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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Mar 29, 2010 11:33:18 GMT -5
I think the "dumb guy/smart woman" archetype in sitcoms (or elsewhere) is really just a reaction to how male-dominated American society's mindset actually is, and has been for eons. It's not as if men have ever been "oppressed", or Spike TV is some sort of televised revolution.
It's cliche, but I get it.
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AriadosMan
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Post by AriadosMan on Mar 29, 2010 11:49:55 GMT -5
I think the "dumb guy/smart woman" archetype in sitcoms (or elsewhere) is really just a reaction to how male-dominated American society's mindset actually is, and has been for eons. It's not as if men have ever been "oppressed", or Spike TV is some sort of televised revolution. It's cliche, but I get it. Um, no it's not. Its an attempt to make women feel better about themselves by portraying men as subhuman apes, and its lazy writing. Look at All in the Family. That had a main character who was a crude (and often hateful) loudmouth, but they didn't portray his wife as some sort of MENSA member to try to make a "Men=Dumb, Women=Smart" contrast. Anyone COULD write without stooping to the level of cliche that modern sitcom writers have embraced, but Hollywood trains writers to be lazy and write two-dimensional characters to "appeal to a mass audience".
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Mar 29, 2010 11:59:11 GMT -5
I think the "dumb guy/smart woman" archetype in sitcoms (or elsewhere) is really just a reaction to how male-dominated American society's mindset actually is, and has been for eons. It's not as if men have ever been "oppressed", or Spike TV is some sort of televised revolution. It's cliche, but I get it. Um, no it's not. Its an attempt to make women feel better about themselves by portraying men as subhuman apes, and its lazy writing. Look at All in the Family. That had a main character who was a crude (and often hateful) loudmouth, but they didn't portray his wife as some sort of MENSA member to try to make a "Men=Dumb, Women=Smart" contrast. Anyone COULD write without stooping to the level of cliche that modern sitcom writers have embraced, but Hollywood trains writers to be lazy and write two-dimensional characters to "appeal to a mass audience". Never said it made for great television, just saying that there was probably a bigger reason behind it.
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darthalexander
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Post by darthalexander on Mar 29, 2010 12:13:08 GMT -5
I know in the last few years there have been a lot of commercials with dumb men in them - on the radio and on tv - and I'm getting pretty ticked off about it. I guess it's only "fair"since for many years women were portrayed fairly badly in commercials.
Commercials in general are stupid pieces of junk. I can't stand them.
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Post by HMARK Center on Mar 29, 2010 16:32:52 GMT -5
More sexist against women, and it's really not even close.
That's not to say I condone the "idiot man/intelligent woman" cliche in so many shows/commercials; hell, when I was five years old I remember asking my parents why so many commercials do that, and how dumb I thought it was. It really offends me that it perpetuates this idea to men that "it's OK to be dumb, you're a guy! That's how you're supposed to be!".
However, as stupid as I think that cliche is, men aren't as consistently bombarded with the images women are that only seem to carry the message of "There's something wrong with you. You'll never be good enough. Your significant other isn't interested in you anymore. You're not young, thin, or interestingly looking enough. You don't fit the ideal. Not unless you BUY THIS CRAP!"
So women get that when they have items advertised to them, and when men see items advertised for guys, we get a bombardment of "woman as fantasy objects" messages.
Meanwhile, yes, guys do put up with having to watch the bumbling oaf of a husband get owned repeatedly by his intelligent wife, but it's much more lopsided the other way, I'm sorry.
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The Line
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Post by The Line on Mar 29, 2010 16:42:51 GMT -5
It's not so much about sexism per se as using sexist stereotypes to sell a product. BINGO, BINGO, BINGO! Commercials have 15 to 30 seconds to establish a setting, characters, and show how great their product/service is. They don't really have much of a choice but to use stereotypes. Unfortunately, they often use hackneyed, sometimes offensive ones. Edit: Hmark, while I agree, you gotta be careful arguing your point so one-sidedly. While yes, women do get more commercials trying to establish what a woman's "image" should be, the gap is closing and closing quickly, however, with men, its less physical image and more a status image.
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Tapout
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Post by Tapout on Mar 29, 2010 17:43:29 GMT -5
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Post by nickcave on Mar 29, 2010 21:01:09 GMT -5
It's not so much about sexism per se as using sexist stereotypes to sell a product. I'd say its about 50/50 in terms of commercials. As for sitcoms, most are sexist only towards men and always portray guys as dumb cavemen. Which wouldn't be a problem if the female characters were given obnoxious traits as well to add balance. Usually, they are not. Married With Children and Seinfeld subverted this trope pretty well I think.
