This comment was from bobbt on the post “We’re Dads, We Don’t Need No Fancy Label“
The reason I feel the media can’t get a handle on this is because of the way Fathers, and Men in general, have been portrayed for some time now as bumbling, incompetent idiots, incapable of navigating through life without the assistance of our beautiful, all knowing and wise mates. I mean, how could you possibly conceive of leaving your children in the care of such a person? You have to go back to the late 1950′s or early 60′s to find ‘competent Fathers’ portrayed in the media (Robert Young, John Forsythe etc) The ironic part, Fathers back then in general weren’t expected to do half the ‘hands on’ parenting work they do today (cooking, laundry, diapers). Here’s a wild idea, let’s refer to stay-at-home-dads as Fathers (no, it’s not that he can’t find a job!) and refer to working moms as Mothers (and no, she doesn’t value her work more than her family!) Each one is doing what’s best for their family! Wow, what a concept!
About the Editors
I really love the sentiment in this comment. I think sometimes adding a “stay-at-home” or “working” qualifier to either the term ‘mom’ or ‘dad’ is necessary…like if we’re talking about the different ways of dividing a household based on labour or whatever. But yeah, the sentiment that neither a working mom or a stay-at-home dad isn’t somehow failing at their ‘normal’ duties is a good one.
I will say that I don’t think you have to go back that far to find competent Dad’s. Bill Cosby, for example, is most certainly a competent dad, and that’s the 1980s and 1990s.
Even the good doctor Huxtable was constantly befuddled by the trials and tribulations of fatherhood. Thank god his beautiful and all wise lawyer wife Clair was there to guide him through it all.
Now hang on, Huxtable was always portrayed as a brilliant father, particularly when it came to dealing with Theo. He was meant to be the sillier of the two (between him and Clair) but that’s because he’s a comedian and she’s not. I never thought of Huxtable and being befuddled by fatherhood…he was just a sillier person.
You have to go back to the late 1950′s or early 60′s to find ‘competent Fathers’ portrayed in the media (Robert Young, John Forsythe etc)
Be careful. Some folks are just waiting for someone to mention the past so they can instantly accuse you of “wishing for the good ole days”. Folks like that seem to think that the only things that ever happened in the 50-60s was the oppression of women so any reference back to that period must reflect a desire to oppress women.
But I feel your sentiment. And I find it odd that while times have supposedly gotten better in terms of gender the image of men has gotten worse (with pretty much the exception of Danny Tanner and Dr. Huxtable).
“But I feel your sentiment. And I find it odd that while times have supposedly gotten better in terms of gender the image of men has gotten worse.”
Okay, bear with me as I try to think about this…this might be a bit rambling. I do think that a lot of the 50s was about oppressive gender roles…particularly when we talk about what was on television. T.V. shows were highly idealized at the time. Combine that with the strict gender roles in society, and the media depicted both mothers and fathers as being ideal an Mother and Father. Even with comedy, like say with I Love Lucy, people still weren’t breaking or challenging gender norms. And, in fact, whenever the characters on I Love Lucy did break with gender norms, the comedy was in how they failed at it. And though yes, feminism was around at this time, it wasn’t focused on media portrayals.
Alright so then we’ve got feminism of the 1960s (and beyond), which was challenging the rigid gender norms, particularly for women in media. I distinctly remember reading quite a few things where feminists tore apart the episode of I Love Lucy where she tried to get a job and failed, because it reinforced gender norms. Similarly, the classic example of discussing how Beaver’s mother was just too ideal to be real.
Okay so fast-forward to today, and television isn’t nearly as idealized. In fact, a lot of our current shows are about just how crap things are…take The Wire, Oz, all the reality t.v. shows. Even something as sweet and middle class as Brothers & Sisters still has people behaving badly on occasion, in order to create a story. So we have women doing all sorts of different things on television…there are depictions of absolutely crap mothers, but also of amazing mothers…there are single parents, married parents, women with jobs, women who are housemakers…etc.
