In today's society there are still so many stereotypical views towards men and women within their occupations, their roles as a family member, and their roles just as their gender. These stereotypes are highly portrayed by television shows in the past and still are today. The Little House on The Prairie shows how women were the ones without an occupation and men were the ones to go out and provide for the family financially. The family had more than one child which was very common back in that time period. The mother would always be the one to do all of the housework, take care of the children, and even the children did work at home also. Now, in today's society we still have shows stereotypical like this, although the shows are more realistically within our time period. One show which I think is a good example of this is Modern Family. This show has in a way gone against what we usually see on television with gay couples, which I think is great. The couple in this show may be two guys but they still each portray themselves as more feminine or more masculine. The more masculine guy of the two goes to work and has a good occupation. His partner is more feminine and stays home, does the laundry, makes dinner; he does everything a woman would typically do in a household. I found an article very alarming on the gay couple in the show; People are still hateful towards gay couples. If you read the article you might be able to understand the argument they are making but some of what they say shocked me. http://www.mamapop.com/2011/10/why-modern-familys-gay-couple-cameron-and-mitchell-are-a-bad-influence-on-families.html. I chose to talk about this show because there is so much to talk about within it dealing with gender roles, race, religion, and class. Going off on how television shows are usually portrayed as the "american dream", this show proves that in good detail. During the reading, within the chapter "Family Formation and the Economy-The Television View" they talked about how the tv shows do have female and male expectations shown through their dialog. The children in TV shows express their parents' need for change. Throughout these tv shows you can see what the society expects us to be like and how they expect us to react to certain things.
http://www.mamapop.com/2011/10/why-modern-familys-gay-couple-cameron-and-mitchell-are-a-bad-influence-on-families.html
In television there are many stereotypes that are just repeated in each show. The woman normally stays at home and the man goes out and earns money. In a show that I watch called Suits, I think that one of the characters, Jessica, doesn't fit the normal stereotype that is pushed on women in TV. She is the head of a law firm, has a powerful position and is respected by the men that she is surrounded by everyday. Jessica is also smart, and has common sense which a lot of female characters seem to lack on TV.
ReplyDelete