In chapter two (“Television in the
Family Circle”) of her book Make Room for
TV: Television and The Family Ideal in Postwar America, author Lynn Spigel
examines the impact of the rapid rise of the television on family dynamics and
gender roles. Spigel argues that that the new technology both brought the
family together and divided them along gender and social lines.
Throughout
the reading I was most intrigued by Spigel’s ideas about the contradictions and
tensions between family unity and division. Television sets were advertised as
“the new family hearth” and featured families gathered in a semicircle
suggesting a Victorian-esque “domestic haven.” In direct contrast to this
notion of televisions bringing families together for group entertainment were
later advertisements for multiple TV sets. A 1955 General Electric ad, for
example, utilizes a split-screen layout with the message “When Dad wants to
watch the game … Mom and Sis, the cooking show … there’s too much traffic for
one TV to handle,” thus promoting a harmonious family through the “sociosexual
division of space.”
I
agree with Spigel’s argument that the introduction of televisions into American
homes caused both an upheaval of and reaffirmed gender roles. As television
sets invaded the sphere of domesticity, they brought a variety of programming,
which could either confirm or challenge gender roles. There was an underlying
fear that TVs could undermine male control of his household – “it is a rare
show that treats Father as anything more than the mouse of the house – a
bumbling, well-meaning idiot who is putty in the hands of his wife and family.”
The show Father Knows Best that we
screened last week could be seen as an exception to this “mouse of the house”
rule since Jim Anderson portrayed as the head of the household (even the show’s
title emphasizes his ultimate authority). However, he does allow his daughter to
make gender transgressions by dressing in her brother’s clothes and pursuing a
typically male profession. Spigel’s piece also affirms the idea of gendered
technology that we encountered in the “When Computers Were Women” reading by
pointing out the feminized language (“passivity […], penetration, consumption,
and escape”) surrounding mass culture and television.
Spigel concentrates most of her
piece on the effects of television on the nuclear family and parents’ roles.
This can be applied to how we look at feminist geek culture by looking at how
technology could both challenge and uphold gender ideals. We can also utilize
Spigel’s ideas about contradictions and compromises within gender roles. How
new technologies or geek culture force men and women to either challenge gender
roles or go out of their way to make the roles fit, even if this ends up contradicting the ideals of the role. 
I think the comment that new technologies can equip people to either challenge or redefine existing gender roles is very insightful. In fact, while Spigel spoke primarily about gender and the roles within a family dynamic, I would argue that this extends to other spectra of privilege and power as well. Spigel’s piece mentioned that with the introduction of TV, even magazines geared toward black families began establishing the television as key to the attainment of middle-class ideals. She notes that “Many of these ads were strikingly similar to those used in white consumer magazines – although often the advertisers portrayed black families watching programs that featured black actors.” In this way, the television was used to suggest that the ideal of middle-class domestic harmony could be accessed regardless of racial boundaries – so long as one had the appropriate consumer goods to achieve it, of course.
ReplyDeleteA more contemporary example is the pushback to the mobile phone app “Lulu,” which allows women to rate and leave comments on their ex-boyfriends for other women to view. Men argued that they should also have access to the app, which accesses users' Facebook data to ensure that users are female-identified before allowing them to create an account. Lulu challenges gender roles by offering women the opportunity to help other women make choices in their relationships, which in turn prompts resentment from men who feel the app is exclusive and
I agree with Michelle that many of Spigel's arguments are applicable to more modern technology. Particularly, Spigel's sections on how advertising portrayed TV as a way of bringing together a family reminded me of advertising for Skype and other video chat services. Interestingly, these new technologies also get read as threatening to the family, for example, with fears about kids having Skype sex or meeting strangers through Chatroulette. The angle of "bringing the family together" is a common one for advertising, as it plays on our cultural desire for happy, united, nuclear families. This desire may have been especially strong during the post WWII years, when television first appeared on the market.
ReplyDeleteIt is also important to remember that advertising itself took on more meaning in the post WWII years than it had during the war. Because many companies were no longer on government contracts, they had to find some way to sell their products if they wanted to stay in business. This was predicated on selling goods primarily to women, who were assumed to be at home with enough free time to shop. Thus, advertisers had to cater very specifically to women, and they had to carefully craft ads towards their target demographic. While these ads are indicative of the overall cultural gender norms, they were aimed at a specific audience of women, and therefore disproportionately represent the hopes and anxieties of American women who could afford televisions (who were mostly white and middle to upper class).
I think that it's very interesting to examine the sort of bumbling father/husband figure that began to appear on early television shows, because this is also a trope that exists in a lot of sitcoms and ads today. It seems that almost every cleaning or household product has run some kind of ad that features a clueless husband running around and messing up the house. I think this is partially because these sorts of products are marketed towards women, and are trying to instill a sense of superiority in them - kind of like, "oh, those poor husbands, they can't do anything right around here". It's basically an in joke.