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AriadosMan
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Post by AriadosMan on Mar 29, 2010 23:16:18 GMT -5
It's not so much about sexism per se as using sexist stereotypes to sell a product. I'd say its about 50/50 in terms of commercials. As for sitcoms, most are sexist only towards men and always portray guys as dumb cavemen. Which wouldn't be a problem if the female characters were given obnoxious traits as well to add balance. Usually, they are not. Married With Children and Seinfeld subverted this trope pretty well I think. Indeed, you're correct. Married had an idiotic husband, but it was balanced by the fact that the rest of his family were misfits. In Seinfeld, male and female characters could be equally juvenile, stupid, and picky (most of Jerry's dates were horrid people). I guess that's why I consider Seinfeld one of the more durable sitcoms--it was so adamantly opposed to Mary Sues that it continually ran the risk of making its characters uniformly loathsome. HMark has a good point that women are subjected to body horror in alot of ads aimed at them, but at least they don't constantly have their "feminity" called into question in the matter that guys have their "masculinity" questioned. Hell, about 3/4ths of beer/car commercials say something to the effect of "if you don't buy this, you're not a real man".
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Post by HMARK Center on Mar 29, 2010 23:34:36 GMT -5
It's not so much about sexism per se as using sexist stereotypes to sell a product. BINGO, BINGO, BINGO! Commercials have 15 to 30 seconds to establish a setting, characters, and show how great their product/service is. They don't really have much of a choice but to use stereotypes. Unfortunately, they often use hackneyed, sometimes offensive ones. Edit: Hmark, while I agree, you gotta be careful arguing your point so one-sidedly. While yes, women do get more commercials trying to establish what a woman's "image" should be, the gap is closing and closing quickly, however, with men, its less physical image and more a status image. While I'm not about to go running off to find the data (sorry, I'm kind of sick, tired, and feeling lazy as a consequence), there's a lot of data collected pretty regularly concerning TV/commercial content and who and how it's directed. Most studies will show that women are given a lot more negative messages than men. Again, I'm not invalidating any guy who feels slighted by the stereotypes of the "dumb, fat, sports obsessed, beer swilling, uncultured, misogynistic, hapless husband", as I feel plenty slighted by it, but it's fairly widely agreed upon.
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Post by Bravo Echo November on Mar 30, 2010 10:33:43 GMT -5
Personally I think commercials are more sexist towards women, especially during the Super Bowl.
Case in point: Go-daddy.com commercials.
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hassanchop
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Post by hassanchop on Mar 30, 2010 11:12:53 GMT -5
It's not so much about sexism per se as using sexist stereotypes to sell a product. I'd say its about 50/50 in terms of commercials. As for sitcoms, most are sexist only towards men and always portray guys as dumb cavemen. Which wouldn't be a problem if the female characters were given obnoxious traits as well to add balance. Usually, they are not. Married With Children and Seinfeld subverted this trope pretty well I think. What about Wait Till Your Father Gets Home or The Jetsons where the father is somewhat reasonable?
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hollywood
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Post by hollywood on Mar 30, 2010 11:35:08 GMT -5
This is going to be a bit long, so I'm sorry. But I've got some strong opinions on this...
Women. Most definitely women. It's really not even up for debate.
Commercials are the worst about this, but the media as a whole tends to constantly bombard girls with one, simple message: "You're not good enough." Your pores are too big. Your nose is enormous. Your hips are awful. Your feet are disgusting. (But buy this product, and you'll be ok.) There's an unending barrage of superstar celebrities, fashion models, and more all dolled up with untold dollars of makeup, lighting effects and post-production editing to create a totally impossible image all women should apparently strive for.
My teenage sister, my girlfriend, and my plutonic friends are all convinced they're hideous. And it's the furthest thing from the truth. But they're shown every waking minute of their lives this unattainable image. That they WOULD be beautiful, if only they looked like THIS.
Granted, I find the oafish husband/smart wife television format as tiresome as anyone else (According to Jim, King of Queens...I hate them all), but suggesting that men are somehow getting the shorter end of the stick borders on the absurd. You'll never see a woman who looks like Danny Devito get work in Hollywood on a regular basis--and, most definitely not outside of comedy, where we get to laugh at her physical appearance.
Take the Axe commercials. Granted, they're tongue-in-cheek. Not to be taken at all seriously. But will we ever see a similar commercial for girls? Where a girl can spray herself with some "magic spray" and suddenly every man in the room will notice her? No, girls will be explicitly told, "You have to be absolutely beautiful, incredibly sexy, with perfect hair and perfect teeth. With perfectly rounded breasts and a perfect ass."
