Lucy I'm Home

Breann Adams
Apr 11, 2017
3 min read

I have seen every single episode of I Love Lucy more than once. As one of my all-time favorite TV shows, it never fails to make me laugh. Lucy is a red-headed ball of energy that is constantly getting into some mischief. She wants to go into show business like her husband, but because she is a woman and finds many obstacles in her way. A psychoanalytic and sociological lens can be used to analyze the great Lucy Ricardo.

You are probably thinking that psychoanalytic sounds a lot like a “Freud thing”. Yes, I am taking this back to Freud, but hang in there! I promise I will make this interesting. According to Freud, we all have defense mechanisms and these mechanisms are, “techniques the ego employs to control instincts and ward off anxieties” (Berger, 2014). With Lucy, we can see a few of these defense mechanisms. The first would be denial or disavowal. This can be seen on multiple occasions and one in particular is when Ricky tells Lucy that she can’t be in show business because she is not able to act. She does not believe him and actually goes to the club where he works. She is determined to prove to him that she can act and that she is really good at it. The next line of defense she uses is identification. She has a desire to become like the great showgirls that surround Ricky by imitating their behavior when they are acting. The final defense is rationalization. Poor Lucy! I would have to say this is the most used line of defense that she has. Every time Ricky says no, she tries to prove him wrong. This leads to her getting caught and then rationalizing why she was trying to prove him wrong (Berger, 2014).

Moving into the sociological aspect, one could say that all of these defense mechanisms she uses cause her to behave in a way that breaks all social norms. The word for this is anomie. Because of some of the drastic, crazy, and downright hysterical things Lucy does in order to prove to Ricky that she can be more than just some housewife, she can be said to have no norms. At least, she does not hold to the same societal norms that Ricky or most of the general public hold to. Ricky is adamant that she must remain a housewife, and this causes her to feel a sense of alienation. She sees herself as being separated from the other women that she is surrounded by, except for her good friend Ethel.

This TV series can be seen as mass media because it is produced for the people in society. So you might be thinking, “what’s the take away?”, and what is the “she did what?” point. Here is a female character in the 1950s (IMDb, 1951). She is young and married to an actor/musician who is from Cuba. She wants to be in show business just like her husband, but that is a struggle for her. According to her husband, Ricky, a woman’s place should be in the home. Naturally, she doesn’t take this “order” from her husband and that is what gets her into trouble. Due to the society and the social norms of that day in age, she found it hard to break out of the mold that she was put into for being a female.

*All images were taken from Google Images

*All information about the show was from personal knowledge but can be found in the TV series cited below.

- Berger, A, A. (2014). Media analysis techniques. SAGE Publications, no. 5.

- Arnaz, D. (Executive Producer). Oppenheimer, J. (Producer). (1951-1957). I Love Lucy [Television Series]. Desilu Studios Los Angeles.: CBS Television Distribution.

- Information courtesy of The Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com). Used with permission.