Liz+Lemon

= Liz Lemon (Daniel Gaewski)   =

= Biography = Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey, is a lead character on the popular comedy 30 Rock, which follows the production of a sketch comedy show entitled TGS with Tracy Jordan. Liz Lemon is the lead producer of the show and must regularly deal with managing her crew of often crazy crew of actors and writers, as well as reporting to her boss Jack Donaghy. Jack, upon meeting Liz, describes her as a " New York third-wave feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, overscheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says 'healthy body image' on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for...a week." (from wikipedia). Liz goes through several failed relationships and loves to eat unhealthy foods, such as ham (in one episode she is forced to begin eating healthier and cracks from the pressure after only one day.)

Trait and Skill Approach
We can analyze Liz Lemon's personality by looking at each of the Big Five Factors. The Big Five is a model of personality that proposes that every person can be analyzed along five spectrums of personality, openness to experience, conscientiousness of agreeableness with other people, extraversion in behaviors, and neurtoicism.

Openness
Openness includes measures of imagination, wit, and originality and Liz Lemon shines in all three of these things, although she appenently has few social skills (Jack at one point refers to her a socially retarded). As a former actress and as the lead writer for TGS, Liz definitely has a large creative imagination. media type="file" key="Creativity Bird (trim clip).mov" width="300" height="300" As head writer for TGS. In many episodes she seems to be dealing with some strange and novel occurrence happening on her set, or in her personal life, such as deciding to performing improvisational comedy to distract a room full of Jack's peers from his embarrassing personal motivational speech being broadcast over the speaker system.

Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is defined as dependability, cautiousness, organization, and responsibility. It's hard to decide where Liz fall on this measurement of personality. On one hand, she is responsible for making sure her show goes on every week, and that requires a huge amount of responsibility to manage all of the writers, to deal with the actors, and to make sure the whole production goes smoothly, so in this regard she can be seen as very conscientious. However she is often disorderly (her office is always a mess of papers and assorted items), and impulsive (in the first episode, after arguing with the man behind her in line at a hot dog stand, Liz decides to buy all of the hot dogs so and gives to random people on her way to work.) She doesn't care much about what she eats, and

Extraversion
Extraversion refers to a person's enthusiasm, dominance, and sociability. When working with the writers on her set, we can see Liz is highly extraverted. She often tells the writers what to do (usually calling them nerds or saying "listen up dummies..") and she isn't shy about saying what's on her mind. Liz wanted to become an actress when she was younger and she actually did get a few acting jobs (one of which was for a sex chat service). She's usually easily excitable and ready to jump into new situations as they arise.

Agreeableness
Agreeableness measures friendliness, cooperation, and warmth. Liz is often agreeable, such as when talking with her best friend Jenna, who also acts on TGS. However at other times she can become very irritated, such as when she has to tell Tracy he can't go to the moon because he has work. Most of her irritability can be attributed to job stresses.

Neuroticism
Neuroticism measures a person's measurements of nervousness, tension, and anxiety. Liz is at times a highly neurotic character; she often gets anxious when talking with Jack. She is not emotionally stable; in one episode, she decides on a whim to buy a wedding dress because she wants to have it for when she gets married (she ends up using it mostly as a giant expensive napkin)

Neo-Analytic and Ego Approach
This approach examines many aspects of a person's identity, from a variety of perspectives put forth over the years by prominent psychologists. We can examine Liz from several of these perspectives.

Erik Erikson's Stage theory looks at the formation of people's identities as a lifelong process. His theory outlines various stages of identity formation that occur as life develops. At each stage an ego crises must be resolved in order for optimal growth to occur. Examining Liz Lemon, we may speculate that she is still attempting to resolve the Intimacy vs Isolation stage of identity development. She is very close with her friend Jenna, but she also seems to have trouble finding a significant other to stay with for any extended period of time.

Another way of approaching Liz Lemon's personality from this perspective is looking from Adler's superiority complex, where people develop an exaggerated arrogance. In one episode, Liz becomes the host of a show on NBC starts to act like on of her actors normally would (feeling entitled, better than everyone else, locking herself in her room and refusing to come out). This is a somewhat abnormal event, since it only occurs for one episode, but it shows that Liz is not immune to the effects that becoming famous can bring.

We might approach Liz Lemon from the perspective of the greek notion of four temperaments. The four temperaments are sanguine (cheerful), melancholic (brooding), choleric (irritable), and melancholic (lethargic). Liz would probably best fit into the sanguine description of temperament, because even though she is often irritable, she does have a cheerful energy to her (Her dream was to be an actress). Jung also posited that people may be categorized into sensors and intuits, and Liz would certainly be an intuit, living in her own head half of the time.

Discussion
== It's clear that Liz Lemon is a diverse and interesting personality to look at. Since she is regularly involved in unorthodox activities, looking through each of the big five perspectives provides us with a lot of variety. She is at times extremely extraverted and open, usually neurotic. Her openness to experience is a necessity to her career, and to working with all of the insane actors and crew member who are either busy locking themselves away or going on strike (or urinating in tea jars.. or trying to win an emmy, oscar, grammy, and tony all at once.. etc.). There are a variety of neo-analytic perspectives that describe her. However, all this adds up to describe Liz as she really is: diverse, eccentric, and unique. There are few personalities that can be so many personalities, and this is all attributed to the real-life acting skills of actress Tina Fey, who not only portrays Liz Lemon, but also writes and produced 30 Rock. This kind of meta-analysis (a comedy show about making a comedy show) is why 30 Rock is such a brilliant and entertaining show, and the character of Liz Lemon is the keystone that holds it all together, in a crazy way. ==