Wait Until Your Mother Gets Home

683 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Negative effects of mass media on families

Mothers do not get enough credit. Weather it is a house wife or a single mom working two jobs just to keep her children fed it seems that throughout time mothers are far to underappreciated. This extends beyond just the mother, all women seem to slam into a glass sealing of some sort and television is no exception to this cruel reality. After reading Neil Postman’s Amusing ourselves to Death and Ella Taylor’s Prime Time Families, then watching sitcoms that focused on families from the nineteen-fifties until now, it is clear that women have begun to slowly break the glass sealing.
Starting off in the nineteen-sixties there is one family that jams traditional gender roles down the audience’s throat, the Petrie family from the Dick Van Dyke Show. It was shows like this that set Ella Taylor on a feminist rant in her book, and rightly so. Laura Petrie, played by Mary Tyler Moore, was a housewife that loved being a housewife, glorifying that persona. However, one episode in particular helped to show just how much better things are in the sixties when it came to gender roles. This episode was entitled “The Bad Old Days” the episode contrasts the usual setting with a dream world where Robert Petrie is back to a time when men ruled the house, but his fantasy turned nightmare when he realized his wife was miserable and he had become a tyrant. This episode was a step forward, the male writers and producers choose to air it even though it was admitting that women have been oppressed for so long and still where to that day. Although at the time, it is more than likely not the intent and in the end Postman would have claimed this episode impotent, because even though female oppression happens there was no attempt to stop it. The next big step ...

... middle of paper ...

...It went from housewives and permission-giving husbands to same-sex couples and single parents. Gender roles may have been diluted over the decades, but that does not mean other roles have not sprouted from the death of the traditional ones, only time will tell.

Works Cited

"Happy Anniversary." The Cosby Show. NBC. Oct. 1985. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
"Just Say No Way." Full House. ABC. 30 Mar. 1990. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
"Mother's Day." Modern Family. ABC. 4 May 2011. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
“Party is Such Sweet Sorrow." The Mary Tyler Moore Show. CBS. 9 Jan. 1971. Web. 17
Apr. 2014.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: the Penguin Group, 2005. Print.
Taylor, Ella. Prime Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America. Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1989. Print.
"The Bad Old Days." The Dick Van Dyke Show. CBS. 4 Apr. 1962. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.

Show More
Related

  • Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound

    1160 Words  | 3 Pages

    May begins by exploring the origins of this "domestic containment" in the 30's and 40's. During the Depression, she argues, two different views of the family competed -- one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated. Yet, despite the many single women glamorized in popular culture of the 1930's, families ultimately came to choose the latter option. Why? For one, according to May, for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women. (May p.42) Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, for example, are both forced to choose between independence and a happy domestic life - the two cannot be squared. For another, New Deal programs aimed to raise the male employment level, which often meant doing nothing for female employment. And, finally, as historian Ruth Milkman has also noted, the g...

    Read More

  • Conflicts of Race, Class and Gender Under the Hidden Patriarchal System on Dance Moms

    2942 Words  | 6 Pages

    Both an empirical approach and feminist approach have been applied to this paper. A feminist approach was vital in understanding the various feminist discourses on the program for each woman speaks a different feminist language causing a clash within what is actually a patriarchal system all the mothers are working under. This is important since historically in media, men have been the ones to have power and women are portrayed as subservient. However, men are absent from Dance Moms and women reign…or so it seems. I argue that childless Abby, while female, is representati...

    Read More

  • Hayden Fox: A Man's Man

    1058 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rosenberg, Howard. "Television Reviews." Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File): 1. Feb 28 1989. ProQuest. Web. 28 Jan. 2014 .

    Read More

  • Materialism In The Rocking Horse Winner

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    Are all mothers fit for motherhood? The concept of motherhood is scrutinized in the stories “The Rocking Horse Winner” and “Tears Idle Tears”. In “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H Lawrence the mother, Hester, unpremeditatedly provokes her son into providing for her through gambling. In the story “Tears Idle Tears” by Elizabeth Bowen, Mrs. Dickinson disregards her son’s emotions and puts more emphasis in her appearance than her son’s wellbeing. Hester and Mrs. Dickinson both were inadequate mothers. Both the mothers were materialistic, pretended to love their offspring, and their dominance hindered their children’s progress in life.

    Read More

  • Television in the Fifties

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the early fifties, young people watched TV more hours than they went to school, a trend which has not changed greatly since that time. What was portrayed on television became accepted as normal. Shows like What's a My Line debut on CBS, Your Hit Parade premieres on NBC in 1950. In April of 1950 5,343,000 TV sets are in American Homes. In May of 1950, 103 TV Stations in 60 cities were operating. In September 7,535,000 TV sets in USA. In October there were 8,000,000 TV sets.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Night Of The Living Dead

    795 Words  | 2 Pages

    Discriminating gender roles throughout the movie leaves one to believe if they are supposed to act a certain way. This film gives women and men roles that don’t exist anymore, during the 60s women were known to care for the family and take care of the house, basically working at home. However, a male was supposed to fight for his family, doing all the hard work so his wife didn’t have too. In today’s world, everyone does what makes them happy. You can’t tell a woman to stay at home, that makes them feel useless. Furthermore, males still play the roles of hard workers, they are powerful compared to a woman. However, in today’s world a male knows it isn’t right to boss a woman around, where in the 60s, it happened, today women have rights to do what they want not what they are

