So I
don’t really like sitcoms all that much.
My recent years spent analyzing complex, postmodern dramas (combined for
my love of serials of all sorts) has severely impacted my ability to enjoy 30-minute
stand alone episodes meant to inspire cheap laughs (or episodic shows more
generally). The wave of reality
television almost killed off sitcoms during the first decade of the 21st
century and of the few that persevered throughout this period I found only two entertaining
enough to follow. CBS’s How I Met Your Mother (2005-present)
reminded me of the next generation’s Friends
(although Neil Patrick Harris at times single-handedly supplied the show’s
comedic content). And ABC’s Modern Family (2009-present) seemed to
be a show that could possibly break new ground (but instead it problematically reinforced
stereotypes at every turn). If I could
go back in time I’d also follow The Big
Bang Theory (CBS, 2007-present) because I believe it will likely go down as
one of the better sitcoms of this decade.
As we
head into “the teens,” sitcoms are again big (especially on network television
where the bottom line is making stations fearful of high-cost dramas). So ever the dutiful television scholar I decided
I’d record the first few episodes of some of the new sitcoms launched this
fall. And after two weeks, I am
underwhelmed (to say the least). My
inability to fall in love with at least a few of these sitcoms is perplexing to
some degree because as a child of the 80s I grew up consuming an endless diet
of these delights. Also, in my early
studies I analyzed how situational comedies (at different times) had been an
unexpected friend or foe of feminism. So
I have always valued their ability to act as distorted fun house mirrors
reflecting societal trends, values, fears, and desires. When I was reflecting on this the other day
I realized that may be exactly why I cannot get into these new sitcoms: I don’t understand what they are saying about
society today. Specifically, as a
feminist media scholar, I’m not sure what to do with new shows like ABC’s Trophy Wife and Super Fun Night. In order
to understand my confusion, we need to look back at previous televisual decades
and their portrayals of women.
The 50s
Even from its very beginning, the medium of
television was tied to a gender war from which it would never seem to
escape. As early as 1948, television
manufacturers had already determined that women were a primary consumer and
hence targeted them with countless advertisements in home and fashion magazines
and even through the radio. The ideology
behind these ads was clear: women should
be content within the domestic realm (after all, home is where the heart is)
and the presence of a shiny new television could ensure that the family within
that sphere would be united and happy despite the social and sexual divisions
still strictly intact. Many have argued
that television contributed to women’s domestication, but this very same medium
also empowered female viewers through the consumption of enjoyable products and
positive depictions of femininity. The interesting thing is how the same
medium, even the same program, was able to disseminate such contradictory
messages simultaneously. Television scholars have noted that figures like
Gracie Allen, Lucile Ball, and, later, Mary Tyler Moore became some of the
earliest feminist role models and that their performances provided
opportunities for critiques of patriarchy, appreciation of women’s agency, and
audience pleasure. Patricia Mellencamp
views the laughter they voiced, and induced, as a “tactic of survival, ensuring
sanity, the triumph of the ego, and pleasure; after all, Gracie and Lucy were narcissistically
rebellious, refusing ‘to be hurt.’” However, these chuckles did not come
without a price – comedy often replaced anger.
The 60s
As images broadcasted across television screens
became less blurry, so did the image of femininity. The static was clearing up and women were
coming across the screen just as they were “meant to be” – as ideal depictions
of femininity. Prime-time shows like Father
Knows Best (1954-1962), Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963), Bewitched
(1964-1972), I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970), and The Brady Bunch
(1969-1974) jump start this televisual period with visions of women that would
no longer fit by the time the sixties ceased.
The eclectic grouping of television shows listed
above demonstrates the ways in which seemingly diverse programs were actually
providing viewers with very similar lessons in femininity. These five popular programs can be seen as
existing on a continuum not only historically (based on their air dates) but
also conceptually in terms of the way television depicted the American
family. In the earliest television shows
(like Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver), the
“traditional” so-called nuclear family was foregrounded. As those early programs went off the air,
other popular shows replaced them by making one (not necessarily small)
variation in their conceptual set up – mysticism entered into the mix. Programs like Bewitched and I Dream
of Jeannie kept the basic nuclear family notion intact but made that
traditional family fall into the realm of the supernatural. (This variation is clearer in Bewitched since
the fictional family does contain a married couple and their child. However, the same basic shift can be seen in I
Dream of Jeannie even though the childless couple only acts as if
they are married). The final alteration
of the fictional family structure as seen in these early programs came in the
form of the blended family. The Brady
Bunch serves as an example of the programming that would replace earlier
sitcoms with a family unit that would prove more enduring (and realistic) than
the supernatural television families that preceded it. What is important is that all of these
programs, despite some obvious contextual differences, offered up the same
repetitive feminine ideal through their lead female character. Regardless of
their role – the women in these shows all most definitely required their male
counterpart to ensure their sitcom-friendly happy endings and televised
smiles. Quite simply, television during
this period reinforced traditional gender norms.