Are men getting shafted a bit by occasionally being portrayed as morons? Perhaps. It certainly won't do much to slow the current decline of young men enrolling and graduating from college.
Maybe men are being treated badly by the media these days. But if we are, all it means is that now we're even. Women have gotten the shaft on this one since print ads were first published.
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Post by Mozenrath on Mar 30, 2010 11:42:37 GMT -5
It's pretty obnoxious on both sides of the board.
A trend I'm pretty sick of is trying to play off of prejudice for humor in a weird way, like the Hot Pocket commercials with "Free Eaters" and Geico cavement. Get it, because some groups of society have traditionally been seen as less than human! Hahaha...ha.
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hollywood
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Post by hollywood on Mar 30, 2010 11:47:04 GMT -5
It's pretty obnoxious on both sides of the board. A trend I'm pretty sick of is trying to play off of prejudice for humor in a weird way, like the Hot Pocket commercials with "Free Eaters" and Geico cavement. Get it, because some groups of society have traditionally been seen as less than human! Hahaha...ha. Yea, what the hell are those? The "Free Eaters" one just leaves me scratching my head. And the Geico cavemen were only funny when they were bowling.
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Post by Orange on Mar 30, 2010 13:15:00 GMT -5
This is going to be a bit long, so I'm sorry. But I've got some strong opinions on this... Women. Most definitely women. It's really not even up for debate. Commercials are the worst about this, but the media as a whole tends to constantly bombard girls with one, simple message: "You're not good enough." Your pores are too big. Your nose is enormous. Your hips are awful. Your feet are disgusting. (But buy this product, and you'll be ok.) There's an unending barrage of superstar celebrities, fashion models, and more all dolled up with untold dollars of makeup, lighting effects and post-production editing to create a totally impossible image all women should apparently strive for. My teenage sister, my girlfriend, and my plutonic friends are all convinced they're hideous. And it's the furthest thing from the truth. But they're shown every waking minute of their lives this unattainable image. That they WOULD be beautiful, if only they looked like THIS. Granted, I find the oafish husband/smart wife television format as tiresome as anyone else (According to Jim, King of Queens...I hate them all), but suggesting that men are somehow getting the shorter end of the stick borders on the absurd. You'll never see a woman who looks like Danny Devito get work in Hollywood on a regular basis--and, most definitely not outside of comedy, where we get to laugh at her physical appearance. Take the Axe commercials. Granted, they're tongue-in-cheek. Not to be taken at all seriously. But will we ever see a similar commercial for girls? Where a girl can spray herself with some "magic spray" and suddenly every man in the room will notice her? No, girls will be explicitly told, "You have to be absolutely beautiful, incredibly sexy, with perfect hair and perfect teeth. With perfectly rounded breasts and a perfect ass." Are men getting shafted a bit by occasionally being portrayed as morons? Perhaps. It certainly won't do much to slow the current decline of young men enrolling and graduating from college. Maybe men are being treated badly by the media these days. But if we are, all it means is that now we're even. Women have gotten the shaft on this one since print ads were first published. I get what you're saying, believe me I do but men are portrayed the same way in commercials, mostly with those Bod commercials that were on a while ago. Any guys you see in commercials always have six packs and all that stuff, so while women are portrayed that way as well it's the same for men. I'll give you that not everybody that looks like Danny Devito will get work, but recently we have seen women that are outside "the norm", and most recently that "Precious" girl (her name escapes me at the moment) Also what you said about you're not beautiful unless you buy this product, once again I understand what you mean but that's the point, to overhype their product because some people will believe that. It's the same reason paid programmings have those black and white dramatizations, it's to get a point across (whether it be truthful or not) that you NEED their product to get by day to day. So while I get what you mean about women being portrayed a certain way, it does go both ways because according to commercials. men have to have six packs and be chiseled to get attention from women, just like that 5 hour energy commerical I posted. If you are a man that is not chiseled like a football player, you're not going to get female attention, when in reality that's not true. And in reality women don't all have to look like glamorous movie stars to get attention from men either, but the stereotypes and sexism does go both ways IMO.