    Read More

  • Television Quiz Show Scandals of the 1950s

    3211 Words  | 7 Pages

    Stone, J. and T. Yohn. Prime Time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal -- A D.A.'s Account. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

    Read More

  • Homemaker to Superwomen: The Evolution of Betsy Rath

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the 1950’s becoming a wife, having and raising children and taking care of the home was the primary goal for most women. Post war brides were marrying young, having children at significant and unrivaled rates, and settling into roles that would ultimately shape a generation. This ideal notwithstanding, women were entering the workplace like never before and changing the face of American business forever. In the movie The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit directed in 1956 by Nunnally Johnson, we get an inkling of the type of voice American women would develop in the character of Betsy Rath. We are introduced to a wife and mother who leverage her role in the family to direct and influence. The decade of the 50’s signify the beginnings of the duplicity that women would embrace in America, being homemakers and independent women.

    Read More

  • Mississippi: The Most Racist State in America

    1691 Words  | 4 Pages

    Pinkston, R. (2013, June 12). 50th anniversary of Medgar Evers' broadcasting milestone. Retrieved from CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/50th-anniversary-of-medgar-evers-broadcasting-milestone/

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Desperate Housewives

    1832 Words  | 4 Pages

    Society has evolved significantly from its initial gender stereotype of the black and white images of the hard-working husband and the loving, domestic housewife. According to Raewyn Connell in his book Gender (2009) he says that men are or at least should be the ‘producers or breadwinners’ and that women should be the ‘consumers’. However, it was around the middle of the 20thcentury during the onset of the feminist movement when the idea of the perfect woman was featured by glamorous magazines and television. Yet, there has been much controversy about the ways in which the mass media represents women and how they have been affected by these images. In the patriarchal society of the period, there was a decrease in strong women being emotionally and mentally stable, intellectual and sexually attractive. Building on that premise, this paper will examine and analyse the different stereotypical roles the female characters of Desperate Housewives portray, how they are viewed by the audience, and what impact these gender constructions have on society.

    Read More

  • Sitcoms Gender Roles

    1351 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Mad Men

    1935 Words  | 4 Pages

    Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, explains the mind set of society in the 1960s. She writes that the women of the ‘60s were identified only as creatures looking for “sex, babies, and home” (Friedan 36). She goes on to say “The only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal a woman [was] permitted [was] the pursuit of a man” (Friedan 36). This mind set, this “feminine mystique,” is clearly shown throughout the show Mad Men. The side effect of the feminine mystique hurt all the women of this time. Matthew Weiner shows how this conception of the “ideal woman” hurt all of his lead women. The consequences are shown in the two women who bought into the idea, Betty and Joan, and the one who re...

    Read More

  • Evolution of Traditional Values: A Perspective on Gender Equality

    1473 Words  | 3 Pages

    As centuries pass by, generations also pass their traditional values to the next generation. some people still think the way their ancestors thought and believe in what they believed in. During the beginning of 1890 people couldn’t have premarital sex, women had to be the caretaker while men were the breadwinner. During this century, those perspectives have changed, argued Stephanie Coontz, the author of “The American Family”. Coontz believes women should have more freedom and there should be gender equality.

    Read More

  • The Lack of Women's role in society in the 1950s

    1155 Words  | 3 Pages

    Due to the idealization of domesticity in media, there was a significantly stagnant period of time for women’s rights between 1945 and 1959. Women took over the roles for men in the workplace who were fighting abroad during the early 1940s, and a strong, feminist movement rose in the 1960s. However, in between these time periods, there was a time in which women returned to the home, focusing their attention to taking care of the children and waiting on their husband’s every need. This was perpetuated due to the increasing popularity of media’s involvement in the lives of housewives, such as the increasing sales of televisions and the increase in the number of sexist toys.

    Read More

  • A Change in Perception: The Evolution of Entertainment, 1920-1962

    1789 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the last century, America and its inhabitants underwent many changes. From the "Roaring Twenties" to the Great Depression, and from the Dust Bowl to the ideal 50's, entertainment evolved to suit an ever changing nation. In D.W. Griffith's film, Way Down East, a young woman seeks out financial assistance from her wealthier family members. In this film in particular an ever widening separation between the classes is evident. In John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, and The Salt of the Earth, a change has occurred within the sexes, and within the struggles of working class American's. In Leave it to Beaver, American is life depicted as worry free and ideal. It is through movies and television shows of these eras that people of today are able to witness the evolution of a culture first hand. Between 1920 and 1962, movies and television experienced a vast amount of progress. During this century, as is displayed in these films, woman's roles were drastically transformed. The struggles that families faced during the Great Depression and the overwhelming Dust Bowl called on women, especially mother's, to become just as much the backbone of the American family as the father had always been. Another great change that is apparent from the viewing of these films is the ever changing fashion and the prominent emphasis placed on appearances. Perhaps the most momentous change apparent in the comparing of American life in these films is the substantial emphasis placed on the appearance of the home. Within the fifty years between 1920 and 1962 American's and their perceptions of the world changed substantially. By taking an in depth look at women's roles, the e...

    Read More

More about Wait Until Your Mother Gets Home

Open Document