The Simpsons is a popular Fox program that has been airing for almost 30 years, and this indicates its massive popularity and impact both domestically and globally. It has delivered a great amount of direct and implied messages throughout the years. These messages have received different responses from heterogeneous audiences. So, does The Simpsons elicit any negative response? Yes. According to Joseph Allen (2017), The Simpsons is one of the most controversial TV shows of all times. Most of its controversy lies in either the messages implemented in the opening scene or the plot. Therefore, exploring the negative responses held by individuals is crucial for analyzing the theory. Stereotyping is one of the issues that has stimulated a negative …show more content…
In 1992, American President George W. Bush said, “we need to make our families more like the Waltons and less like The Simpsons” (Bath, 2015). So, who are the Waltons? The Waltons is a 70’s show that illustrated a family who lived in harmony during the Great Depression. President Bush negative response indicates the extent of how much The Simpsons is misshaping opinions on the United States. The President does not want the rest of the world to think that the ideal American family is similar to The Simpsons’ family. Eliezer Van Allen (2000) described the latter to be “couch potato,” which was one of the destructive responses that were stimulated by the show. Criticism was mostly associated with the parents who are Homer and Marge Simpson. Homer Simpson is an icon for irresponsibility and procrastination, and Marge Simpson represented women who gave up their dreams and submitted to their duty of merely being a housewife (Allen, 2000). The episode, “That 90’s Show” (Season 19, Episode 11), that explains how Homer and Marge met have received negative response since it shows that neither of them obtained a college degree (Bath, 2015). This episode was broadcasted 16 years after President Bush speech, which shows that criticizing the representation of the American family
The Futurama episode entitled “The Problem with Popplers” (2000) satirically pokes at meat-eating, while openly mocking animal rights protestors in the face of their ignorant compassion. And while targeting the hypocrisy that exists within modern society and presenting the far too common avarice of corporations and businesses, the episode never truly lets the audience get comfortable. That being said, a general feeling of moral ambiguity underlies the episode. And without becoming unpalatable and unenjoyable, the content reaches the brink of legitimate trepidation, while maintaining cunning social commentary and foolishness. Therefore, the audience most likely consists of young adults and adults, sci-fi fans, and those
Television programs often retain an aspect of reality in order to relate to the audience and commentate on social issues. Although both The Goldbergs and The Twilight Zone address controversial issues such as gender roles, insanity, and ethnic stereotypes, genre differentiates their approach and their audiences’ receptiveness to change. Whereas The Goldbergs, an ethnic sitcom, addresses the external world using comedic relief, The Twilight Zone, a science fiction program, delves into the human mind using imagination. Despite their common efforts to direct social change, the programs are inverse images of one another, and The Twilight Zone’s genre structure allows it to resonate more with the audience. From 1949 to 1956, The Goldbergs dominated television as the first televised sitcom.
“The Influence on the Unconscious” As young adults, we have laid around our homes for countless hours watching different types of television programing. Many of us, have a good idea on whether a program tries to offend viewers with their content. For over a decade, the popular television show “Family Guy” created by Seth MacFarlane, has shown controversial content that many people throughout the world have either loved or hated. In the writing piece titled, “Family Guy and Freud: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious” by Antonia Peacocke that is discussed below encourages us to distinguish between offensive and insightful content that airs on Family Guy.
Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie all get episodes with their perspectives being the premise of the episode. The influence the Simpsons have left on the world is clearly seen in people’s humor and hidden references. Even Homer Simpson’s catchphrase, “d’oh” is now a word. (Go ahead look it
Stereotyping is a general idea that someone uses to view someone before they actually get to know them. In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Scout, Jem, and Dill stereotype people until Scout’s father tells her to stop stereotyping. Harper Lee suggests that in order to fully understand someone, you must learn to see the world from their point of view. Mrs. Dubose is an example of Harper Lee’s idea because at first she acts mean towards the Finch family which cause Jem to destroy her camellia flowers. When Mrs. Dubose dies, Atticus tells the kids that the reason she was so mean was because she had a morphine addiction.
People today could say that stereotypes aren't such a factor in life, but they don’t notice what's really around them. The book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, gives a realistic example of how stereotypes rule society. The Outsiders is about two groups of kids, the Socs, and the greasers. The story takes place in the east side of Tulsa Oklahoma, in the 1960’s. The main character Ponyboy is part of the greaser group, with Johnny, Darry, Dally, Sodapop, Two-Bit, and Steve.
