Sitcoms Today

The way of portraying men in the sitcoms of 1970s is important for understanding gender roles in sitcoms. Men were portrayed as the only decision-makers and the only responsible and “adult” persons in the society. Both Leave it to Beaver and All in the Family suggested that women should subdue to the men, that they may occupy with their own businesses only when men are out of home and when they men are absolutely satisfied (Fraiman, 1999). All in the Family expressly stated that men are making money and doing business, so women are responsible for household, family, children and lot of other things. There were no special sitcoms for men, but in the sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver, All in the Family and Brady Bunch men were really portrayed as being on the top of the things.

Unlike the sitcoms of the 1970s, the today’s sitcoms pay little attention to men. If in 1970s they were portrayed as dominant people, in now they are not simply put at one level with women – they were almost ignored in the sitcoms like Designing Women, Still Standing or King of Queens. Designing Women, for example, was focused on everything about women: work, leisure, fashion, and men were touched only in the role of husbands/partners of women. Designing Women and Still Standing did not portray the domination of women over men, because they did not portray men at all – like the women are only people in the world. The men in today’s TV shows seem to be dumb and incapable of doing anything. Thus, today's TV shows the men seem incapable of doing anything and in the past it was them that did everything. The men seemed to have made themselves dumb and the women are the only ones capable of doing those things. A female reviewer claims that Designing Women is part of the progress television has made in getting the female experience right and there is general agreement that the appeal of the sitcom comes from the interplay of its female characters, who talk about the things women really talk about while laughing, and commiserating, and teasing, and supporting one another, as women do.

Thus, this media coverage of gender-related sitcoms reveals an emphasis on the realism of the sitcom’s portrayal of adult women and their interaction. Implicit feminist elements are easily discerned from this discussion. At a basic level, the sitcoms of 1950-70s and the current sitcoms highlight adult female interaction, a theme that gets little attention on television. Moreover, the sitcom presents “women’s talk” – frequently devalued as gossip, chatter, or bitching – as meaningful and worthwhile. That conversation, however, often turns to specific feminist issues, which are dissected and analyzed with the same vigor as the less political topics named above. What emerges in many episodes is a variation on consciousness-raising, a regeneration of feminist consciousness that often vigorously resists post-feminist attitudes. The feminist discourse of these sitcoms does not exist without contradiction. Every episode does not involve a feminist issue, and not all feminist issues are framed in the way that many feminists would like.