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hollywood
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Post by hollywood on Mar 30, 2010 13:43:50 GMT -5
This is going to be a bit long, so I'm sorry. But I've got some strong opinions on this... Women. Most definitely women. It's really not even up for debate. Commercials are the worst about this, but the media as a whole tends to constantly bombard girls with one, simple message: "You're not good enough." Your pores are too big. Your nose is enormous. Your hips are awful. Your feet are disgusting. (But buy this product, and you'll be ok.) There's an unending barrage of superstar celebrities, fashion models, and more all dolled up with untold dollars of makeup, lighting effects and post-production editing to create a totally impossible image all women should apparently strive for. My teenage sister, my girlfriend, and my plutonic friends are all convinced they're hideous. And it's the furthest thing from the truth. But they're shown every waking minute of their lives this unattainable image. That they WOULD be beautiful, if only they looked like THIS. Granted, I find the oafish husband/smart wife television format as tiresome as anyone else (According to Jim, King of Queens...I hate them all), but suggesting that men are somehow getting the shorter end of the stick borders on the absurd. You'll never see a woman who looks like Danny Devito get work in Hollywood on a regular basis--and, most definitely not outside of comedy, where we get to laugh at her physical appearance. Take the Axe commercials. Granted, they're tongue-in-cheek. Not to be taken at all seriously. But will we ever see a similar commercial for girls? Where a girl can spray herself with some "magic spray" and suddenly every man in the room will notice her? No, girls will be explicitly told, "You have to be absolutely beautiful, incredibly sexy, with perfect hair and perfect teeth. With perfectly rounded breasts and a perfect ass." Are men getting shafted a bit by occasionally being portrayed as morons? Perhaps. It certainly won't do much to slow the current decline of young men enrolling and graduating from college. Maybe men are being treated badly by the media these days. But if we are, all it means is that now we're even. Women have gotten the shaft on this one since print ads were first published. I get what you're saying, believe me I do but men are portrayed the same way in commercials, mostly with those Bod commercials that were on a while ago. Any guys you see in commercials always have six packs and all that stuff, so while women are portrayed that way as well it's the same for men. I'll give you that not everybody that looks like Danny Devito will get work, but recently we have seen women that are outside "the norm", and most recently that "Precious" girl (her name escapes me at the moment) Also what you said about you're not beautiful unless you buy this product, once again I understand what you mean but that's the point, to overhype their product because some people will believe that. It's the same reason paid programmings have those black and white dramatizations, it's to get a point across (whether it be truthful or not) that you NEED their product to get by day to day. So while I get what you mean about women being portrayed a certain way, it does go both ways because according to commercials. men have to have six packs and be chiseled to get attention from women, just like that 5 hour energy commerical I posted. If you are a man that is not chiseled like a football player, you're not going to get female attention, when in reality that's not true. And in reality women don't all have to look like glamorous movie stars to get attention from men either, but the stereotypes and sexism does go both ways IMO. I disagree. While I'd never argue that media (and God help me, I'm employed by it) doesn't glamorize materialism for both sexes, women by and large are at a constant disadvantage. While chiseled abs and a pouty face may help, men don't need to fit the beautiful mold to make it in the entertainment industry. Look no further than Tracey Morgan, Steve Buscemi, Adam Sandler, John Reily, or Will Ferrell. Talented actors all, and they deserve the opportunities they've had (except maybe Will Ferrell, but that's another debate). But they're hardly on par with guys like Orlando Bloom, Ashton Kutcher, or Justin Timberlake when it comes to looks. As for Gabourey Sidibe and her role in Precious, she's getting quite of a bit of attention right now, but bloggers, commentators, experts, and anyone else voicing opinions about the industry are all saying the same thing: "She needs to lose weight!!" Hell, anyone remember Howard Stern's comments? Consequently, she's probably not going to appear on the mainstream radar ever again. Will she pave the way for future, less-than-statuesque actresses to have a shot at the big time? I certainly hope so. But there's still a long way to go. Meanwhile, although their portrayals as lumbering oafs in According to Jim and King of Queens may offend some men, women should perhaps be more offended by Jim Belushi and Kevin James. After all, they're further proof that an overweight schlub has every right to play a lead role, but anything less than a gorgeous woman has no place as even said schlub's leading lady.
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Post by KevFalcön07 on Mar 30, 2010 13:53:04 GMT -5
This is a great sketch about the different ways the two sexes are targeted by advertising. Lol. Where is that from?
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Post by Confused Mark Wahlberg on Mar 30, 2010 20:23:34 GMT -5
I feel bad for both men and women in infomercials.
You know, the ones who apparently cannot write with a pen or use a skillet without almost killing themselves Three Stooges-style?
What about them, huh?
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Post by Orange on Mar 30, 2010 20:53:41 GMT -5
I feel bad for both men and women in infomercials. You know, the ones who apparently cannot write with a pen or use a skillet without almost killing themselves Three Stooges-style? What about them, huh? I feel for them as well, them and the people who can't unclog their toilets and then get eaten by sharks right afterwards unless they buy THE NEW SPATULA PLUNGER SHARK REPELLENT 5000! ;D
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