The year is 2016 and American society is open-minded to so many issues, except televised stereotypes. Racial and gender stereotypes are continually reinforced by social media and television, it has played a major role in the way society views one another. Enabling stereotypes that have been associated with a person of specific race or gender in the media promotes prejudice. Meaning society expects that person to act a certain way based on what they have witnessed on television or social media. . A perfect example of how television shows incorporate stereotypes based on ethnicity is the tv show “Everybody Hates Chris “which is about a working class African-American family that lives in a poor urban neighborhood in New York.
Family Guy is an adult animated sitcom created by American producer, Seth Macfarlane. The show focuses on the Griffins, an elementary family consisting of main protagonists – Peter Griffin, his wife Lois and their three children Chris, Meg, Stewie and their talking dog, Brian. Family Guy is unlike any television sitcom. It was created to break all the social norms and ignores all the laws of most television shows. In the show, we see all the common issues and stereotypes in popular media that most American’s deal with today.
Television situational comedies have the ability to represent different values or concerns of their audience, these values often change every decade or so to reflect and highlight the changes that the audience is experiencing within society, at the time of production. Between the years of 1950 and 2010, the representation of gender roles and family structure has been addressed and featured in various sitcoms, such as “Father Knows Best” and “Modern Family”, through the use of narrative conventions, symbolic, audio and technical codes. These representations have transformed over time to reflect the changes in social, political, and historical contexts. The 1950’s sitcom “Father Knows Best” traditionally represents the values of gender roles and family structure in a 1950’society, with the father, held high as the breadwinner of the family and the mother as the sole homemaker.
I. Introduction Parenthood, a drama television series, attends to the adversity of an extended and imperfect family. The Bravermans are a blended California family who face a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events but together find a way to get by (Katims, 2010). Television consumers have been introduced to many fictional families overtime and continue to fall in love with family related television shows. Historically, the media has transformed and continues to adapt to the changes in present day family types. “Writers often take seeds from real life experiences and plant then in their scripts,” consumers both consciously or subconsciously attend to cues on television and want to apply what they see to their lives.
Homer Simpson embodies the average man of ‘Murica. He’s fat, white, balding, and straight. The purpose of both George and Homer is to create a character that others can relate to, or at the very least create an understanding of the humdrum character by relating them to someone the readers may know in their
Challenging Stereotypes: How “Modern” Is Modern Family? The show won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in each of its first five years and the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series four times. If you have never heard about “Modern Family," you have never seen comedy. Modern Family is an American television show that portrays the ‘Modernism’ in families nowadays in America.
The Simpsons Hundreds of families have been portrayed over the years through different television programs. Each television family has different roles, statuses, and personas for every member. From cartoons to sitcoms, families have been plastered in front of viewers for decades. My personal favorite show, “The Simpsons”, happens to be the longest running television show in the U.S. For more then twenty-five years “The Simpsons” has been depicted as a dysfunctional family, however each member of the family takes on roles that are more consistent of a traditional family. Aside from the wild and whacky themes that come along with the show “The Simpsons” follows the blueprint of a traditional American family of five.
Despite the creator’s of Modern Family effort to portray a progressive view of American families, the show still accentuates outdated female stereotypes and gender roles; reinforcing gender characteristics, patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. In contrast to its title, Modern Family promotes traditional gender roles and stereotypes of women, which result in the portrayal of an inaccurate image of the female, and weakens the stance of women in today’s U.S. society. Gender stereotypes are prevalent throughout the Modern Family; the women are all portrayed as wives and mothers, promoting a continued male dominant family ideology. Claire and Gloria are throughout the show acting on our society’s “assumptions about women’s ‘appropriate’ roles” (Dow 19).
Gender roles in the past decades When watching The Simpsons family interact, their family depict what a ‘nuclear family’ look like with the father being the breadwinner and the mother staying at home doing the cooking and looking after the kids. It sends a message of what a ‘traditional’ family look/ed like in the past. “Gender roles are the product of the interactions between individuals and their environments, and they give individuals cues about what sort of behaviour is believed to be appropriate