I feel like men sort of got left behind, in some ways. It’s not that the perception of men has gotten worse…but rather that they’re still stuck in the 1950s paradigm. Either they are idealized as being the traditional male, or they are mocked for trying to break out of it. Thus, we have a lot of depictions of crap fathers…it’s like I Love Lucy when Lucy tried to go to work. Of course guys such at being stay-at-home fathers, just like of course Lucy couldn’t actually get a job. Okay so then, you may ask, how come we don’t have depictions of ideal breadwinning dads? Well I think it’s probably a few reasons…first the economy is crap and t.v. is starting to represent this. Second, as I mentioned, portraying anything in an ideal way is no longer in fashion on television. If the only options are idealized male or being crap at trying to break away from that…modern t.v. is going to go for the being crap at breaking out of it.
I hope that is making sense. I also hope you all realize I’m not trying to like, excuse the problem of a lack of good dads on t.v. (particularly comedy) at the moment…I’m just trying to work out part of why I think it might be.
Also comedy shows mirror and enhance current trends or traits to the nth degree for comic effect AND use comic tropes from hundreds of years ago (the fool, the shrew-which often wind up married together, the lover, the rogue, the professional) for comic effect. See Commedia dell’Arte. 16th century and these archetypes are still widely taught in theater schools and used in improvisation and comedy writing.
I’m not sure anything ever “was” shown in idealized way other than hyperidealized or comically unideal. Those seem to be what wind up being (generally) funny, yes? Reality is for dramas.
Comedy is designed to make fun of and with how we are as people. Thus, buffoons, slutty wives, shrewish women, dumb dads, bratty kids, oafish bullies, snobby professionals, incompetent bosses, over competent servant/employees, clumsy paranoid neighbors. If they weren’t drawn in such a way as to highlight the comedy…it would be a drama.
They also have writers and executives looking at the trends of the time and commenting on them satirically or otherwise.
It’s less about (in my opinion) misandry or misogyny (in most cases) and more about really old comic tropes, writers deciding what in the culture needs to be commented on (which can include how men or women are seen/treat each other), and deciding how low or highbrow the jokes are.
All right Julie, Which trends are we “mirroring and enhancing? That men (especially married ones) have become less intelligent and competent? Look, I realize that new Ideas in Hollywood are as commom as waterfalls in the Sahara. It just seems that when a show is sucessful with a certain formula (dumb man married to smart woman) Every other wannabe produces a show trying to top it(REALLY dumb guy married to REALLY smart woman).
I feel like men sort of got left behind, in some ways. It’s not that the perception of men has gotten worse…but rather that they’re still stuck in the 1950s paradigm. Either they are idealized as being the traditional male, or they are mocked for trying to break out of it.
I’m not so sure about that. Because even with the idealized (or idolized) traditional male like the Beaver’s dad he was still a productive member of society and was not the butt of almost every single joke. Sure you can argue about how the Beaver’s mom was bound by traditional roles and how moms on tv have broken away from that, which is a good thing. However I think the perception of dads has actually changed if for no other reason than if you take the Beaver’s dad and compare him to dads/husbands today and you see that most of the one’s from today are portrayed as being screwups.
You can even say that the perception has gone from, to nod another old show, “Dad Knows Best” to “Dad Doesn’t Know Sh!t”.
Even if you close the gap and look at the late 80s to 2005 or so. In the late 80s you had Danny Tanner and Dr. Huxtable. In 2005 or so you had Everybody Loves Raymond and Kevin James character from King of Queens.
I think the perception has changed and with only a few notable exceptions (like Modern Family maybe) its gotten worse.
I think what you’re saying is true of comedy…but then comedy often relies on the worst assumptions about people. Which I, personally, don’t get. I don’t find it funny to watch people be idiots.
HeatherN, that seems to be true of the ‘Hollywood’ formula for comedy. We’ll take one person (more often than not the father) and make him a total bufoon, and make him the butt of the jokes. Funny how when I see the British comedies on PBS, they don’t do it like that. They manage to portray everyone as normal human beings with all the quirks that make us both humorous and human and the results are hysterical.
I think it was James Thurber who said something along the lines of: The difference between British and American comedy is that British comedy take the normal and makes it seem absurd, and American comedy takes the absurd and makes it seem normal. Something like that.
