How I Met Your Mother is a series of TV shows with Theodore Evelyn Mosby or Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) as the main character – and his group of close friends who live in Manhattan, New York City. The main concept of each episode was based on the title, and often, the story will start in 2030 where Ted recounts to his son and daughter the events that led him met their mother.
The television show How I Met Your Mother has received many critiques because of their bluntly episodes. Nonetheless, it is believed that How I Met Your Mother portrays a positive role model in modern society.
With this essay, there will be arguments regarding the essentialism and non-essentialism in modern society that emphasized in How I Met Your Mother series, specifically on gender stereotypes and cultural stereotypes. In such extreme cases, both stereotypes can lead into discrimination – e.g. race discrimination and sexism.
Based on his character personality, Ted is not like a typical guy who would let girls chase after him, who doesn’t commit about the long-term relationship, and who’s ‘flexible’ in the relationship. Instead, he’s the one who chase after girls, who really cares about the long-term relationship, and enthusiastic to find the ‘right one.’ Therefore his character leans more as if he holds a female character.
Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) is Ted’s ex-girlfriend as well as one of Ted’s closest friends. In contrary to Ted’s personality, Robin is most likely to be the ‘man’ in the house. She is a strong, focus, ambitious, independent, and never had so much interest in a committed relationship – e.g. marriage and has children.
Indeed, the differences between them reflect the conception of non-essentialism where Craig Thomas and Carter Ba...
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...for what they have done were never had any intention to offend Asian culture.
Regardless of this issue, indeed the show has proven to be one of the motivations for audiences to look upon as a positive role model in modern society. The show has overcome the confines that limit people to be part of this society, and many different people can be encouraged from what Craig Thomas and Carter Bays have created. How I Met Your Mother concludes the show inclines more towards non-essentialism thus eliminates gender stereotypes more importantly, in terms of sexism, ruptures the homosexuals’ limitation, and diversity of races escalates sense of acceptance. For the absurdity purposes, the show has entertained its audiences with pleasure and satisfactory, even more, it has more valuable messages than just a comedy thus gives some positive changes in this modern society.
One can argue that they watch Jerry Springer purely for fun, but it is undeniable that the show is affecting society one individual at a time. The argument of whether the show has a positive or negative effect is still undetermined, but its changes are profound. It has created a society that is jaded, however more accepting yet our morals and values have deteriorated. However, without such extreme popular culture examples like this, our society would not evolve, thus it would not become better.
“We all use stereotypes all the time, without knowing it. We have met the enemy of equality, and the enemy is us,” quoted by Annie Murphy Paul, a journalist. Human beings typically have varied mindsets as they grow up with different cultural values as well as social environment. Author Gary Soto’s “Like Mexican” compares his Mexican life with his wife’s Japanese background, while author Deborah Tannen’s “Gender in the Classroom” contrasts the “gender-related styles” of male and female students. From the two perspectives Soto’s and Tannen’s experiences’ give a universal, stereotypical point how different gender tendencies, conversational styles, and cultural background can result in a miscommunication of one’s behavior.
The word sitcom is short for Situation Comedy. A good sitcom story idea places the star (or supporting character) into a situation in need of a resolution, which will cause the character to respond in unexpected, exaggerated, and hugely sidesplitting ways (Rannow, pg. 13). A comedy now days are different from how they were in the 1960's and 1970's though. Today directors use sexual content and foul language to make people laugh and do not usually have a purpose or point to get across to the audience with each show. In earlier comedy, such as The Brady Bunch, Director Jack Arnold tried have a lesson learned in each episode while still maintaining a sense of humor, minus the foul language and sexual content. Although the show is not extremely funny to most people it is still a classic show that deserves to be remembered.
He was intelligent, articulate and handsome. During a gruesome killing spree, Ted Bundy slaughtered more than thirty five women within the span of five years, becoming one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. He grew up believing that his grandparents were his parents and his unwed mother to be his older sister. He was not very good at building relationships and had a lot of conflict with his stepfather and enjoyed the terms of violence and sex as a child. Ted shoplifted during his teenage years and enjoyed being above the law. He was generally very shy and gained a lot of popularity and self esteem in high school because of his good looks. It was there that he met his high school girlfriend Stephanie Brooks with whom he become obsessed, but the relationship did not last very long as she did not feel the same way for him so she broke up with him. Depressed by the break up, Ted dropped out of college and returned home with his family where he found out the truth about his biological mother. This left Ted in a state of confusion about his identity and he felt betrayed by the women in his life. He went back to high school where he and Stephanie got back together but right after she agreed to marry him, he broke up with her to seek revenge. After this charade his killing spree began, luring young women with lies, abducting, raping, physically abusing and killing them.
