Part One: Phenomena
I must say I had a really difficult time picking something that is portrayed in the media. There are many things in the media that are portrayed in the stereotypical way. Nothing is really shown how the average person sees life everyday. I don’t think any show is really true to life. It would probably not be that interesting if it were. There are a lot of films that are based on a true story but how often do they not add twists in the story to make it more interesting?
Phenomena: Relationships
I chose the phenomena of relationships in the Media. I think that this is a very important topic and one that should be advocated for more--advocating the promotion of healthy, happy relationships and marriage and the importance of being faithful, trustworthy, true, and loyal to your partner.
Most popular shows that air during Primetime television promote promiscuity, infidelity, cheating, and non-commitment to a relationship. More often we are seeing less happily married couples and more cheating, adultery, and unhappy, unstable relationships in the media.
Prime example: Two and a Half Men. The main character prides himself on being single and sleeping with a different woman every night. His brother is divorced and has to live with him. Many jokes are made about marriage being bad and not worth it.
The Grey’s Anatomy series started off with the main character having a relationship with a married man. Not only does she have complicated love life but so does most of the staff at the hospital as well (almost everyone!!) The show has a recurrent theme of infidelity.
House is another example. Dr. House is a person that has a deep distrust of human beings and their motives and lacks the skills to keep up personal relationships.
Family guy…does have a married couple but it spends most of its time pushing the limits of decency with heavy sexual innuendo and sexual themes. The Simpsons and King of the Hill also have married couples but aren’t exactly the most kid-friendly of programs.
In films, it doesn’t seem to be as bad with all the films that generally have a happy ending with people getting married or back together, etc.
Magazines on the other hand can be just as bad and the TV shows. Many popular magazine like to advertise who is together and who has just broken up, etc.
More and more I think that the media is portraying Marriage as Not Sacred, unimportant, or shouldn’t be taken seriously. It’s ok to cheat, lie, and be unfaithful.
Part Two: Research
Like violence and profanity, infidelity, promiscuity, and non-commitment should not be promoted in media…but sadly it is.
The Facts: The divorce rate in America is 50%--Meaning 50% of those who get married each year will eventually get divorced! The CDC reports that the percentage of marriages each year has generally been gradually declining in almost every state since 1990.
When studying on how to fix a problem, often times the key thing is prevention. And the key thing to prevention is early education. Example:
- To help with declining literacy among low income children…head start and preschool programs.
- To help with Americas drug problem…DARE, teaching young children the harmful effects of drugs.
What if we actually started modeling healthy relationships in the media?
Its not only young children that are effected. If an adolescents continues to see it on the big screen, small screen, and in everyday life…they don’t have much of a chance at all in having a healthy relationships themselves.
One of the best ways to teach children is to model the behavior yourself. You need to show them how to brush teeth, comb hair, tie shoes…and have healthy relationships. I’m not saying that airing shows that promote marriage will suddenly increase marriage rates and make children want to get married in the future but it can’t hurt their view of it.
A special report by the Parents Television Council (PTC) found that across the broadcast networks, verbal references to non-marital sex outnumbered references to sex in the context of marriage by nearly 3 to 1; and scenes depicting or implying sex between non-married partners outnumbered scenes depicting or implying sex between married partners by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1 (PTC, 2008).
WATCH ME!!! - Video Examples From Marriage Study - (wait for it to load or download it)
After doing research, I found that the PTC website was the most insightful. They post ratings for TV, Movies, Albums, Video Games, and Cartoons. They are mostly rated by the content of sex, violence, and profanity.
Another report I found interesting was PTC Ratings for the Top 20 Most Popular TV Shows - 2008. In the report, it says “Not all children ages 2-17 watch age appropriate programs, according to Nielsen Media Research. Television shows that might sound innocent enough, such as Family Guy or American Dad, push the limits of decency with sexual innuendo and adult themes…It is interesting to note that every series on the “Most Suitable” list, and all but one of the series on the “Questionably Suitable” list are reality or game shows” (PTC, 2008). The Following are some of the Ratings:
Suitable: Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Football, Deal or No Deal, American Idol
Questionably suitable: The Simpsons- the bumbling father figure and disrespectful attitudes displayed by the children – those elements are still present, and still problematic. On the plus side, the series depicts a loving if somewhat dysfunctional family, and episodes often contain a moral or a message.
Not suitable: House, Grey’s, Heroes, CSI, and Family guy (being the worst)
PTC also did a report on the Family Hour. “Traditionally known as the Family Hour, the first hour of prime time was once a place for programming the whole family could enjoy. Television broadcasters, exercising their corporate responsibility to act in the public interest, reserved adult-themed shows for later in the evening when the youngest viewers were likely to be asleep. In recent years, however, the broadcast networks have pushed more and more adult-oriented programming to the early hours of the evening” (PTC, 2007). This report studied how often violent, profane, or sexual content appeared during that “Family hour.” Some of their findings were surprising and their video chip of examples was quite interesting as well (you should check it out). It really makes you stop and think about it, since a lot of children are watching this stuff every night and coming into school for us to teach them “how to be good citizens.”
Part Three: Compare & Contrast
While marriage may be thought of as taking the final leap…the old ball and chain, there are many people in this world who have been married to the same person for over a half their lives. Not all relationships/marriages are doomed to fail and NOT everyone cheats on their partners. The world may be growing in the number of blended families but that doesn’t mean we should start thinking that marriage is bad. Some relationships do not work out. We all get burned. But we need to get up and get over those bumps in the road and move on. Many times things don’t always work out our first times around. So, we need to keep a positive attitude and promote that positive attitude to the youth we influence everyday whether we pay attention to it or not. They are watching constantly and although everyone may not have the same opinion about it we should be promoting positive and healthy relationships with children.
I agree with your statement, Amanda, that there is not enough promotion about happy and healthy relationships in the media these days. When you point out all of the shows that not only center around a dysfunctional family setting, but they also promote that type of lifestyle! The shows that show loving family relationships are mostly older shows such as The Cosby Show, or 7th Heaven. It'd be nice to see these more often.
ReplyDeleteHi Amanda,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated your post. I think you reinforced some of the things that I have always thought about these shows - but you also shed a little more light on the "unhealthy" side effects of the things we all see so casually on television. I think what you did here is super important to bring up in the classroom and I hope that your experiences afford you the time to do that - this is a severely important issue that our students are dealing with and trying to come to terms with in their own lives.
- Joe