While these shows were coming to a close and fading
off air, the actual events of the feminist movement were finding their way
on. Just as television brought other
social activism into the secluded living rooms of suburbia (the Civil Rights
movement, anti-war activism), the decade of peace, love, and flower power
brought a new mediated focus onto women’s liberation. The effect of these various images, be they
fictional (seen as hyper-sexualized hippie chicks) or real (as in the rampant televisual
footage of bra burning and women on the frontline of other social activism),
eventually affected the familiar portrayal of gender relations on the nightly
line up. To be clear, the television
shows of this time period, although affected by the political climate
surrounding them, did not perfectly mirror what was happening off-screen. In fact, during this period of early
television programming, there was a sort of lag between what was occurring in
the real world and what was being broadcast via fictional programming. (This slow response time would correct itself
throughout the coming decades.) Nonetheless, by the time the seventies were in full swing the juxtaposition of
television narrative and female imagery was completely different.
The 70s
The seventies is often considered the decade of socially
relevant programming with shows like The Mod Squad (1968-1973), All
in the Family (1971-1979) and M*A*S*H (1972-1983) leading the way
(Bodroghkozy 227). It is also the decade
that recast women as figures of empowerment and control with as much loyalty to
their on-screen “sisters” as to the members of the opposite sex they were
paired up with, pitted against, or sworn to protect. Charlotte Brunsdon categorizes many of these
programs as “heroine television,” a category that would encapsulate the
traditional empowering laughter of the comedienne and the emergent feminist
hijacking of the detective/drama genre. Mary Tyler Moore
(1970-1977) soars to popularity in the fashion of predecessor Lucy and shows
like Maude (1972-1978), Rhoda (1974-1978), Laverne and Shirley
(1976-1978), and Charlie’s Angels soon follow after (1976-1981). In the
spirit of women’s liberation, these shows feature women in non-traditional
roles and continued to stir the pot of controversial topics, such as Maude’s
bold move to have the first ever prime-time abortion in 1972, which outraged
the nation (Joyrich 100). Of course, these empowering representations of women
were not without their imperfections.
Julie D’Acci points out that “from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s,
female sex objects dominated the TV landscape in what is often called the
‘jiggle’ era, or the industry’s noneuphemistic tag ‘T & A’ period”
(104). So although figures of the powerful
women were dashing across the screens they were doing so scantily clad –
cleavage shirts, daisy dukes and all.
Clearly, television’s brilliance is that it succeeds in simultaneously
reinforcing and destroying standard gender stereotypes through a variety of
popular programming consumed by the multitudes.
These diverse programs (with their similar contradictory
feminist/anti-feminist messages) then affect (on some level) television’s large
viewing population, making this audio/visual medium extremely powerful in terms
of its role in supplying hegemonic gender lessons. The re-sexualization of
women was only the beginning of what Susan Faludi would term “the
backlash.” The mass media was sending
out its contradictory message that the women’s movement had been successfully
completed but yet these new found winners of the war were confronted by
incessant images of women (“who had made it”) “suffering ‘burnout’ and succumbing
to an ‘infertility epidemic’” and a supposed “‘man shortage’” (Faludi ix). While these motifs hit women from one side,
another blow was coming from a whole new direction; the sitcom that had
previously been a friend of feminism seemingly bought into the “post” mindset
and abandoned it for a surprising (or, considering the political regime, not so
surprising) conservative swing to the right, resulting in the role-reversal
shows.
The 80s
The sitcoms of the eighties were rather blunt in
their message to women: “okay you wanted
out of the home and into the workforce, voila, there you have it and look at
how well your family is functioning without you.” Shows like Charles in Charge
(1984-1990), Who’s the Boss (1984-1992), My Two Dads (1987-1990),
and Full House (1987-1997) featured caring, compassionate Mr. Mom
figures toting the motherhood role with unwavering success. But the family focus was symptomatic of the
eighties, with Family Ties (1982-1989) and The Cosby Show
(1984-1992) resting comfortably high in the Nielson ratings for most the
decade. Besides for this obvious
re-functioning of the family, the politics behind this decade that bred the
yuppie are hard to miss.
Some of the most popular shows of this (“post-feminist”)
period were really working to renegotiate the time periods they had just
endured. I would say that as a whole this
is what the medium of television is always trying to do, only in later decades it
speeds ahead to a point where it is actually trying to renegotiate the period
in which it is still in.
