My Friends Begged Me At The New Comedy Central Show

Images of the “housewives” are excessively pictured on the internet. Bravotv.com has pages full of group photographs of the women in their exotic southern outfits, sparking smiles and diva personas. Pictured on the first page is a photograph from Bravotv.com, featuring the cast of The Housewives of Atlanta. It is intriguing to note that this portrait has been cropped together as one unit. In reality, however, each woman is a picture in its self that the producers of the show pushed together to appear as one photograph. Each woman is given certain characteristics to make them, in turn, an actual character on a show. Characters are needed so that the viewer’s cans stereotype each woman, thus providing a cast of characters. This provides an array of misconceptions of who these women

The representation of the LGBT community in the film industry has long been a topic of much debate. In her article, “It Ain’t Easy Being Bisexual on TV,” Amy Zimmerman addresses this topic with specific interest on bisexual representation. By appealing to the logic of her audience, using an informal tone, and referring to relatable content, Zimmerman constructs an argument which persuades readers of The Daily Beast that the film industry is unfairly and inaccurately representing bisexuals. However, her argument holds little influence over those who are not movie fans or The Daily Beast readers.

The show reinforces the classical gender roles that female stereotypes continue to thrive in the media we consume every day. Women in this show is objectified and mostly portrayed as just beautiful with little education. (Gender Stereotypes in Mass media, 2014).

On the same cable networks that act as the home for gay and lesbian television series, America finds its new woman for the new millenium: she’s smart, independent, gainfully employed, sexually confident, and, usually, she’s single. Television finally has room for a woman to fly on her own, without her minivan, Cub Scout den-mother meetings, or workaholic husband to feed and clean up after. The prime example for TV’s new “wonder woman,” is found in the four women of HBO’s Emmy Award winning series, “Sex & The City.” These

The second pattern that the show demonstrates is the dominance of heterosexuality and heterosextual privilege. All the character in the show are in a heterosexual relationship which are reflected in the nature of the space that they occupy. In the workplace and within the household the representation of heteronormative culture dominates. There is no representation of homonormative spaces or other sexual minorities in the show. The third pattern that the show demonstrates is gender performance. West and Zimmerman refer to gender performance as “doing gender” which will be later discussed in the next section. Due to the strong heteronormative nature of the show, the pattern of explicit gender performances are portrayed through clothing, behaviors, and interactions.These patterns are all related to specific locations in which each of the genders occupies. It is through this segregation of genders that the show perpetuates societal norms that support heteronormative culture and result in gender inequalities.

Similar to Sontag’s “Notes On Camp”, which “proposes a comic vision of the world” (Sontag 288), Ryan Murphy’s “Scream Queens” utilizes comedy to portray issues prevalent in society today. By “dethroning the serious” (Sontag 288) and being “playful” (Sontag 288) and “anti-serious” (Sontag 288), “Scream Queens” effectively accomplishes this feat. The TV series “Scream Queens”, deals with numerous social issues in society such as homosexuality, racism and eating disorders. However, through its comedy and lack of seriousness, this series is able to provide a sense of bluntness and harsh reality of these issues. By adopting this unique approach, this TV series’ use of comedy works, as it depicts these social issues in its true light, which many believe are non-existent, subsequently leading to society’s ability to tackle these issues directly and ‘head on’.

On September 20, 1984 a show aired that changed the way we view gender roles on television. Television still perpetuates traditional gender stereotypes and in reflecting them TV reinforces them by presenting them as the norm (Chandler, 1). The Cosby Show, challenged the typical gender stereotyping of television, daring to go against the dominant social values of its time period. In its challenge of the dominant social view, the show redefined the portrayal of male and female roles in television. It redefined the gender role in the work place, in social expectations, and in household responsibilities. The Cosby Show supported Freidan in her view of “castigating the phony happy housewife heroine of the

blossoms in a bowl, Sex and the City is all about severing established connections to

In the comic series, Modern Family, the show depicts the lives of three families including interracial, homosexual and heterosexual families who all come together at the end of the day because of their love for one another despite their differences. Although the families are quite contrary views on various topics, the show successfully intertwines their lives allowing viewers to obtain a new perspective of family life from the show character’s point of view. In Jennifer Posner's excerpt, “Ghetto Bitches, China Dolls and Cha Cha Divas,” Posner explores how the media in particular the reality TV show, America’s Next Top Model, perpetuates stereotypes that are dangerous to well being of society. However, Posner’s reasoning fails to take into account the positive change

The “true” woman requires purity, domesticity, submission, and divinity while being beautiful, smart, funny, and wealthy. Though a character may embrace one or more of these qualities, it’s unrealistic for them to encompass all. Representation of the body of film is presented differently throughout Roseanne, Orange is the New Black, and American Beauty. One character throughout these films exist in ways that defy the standard presentation of the ideal woman or support it and it’s used for perversion. With Roseanne, the celebrity and character, she doesn’t fit the feminine sanction by being rowdy and too fat, which is considered excessive by the public eye.

The first research entitled “The representation of gender roles in the media - An analysis of gender discourse in Sex and the City movies ” was constructed by Therese Ottosson and Xin Cheng in 2012.

My chosen scene is from a popular T.V. show called How I Met Your Mother. This show goes with gender stereotypes and goes against gender stereotypes. The show is about a group of friends, Lily and Marshall being an engaged/married couple, Barney the single “player”, Robin a Canadian tomboy, and Ted the main character, who is a hopeless romantic trying to find true love in New York City. Ted, over the past couple episodes meets a girl and she becomes his girlfriend. In the meantime, he’s spending all of his time with her, Lily and Marshall have a romantic weekend planned leaving Barney and Robin to hang out together, they decide to have a “Bro” date. Robin and Barney do typical guy things, such as; smoking cigars, playing laser tag, and

Throughout Modern Family’s episode “Election Day” directed by Bryan Cranston, it exemplifies how gender roles restrict what people consider proper or appropriate socially and mentally. In this show, it defies what people believe and helps change the social dynamic of gender roles today while a select few still remain sexist with regard to what they do in life. The show brings opposition by part of the community, like in any town or city. It has led to a better culture, and shows the discrimination women have received when defying gender roles with sexism simultaneously existing in the TV show. One way ¨Election Day” shows how gender roles have been defied is through the usage of certain words adding to the common idea, gender roles in society.

Orange Is the New Black debuted in early 2013 and has since been a highly favoured television title on the online streaming service, Netflix. Orange Is the New Black features a mainly female cast, creating a female centred comedy drama, within the cast there is a large amount of diversity, causing many gender stereotypes and genre conventions to be broken. Orange Is the New Black has characters that represent many different spectrums of sexual orientations and identities, creating a change in gender expectations. This essay will focus on episode thirteen of season one, where characters Sophia Burset and Big Boo have a large influence over the audience. These characters are unique as they break the gender expectations for LGBT and African American women that have controlled similar characters for many years.

This blurring of gender norms, which would normally be seen as taboo is actually celebrated and fully embraced in the context of the show. This is similar to what Sex and the City does in the creation of Samantha Jones, one of the main characters of the show. Throughout the show Sam is seen as the wildest and most sexually liberated character. She is a highly successful, confident businesswoman who has “sex like a man”. Samantha defies popular gender norms by unapologetically speaking her mind and truly having sex with no strings attached in a world in which women are expected to be fragile prudish and depended on men in order to feel fulfillment.