Plus, the Brits have a long history of wit and satire…and really dry humor. The U.S. has a history of really over-the-top slapstick…which yeah, the Brits had that too with vaudeville, I suppose. Plus, British comedy is a bit more self-deprecating, I think…so even when they do make someone really outrageous and buffoonish, that’s sort of the point – it’s saying isn’t this really weird/stupid/etc. I also have a total bias toward British comedy, though they’ve got some crap shows too.
Yeah, maybe they just import the good ones. I’m just saying I find them much more enjoyable.
A father doesn’t need to be a SAHD or even be as domestically capable as the mom. The dads referred to here, and the later example of Cliff Hutable were good/great dads were examples of such dads.
No one’s mentioned Dan Connor from Roseanne? He didn’t always make the best decisions when raising his kid, but damn if Dan didn’t do everything he thought he could for them, and he always seems to have their best interests at heart.
Very true!
I think Dan Connor gets left out of mentions of good dads for two reasons:
1. When most people talk about Rosanne they usually don’t go any further than how progressive Rosanne herself was. Not a bad thing in an of itself but I think it becomes a problem when other elements that aren’t Rosanne are left in the shadows.
2. From what I remember of the show Dan really didn’t have that many standout moments and when he did they were usually in relation to Rosanne or her sister or the kids (like the time he almost wiped the floor with the guy that was abusing Rosanne’s sister, and when he had an argument with someone that didn’t approve of Becky’s boyfriend who wasn’t educated or high class but was a hard working blue collar man must like Dan himself).
Absolutly right TPK . Forgot about Dan Connor. ‘Roseanne’ was probably one of the best shows , it wasn’t so much a comedy (in the Hollywood) sense , but a portrait of Blue Collar America that so many people could relate to (I could think off hand of half a dozen guys that Dan Connor reminds me of) This made the humor in the show real, at least to me.
I would also remind people how sarcastic Ward Cleaver was on _Leave It to Beaver_. He was usually reluctant to get involved and almost every episode made some snide comment to June about how fatherly expectations were absurd or children don’t make any sense. He certainly didn’t seem to enjoy being a dad very much.
Picking just ONE of the many problems with using TV sitcoms as models for domestic behavior, I would also draw your attention to the idealized behavior of the CHILDREN on these shows. Given the angelic nature of the kids on _Father Knows Best_, anyone could say anything blandly obvious and look like a wise father. How hard was it for Robert Young to look like a good dad with kids like that? Let me see your brilliant homilies when junior starts huffing paint supplies.
Good points all around.
Hey everyone, I grew up in the late 50′s and throughout the 60′s and no, I never met anyone like Ward or June Cleaver, or Ozzie and Harriet Nelson ,or Robetr Young or Jane Wyaat for that matter. Our Mothers didn’t vacuum the house wearing pearls and our Fathers didn’t sit around the house, reading the paper in a suit and tie! I get it that these ‘People’ were idealized characters. It’s just that they were BOTH (Mom and Dad!)portrayed as being not only wise , but loving ,caring and virtious! A couple of you responded with some show characters I forgot about (Dan Tanner and Dan Conner) and I thank you. I probably forgot then because it’s been a while. Don’t you all think were due for another show with some more good characters, instead of these ‘Bugs Bunny’ types?
Actually good fathers are starting to make a come back. I find Parenthood to be more in line with the fathers I know in real life. Smart, involved, caring men who are active in raising their children.
Yeah, I’ll have to try to catch that show. I’ll admit I don’t watch much TV anymore(other than sports) , and I try to avoid modern sitcoms like a plague. I know I enjoyed the movie with Steve Martin alot.
John Ritter in 7 Rules for Dating My Daughter
Tony Soprano, embattled master of two complex, demanding families
Viggo Mortenson, postnuclear warrior father in The Road
Dennis Quaid, indomitable dad in The Day After Tomorrow
Stephen Collins, preacher dad in 7th Heaven
Any dad in a Suburu commercial
John Ritter sorry to admit I never saw the show Tony soparano- Muderious Mafia Thug; are you kidding? Viggo Mortenson , Great actor, again never saw this! Dennis Quaid; The Day After Tomorrow was a propaganda piece for the’ global warming’ sect Stephen Collins, Can’t argue here. 7th Heaven was a positive show that my kids loved! Any dad in a Subaru Commericial, Sorry commercials are annoying by nature!