Concerning this practice, Aniko Bodroghkozy reads The Wonder Years
as working to soften “the turmoil of the sixties by nostalgically representing
the period through the experiences of a prepubescent boy living in generic
suburbia-land;” a world in which “the political and social turmoil so
fundamental to America in the 1960s seldom intruded on the gentle world of” its
central family. Likewise, she claims
that Family Ties “renegotiated the sixties by taking the premise of All
in the Family (…) turning it upside down.”
And thirtysomething too explored “how one – or whether one –
could maintain ‘sixties values’ in a reactionary political climate”
(Bodroghkozy 241). Moreover, focusing
specifically on gender politics, one cannot overlook thirtysomething’s post-feminist
vision of the home to which women have ‘freely’ chosen to return. This “vision” is an obvious product of, and
response to, the times in which the show was created. These shows were not simply entertaining the
masses during this decade, they were dictating a conservative ideology in a
time period of re-setting.
The 90s
The next decade found depictions of femininity
bouncing back from the detrimental restraints of the mid-eighties. Murphy Brown (1988-1998) went up
against Dan Quayle for the rights of single mothers in America, Oprah (1986-2011)
became an African-American feminist icon whose influence would reverberate for
over two decades, Ellen (1994-1998) broke ground by coming out both on
and off screen exposing the nation to issues of gay rights in weekly thirty
minute segments, and Roseanne (1988-1997) questioned normative
definitions of female sexuality, body image, and familial arrangements – giving
birth to the notion of the “domestic goddess.”.
The 00s
During the early years of the 21st
century blended genres rose in popularity and attracted female viewers. Many of these concoctions (many which were
sitcom-soap opera hybrids) critiqued hegemonic depictions of traditional
femininity. This can be seen in shows
like HBO’s Sex in the City (1998-2004) and Desperate Housewives (2004-2012).
The 10s
And that brings us to today and to my opening mention
of ABC’s two new sitcoms. This fall
brought viewers Trophy Wife starring Malin
Ackerman. In this show she plays a familiar
role (much like one she played in 27
Dresses) – the pretty, ditzy blonde.
The variation is that this pretty, ditzy blonde is married to a twice
divorced rich lawyer and becomes an unlikely step mother to his children from the
two previous marriages. The makers of
the show were quick to clarify that the show is meant to be ironic in that she
is not the typical trophy wife – she can’t cook and struggles in all of her
attempts to parent. Much of the comedy
comes from her bumbling efforts to fulfill her new roles as wife and mother
(and more so in the contrasting, highly stereotypic portrayals of the other
ex-wives). Of all the sitcoms I tried
out this season, I find this one to be at least mildly interesting (but I’ve
been known to watch Cougar Town so
please don’t take this as ringing endorsement).
The problem, of course, is how the show focuses explicitly on Kate’s
(Ackerman’s) physical appearance. In the
first episode she is referred to as a “MILF” and in the second episode ex-wife
#1 accuses her to be the sexual fantasy that has prompted her son (Kate’s
stepson) to write a piece of erotic fiction.
(It was, in fact, written about a fellow peer).
Another sitcom launched this year gets its humor by
focusing on the female body. While Trophy Wife puts Kate’s highly sexualized,
perfect body at center stage, Super Fun
Night casts the spotlight on a very different body type. Rebel Wilson plays Kimmie and, following in
line with her previous roles, her plus-sized body becomes the punch line for
the narrative. (This is not unlike her
role in Pitch Perfect, for example,
where she plays “Fat Amy” – a name she bestows upon herself, as her character
explains, so “twig bitches” can’t call her it behind her back). While the show casts her pretty girl rival,
Kendall, in a horribly unflattering light, making
viewers root for the underdog Kimmie to win (the man in terms of the show’s
longer plot arch, and a singing competition in the first episode), it still
gets its laugh at her expense as she runs through the office in search of jelly
donuts or ends up in her girdle-like underwear after an elevator door incident. Instead of simply casting a plus-sized
actress to star in a show about professional and personal quests, the show
focuses specifically on her body – again proving that there are limited roles
available to women of a certain size.
If all the previous decades of
scripted television had something to say about women, what will this one have
to reveal? Are we returning to a time
where the female body (and not the female character) must be the focus of
televisual sitcoms? Quite obviously this
sample is too narrow and the decade too young to make such claims, but I fear
that this television era is not going to prove to be overly progressive in
terms of feminist portrayals of women.
So, if this is the case, I guess I’m left with this lingering
thought: welcome back sitcoms… you can
go away again if you want.
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