Parks And Recreation
Big Idea Question: How does the time and place add or contribute to cultural aspects of the story?
The setting of the show is in the fiction city of Pawnee, Indiana. This is where all the action occurs, but most of the scenes are at the government offices and in Ann’s backyard where the hole is. The action occurs at different times during the day and this episode spans across a couple days. Not much time has passed between the scenes different, maybe a couple of hours, never more than a day. The setting is important because if it were set anywhere else in the United States then it would not have the Midwest feel to it. Pawnee has a unique history, which can be seen in the scene when Leslie is showing Ann around the government building. They pass a mural on the wall and the scene description reads “ Pan slowly over a mural painting in the elevator area, of a hard-working, tough as nails prairie woman… We see the woman is holding an ax… We pan down and see the woman is actually swinging her ax at the head of a Native American woman… A minimum wage poster is covering up what must be a slaughter scene” (3.11.12-19). The people of Pawnee are also over the top, which can be seen in the Public Forum when they yell at Leslie for things that are out of her control. If it were set in another place and time, the Leslie would probably still have her dedication to her work and the people living in her community. Setting the show in a fictional city is beneficial for the show because it is able to make the people in the city ridiculous without offend people.
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The stage directions do describe particular settings and props in detail. Before each scene there is a description of how the scene will look and the camera angle. For example, in one the opening scenes we see Leslie’s office and the directions say,
“In her office, she is framed by an American flag, and a flag of the state of Indiana. A nameplate on the desk reads “Leslie Knope.” She is wearing a beige pantsuit… Camera widens to see that her office is small and cramped, and not all that impressive… we widen further to see that there is another desk in her room, with a piece of another guy (TOM) typing at something” (1.2.1-7).
This specific scene is significant because it establishes how Leslie is as a character and her pride of her job and state with her picture next to the two flags. Then when it widens to show how her office is small and cramped with someone else, this highlights how Pawnee is a city with low operating costs and a large labor pool. It also shows Leslie’s optimism because she is so happy to be there even though the conditions are not ideal. The stage direction seems to be more for a director staging a production because the viewers of this show would visually see this scene and the director needed it to be written out with the different angles they will use.
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“Pilot.” Parks and Recreation. NBC. Los Angeles. 09 Apr. 2009. Telvision.
The protagonist of Parks and Recreation is Leslie Knope. Leslie works for the department of Parks and Recreation in the fictional city of Pawnee, Indiana. Her distinctive traits are she is self-discipline, ambitious, caring, optimistic, and goodhearted. She strongly believes in her values and stance on various political issues. A specific scene that demonstrates Leslie’s character is when Ann comes to a public forum to complain about a hole in her background and wants to get it filled in and Leslie promises her she will help and says “Its more than a promise. A pinky promise. I pinky promise all of you, right now, that I will help. And not only will we fill in that pit, but we will put a beautiful new park on that land” (1.20.45-50). This shows her dedication to her work and to the citizens of Pawnee. Conflict for Leslie is she promises to do things for the people, but she makes these promises before she has a plan and has gotten the permission she needs by the government. The other main characters in the show are Ron Swanson (her boss), Tom (her co-work), Ann (friend), April (co-worker), Mark (co-worker), and Andy (Ann’s boyfriend). The minor characters in the show are the people of Pawnee that are shown in the public forum. This is similar to another TV show, Scandal that has another female lead. Both are shows about women working for the government and take great pride in the work they accomplish, however Scandal is more serious and a drama and Parks and Recreation is a comedy satire. Parks and Recreation is set in the Midwest during the late 2000s, while Scandal is set in Washington D.C and is currently on TV.
After reading the first few pages of the script, a potential conflict that may occur would have to do with the hole in Ann’s backyard. Leslie promises to fill it in and create a new park on top of the hole. Leslie promised this on the spot and did not talk to anyone before doing so. To make it worst she made this promise in front of the whole Public Forum, which means a lot of people witnessed this. I expect for there to be a huge problem with these in government permits have to be in place in order to beginning construction on a property. The episodes are divided into different scenes and those scenes are divided into acts. In the pilot there are three acts with numerous scene within each of these acts. The scene change is normally when the characters are moving around from different locations. All the scenes are in chronological order. Most of the scenes are interviews with the characters since it is a documentary style show. The division of the scenes does not correspond with the five stages of plot development.