DSU

"Friendly Misogyny: Television Sitcoms and the Reification of Gender"

Abstract

 In a reaction to criticism of television violence, communication theorist Herbert Hyman (1974) describes some of the pro-social aspects of television viewing: sympathy for those who are in misery or for the victims of violence, moral indignation toward wrongdoers, and socialization. According to Hyman, the mass media provide a socialization function by helping people prepare for a new status and role in life. In his view, an individual who has not been a member of a particular reference group has no means of learning the group’s ways. Family and friends may not be able to help because they lack the information, too, but the media can show the way. Large-scale media like movies and television are especially useful in socializing those who lack appropriate role models in their own lives, i.e., minorities and women.

Another set of theories regarding the media are the well-established criticisms of the culture industry as set forth by Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno in the 1940’s. Horkheimer and Adorno demonstrate the power of the media to control and reify only those behaviors which protect the status quo while simultaneously presenting themselves as new and different. Their powerful arguments regarding the power of the culture industry to control behavior combined with Hyman’s arguments concerning the media’s place in establishing behavior patterns form a compelling context from which to analyze current media trends.

This paper uses these communication and political theories to examine the current surge of television sitcoms based on last year’s popular hit sitcom, Friends. These new sitcoms, like Friends, are aimed at the highly impressionable age group of "twenty-something." On the surface, programs like Caroline in the City, Almost Perfect, and Can’t Hurry Love appear to accept (and even celebrate) the career-oriented single woman. We argue that the outward newness of these shows is a facade and that traditional masculinist views form the basis for their characters and storylines. Further, we argue that the new crop of sitcoms frequently reinforces the female as needy, vulnerable, unable to function without male approval, and primarily concerned with other women as competition. Therefore, these new comedies serve to remind, reinforce, and reify the gender roles which perpetuate unhealthy -- indeed, sometimes deadly -- male/female relationships in contemporary society.

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