The girls at the auditions from I Love Lucy, season one, episode three (1951) highlight the characteristics of Lucy by emphasizing with the audience and exhibiting their contrasting characteristics with her. First of all, this episode is about the process of how Lucy loses twelve pounds in order to be in Ricky’s show (Oppenheimer et al., 1951). More specifically, the show opens when Lucy is with her family and gets a call saying Ricky needs to find another girl for his show (Oppenheimer et al., 1951, 4:25). Lucy wants to dance with him but needs to lose twelve pounds by tomorrow to fit into the new costume (Oppenheimer et al., 1951, 5:36). However, she goes to audition on the next morning and dances with other girls who came for the audition (Oppenheimer et al., 1951, 8:56). Then, she wears the new costume but did not fit her, so she started to lose weight in one day (Oppenheimer et al., 1951, 11:00). She runs, jumps rope, restricts her meal, and stays in the human pressure cooker (Oppenheimer et al., 1951, 11:34-18:30). Luckily, Lucy lose her weight and shows up in Ricky’s show, but she faints at the end of the episode, and the girl who was supposed to dance with Ricky was locked in the storage (Oppenheimer et al., 1951, 22:43). The audition girls appears when Lucy comes for Ricky’s dance partner (Oppenheimer et al., 1951, 7:22). They are considered ensemble casts, which is one of the types of minor character that Mathijs (2011) describes, because the definition is “ensemble casts, notions of the audience, or of a strongly implied viewer, inform the acting in profound ways” (p. 90). Since the audience knows that Ricky’s dance partner should be skinny because of the costume, the viewers have an image in mind of the girl. The ensemble girls are important because they act in a way that viewers expect to “strive to highlight not the authentic division of labor but the pirates’ perceived collectivity” (Mathijs, 2011, p. 90), in order words, their role is to emphasize with the audience. Empathy leads to highlighting the characteristic of Lucy because she is the opposite of what the audience thinks about Ricky’s dance partner model. In addition, the outfit of the girls shows the contrast with Lucy. More specifically, they are showing their skin and wearing heels, whereas Lucy is wearing a long sleeve and pants with pumps (Oppenheimer et al., 1951, 7:29). This represents that Lucy is different from other girls, needs to work on her appearance, and is not a stereotypical lady by drawing their characteristic contrastively. Therefore, the girls from the audition are minor characters because they are categorized as ensemble characters, which represents the audience’s image, and they make characteristics of Lucy stand out in the film by contrasting their outfits.
References
Oppenheimer, J. (Writer), Davis, M. (Writer), Carroll, B. (Writer), & Daniels, M. (Director). (1951, October 29). The Diet (Season 1, Episode 3) [TV series episode]. I Love Lucy. Desilu Production.
Mathijs, E. (2011). Screen. Oxford Academic, 52(1), 89-96, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjq063
Provide Feedback