The society has a tendency to develop assumptions about individuals based on their race, income levels and even gender. One of the major stereotypic notions is based on the roles and position that
by his mother. While in college, Ted found the love of his life. They later broke up and
Prentice, D. A. and Carranza, E. (2002), What Women and Men Should Be, Shouldn’t Be, Are Allowed to Be, and Don’t Have to Be: The Contents of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26: 269–281.
How I Met Your Mother is an American sitcom that has been airing on CBS for the past eleven years. The popular show follows the lives of five friends as they seek to settle down in their lives and marry. The show is narrated from the perspective of one of the main characters, Ted, as he tells his children the story about how he met their mother. As such, Ted narrates most of the story in the past tense and a key focus of the show is his own love life as he explains the process of courtship that he went through before finally getting married. One of Ted’s love interests in the show, Robin, is another main character and one of the five friends that How I Met Your Mother revolves around. Two other characters, Marshall and Lily, are a couple right from the start and eventually marry halfway through the show. The last main character, Barney, is a rich, womanizing bachelor that provides most of the comic relief in the show. His promiscuous exploits with different women in the city of New York regularly act as side plots within the show.
For a large part of the history of TV sitcoms women have been portrayed as mothers or as having to fulfill the woman's role in the private sphere. Family based sitcoms were one of the forms of sitcom that keep women in these roles, but what is interesting is that even in other forms of sitcoms women do not truly escape these roles. Sitcoms, like Sex and the City and Murphy Brown showcase women whom have seemingly escaped these roles, by showing liberated women, but that does not mean that both do not fall into the gender role showcased in family sitcoms. It draws the similarities between ensemble sitcoms and family sitcoms when it comes down to the role of women. The starring women in both Sex and the City and Murphy Brown, and even the Mary
...d what they consider entertaining or even humorous in a sitcom. Overall, modern sitcoms rely on sex, violence, and the most ridiculous situations that you could ever find yourself in to create entertainment, and although Mary Tyler Moore does have some of this, such as the “Chuckles Bites the Dust” episode, for the most part the show relies on the contemporary ideas of the time. The ideas that they explored was the feminist movement of course. This is why the show Mary Tyler Moore holds up as a historic show rather than a comedy. The audience has simply changed what they find as funny over time.
Throughout the evolution of television shows, one thing that is evident in them is that the families follow some sort of sociological theory. By observing these shows, it is easy to perceive what the struggles and achievements these families may experience. Specific examples of television families that display a sociological theory is: Switched at Birth showing conflict theory, Full House presenting symbolic interactionalism, and finally, The 100 which showcases feminist theory. In all of these shows, the families involved each go through their own issues with themselves and each other as well as barriers that may get in the way of their success. Analyzing families through the sociological perspectives open up opportunity for people to better
Women were continuing to display their sexuality throughout the film, and the opening musical number is evidence of this. Women were done being treated like objects, and were becoming more confident and bold members of society. This scene was very significant because it really showed how women were not there just to please men. A cast member that exemplified a gender role was Brad 's older brother, Lawrence. Lawrence is shocked to see Brad planning to marry some flapper girl, when a good chunk of their financial well-being could be lost due to this. He sees these women who are expressing their sexuality and breaking apart from the traditional punching bag of a woman to be gold diggers, and nothing more. In a way, Lawrence depicts the typical close-minded American male. Trixie also broke stereotypes for the typical woman in this film. Trixie is an outspoken, funny, and loud mouthed female and this was not very common among women during this time, but she symbolized everything a woman should want to be during this time. This symbolized a woman outsmarting and out cunning a
I had always thought it was normal for women on reality TV shows to be screaming at and insulting each other, but I had never considered the thought that this was not a reflection of how people actually acted until Miss Representation showed me various reality TV shows depicting women at their worst. I had also never questioned why shows hosted by a female were typically about home improvement or cooking and why there were very few shows that did have women taking the spotlight without being sexualized. Even though I had never consciously recognized this, somewhere in my subconscious I had accepted all of the misogyny, and it had influenced my current thought
Ted met his first girlfriend in college and eventually falls in love. His girlfriend did not see Ted as someone who would be successful and eventually broke up with him and this broke his heart. This was about the time he learned the truth about his family too. He developed deep depression and this marked the time his killing ventures started.
Situational comedies, more popularly referred to as sitcoms are often praised for their fast pace story line and humorous dialogue, creating an entreating experience worthwhile for many viewers. The sitcom How I Met Your Mother, follows the narration of Ted Mosby telling his kids the story of his life in New York City with his friends, as he attempts to find love. The sitcom is often credited for the introduction of the iconic character, Barney Stinson, a friend of Ted Mosby. Barney Stinson is most noted for his love of suits, the creation of the Playbook (a book with “plays” he uses to seduce woman) and his iconic catch phrases. However, at a closer examination, Barney’s behavior can be criticized towards his treatment of women throughout