristic of this family.

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 Conclusion

There are many elements in Malcolm in the Middle that allow the writers to comment
on several elements of the American culture. As a domesticom, Malcolm comments on the
standards of the American family sitcom. Suburban life and family relationships in
traditional sitcoms are the main targets of the critique. To establish these critiques,
Malcolm in the Middle uses a confrontation between two kinds of family, the stereotyped
one, and the “other”, the “abnormal” one. The first kind of family has many features that we
find in traditional sitcom stereotypes. And their stereotyping is exaggerated to allow the
audience to see how this kind of family conforms the domestic sitcom norms. This may be
the kind of family with the noblest moral values, but this kind of family sitcom is simplistic,
for example in the way it provides solutions to problems. On the other hand, the second
type of family, has many drawbacks which are not hidden to the spectators, but it still has
some great qualities, for example, the family members are loving after all, and still have a
morality deep inside. These two families meet in the suburb, and of course, they are too
different to coexist peacefully. The other families reject Malcolm’s family, and it shows how
the qualities of these families are superficial, because finally, they are not tolerant, loving,
etc. On the contrary, Malcolm’s family with all its apparent drawbacks has deep qualities
hidden under dysfunctions and exaggerations.

In this confrontation between these two kinds of family, the focus is set on Malcolm,
as he is “in the middle” of the show, and the audience can somehow identify with him. This
is made easier by the use of asides, because we can share Malcolm’s point of view. In
addition, Malcolm’s family’s abnormality bring them out of the traditional family
stereotypes, with which the audience would not necessarily identify, because of their
perfectness. Malcolm’s family then appears realistic, even with its drawbacks, and despite
exaggerations, and families of the traditional sitcom genre, are not social types anymore
(the ones who belong to the audience’s society), but stereotypes, because they are out of
our world.

Just as The Simpsons, Malcolm breaks some of the standards, because it clarifies
the mechanisms of the standard sitcom genre, through a parody of some of its
characteristics. Then it establishes a new kind of family, a dysfunctional family which still
has a certain degree of stability (just as traditional sitcoms, the show resets itself for each
episode). This stability is often challenged by dysfunctions, but it is also re-established by

62
dysfunctions too. The stability is found within the equilibrium between two or more forces
which are in conflict, and the center of these conflicts is not morality, justice, or what is
good or bad, but it is the character’s interests which created the conflicts. The series is
more realistic in the sense that contrary to traditional sitcoms, it presents the drawbacks of
the family and its members, despite the fact that there are many exaggerations which
create humor.

Beyond the criticism of traditional domesticoms, Malcolm also parodies stereotyped

behaviors. The audience is able to identify with the main characters on some aspects, then
the sitcom uses exaggerations of these stereotyped behaviors to bring these behaviors to
the foreground, and to enable the audience to mock them. Malcolm resembles The
Simpsons because of these critiques, but Malcolm manages to keep a cartoonish aspect,
as older series such as Parker Lewis, without destroying the realistic aspect of the series.
Malcolm has its own identity. It criticizes stereotypes, by taking the audience out of the
traditional “society” we are usually given in the media, with its traditional pattern of
stereotypes and social types, and it brings the audience to another “society”, then making
us look at stereotypes and social types another way.

The potential problem of Malcolm as well as any other series is the risk of creating a
new pattern of stereotypes and social types which would be create a new “tradition” of the
sitcom genre, which would have drawbacks too, just as what we call traditional sitcoms
now.

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