ReplyDeleteSomeone mentioned in a class recently that the dumb father isn't something to be taken seriously - that they were portrayed like this as a joke because seeing power taken away from the father in that time was unexpected. I this is true, but I also think that this trope has existed for so long because it reinforces the fact that men are out of place in the domestic sphere. Though domesticity was highly aspired to in the 50s, showing the father as clueless around the house reinforces that it is intended to be a place for women, while men's talents lie in much more important, less mundane areas. In a way it actually reinforces traditional gender roles.
I think that it will always be true that television (and media, in general) can always uphold or unsettle traditional gender roles. I can't go to the movies without viewing them through my feminist eyes, and too often they fall short. Interestingly, I think television has always been a little ahead of most other media in this sense, with incredibly popular TV shows writing their characters free from stereotypical gender roles. In Full House, which ran from 1987-95, the Bob Saget character was a single parent who filled his role well. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which aired in 1997, broke out of gender norms left and right by having a "girly" character who like clothes and shoes be the bad-ass who saves both men and women.
ReplyDeleteOn a completely separate note, I think the bumbling father stereotype is really complex. On the one hand, I agree with Claire, that his complete incompetency in the home reinforces the norm that men don't belong in the domestic space. However, the men were supposed to be the authority in the domestic space. Comedy has been upsetting the norms since the beginning of time, because there's a fine line between "absurd" and "too true" (and both are hilarious). In this way, undermining the man's authority for the sake of comedy also places the real seed of doubt in the home. It's similar to the way masculinity and authority were both threatened by the man's incompetency with the television. The trope of the man being the head of the house and the woman being the neck, turning her husband any which way she wants, both undermines the authority of the man, but keeps the woman "in her place", below her husband.
Carley makes some excellent points mirrored in Spigel's reading on how television programs uprooted traditional gender roles, utilizing the "bumbling father" stereotype as an example. I would, however argue that while this type of character emasculated the male, I disagree that TV programs substantially upended gender roles. True, fathers were often portrayed as comedic presences, but popular sitcoms of the time also reinforced the traditional dynamic of the nuclear family. Shows like "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It To Beaver" may have drawn humor from the traditional familial roles, but they still portrayed them, actually serving as a conservative counterpoint to later countercultural portrayals in the 1960s and 1970s. I'll be excited to explore how the gendering within television programs evolved through the years.
ReplyDelete(Accidentally posted this one in two parts. Sorry!)
ReplyDeleteThe concept of "new technologies and geek culture" forcing males and females either to conform more to traditional gender roles or conspicuously break them does seem to reinforce the ideas I've presented. With cultural portrayals of masculinity, femininity, and the American family not only portrayed on screens for mass consumption but now brought directly into the home with the introduction of the television, it seems that men and women were REALLY forced to measure themselves up to these traditional archetypes. Sitting in the home watching an idyllic home life play out on screen surrounded by one's own family feels like a really interesting psychological conflation of these ideas, and it's conceivable that the introduction of the television thus accelerated the breaking down of these traditional roles.
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ReplyDeleteI also agreed with Spigel’s argument that television is both progressive and regressive in regards to gender norms. The idea of the bumbling father stereotype that developed in television shows was of particular interest to me. It made me immediately think of Modern Family’s Phil Dunphy as a modern-day example of this sterotype. The “mouse” version of a father, who has little power in the home, tears down gender stereotypes to an extent because it shows women as more powerful within the private sphere. However, I do think Claire’s point that this reinforces the idea that men don’t belong in the domestic sphere is very interesting and something to think about. In addition, I agree to an extent with Carley’s point that Jim Anderson in Father Knows Best is an exception to this rule. Anderson did know best in the end, but until the very end of the episode, he appears to be almost powerless in his own home. He seems like he doesn’t really have a grasp of what goes on and doesn’t care to. This is particularly shown through his conversation with Doyle Hobbs, because Doyle just talks over Anderson and never really allows him to speak. Anderson just takes this good-naturedly and then sends Doyle off to talk to Betty. After Betty puts on her new dress and agrees to a date with Doyle, we see that Father did actually know best when he said at the beginning that she would be over her ideas of being an engineer soon enough. Zach addressed this as well, and I agree completely with his ideas that Anderson’s bumbling father figure plays more to a comedic effect rather than the actual stereotype. I think that this also reinforces gender stereotypes because while the father may seem like “the mouse,” he actually does have a lot of power and say in what goes on in the home.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with your assessment of Father Knows Best as an exception to the “bumbling” father stereotype perpetuated by many early television programs. Although the title of the show does emphasize the father’s authority in the home, based on the one episode that we watched, the title Father Knows Best seems to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Jim Anderson, the eponymous father certainly talks the talk of a strong masculine patriarch, but He doesn’t always walk the walk. For example, when Doyle Hobbes comes to see Betty and she does not want to talk to him, Anderson tells his wife all the things he wants to say to Hobbes about how he treated his daughter and goes to tell him off, but in the actual encounter between Anderson and Hobbes, Anderson barely gets a word in! The young engineer comes into the home and walks all over the father, usurping his position as the dominant male figure in the household. This scene mirrors societal fears about technology and outsiders coming into the home, but in the episode, ends with Betty and Doyle Hobbes planning a date and everyone joining in laughter. Anderson’s authority as a father seems to be intact by the end, but does he really have control over his household outside of the family circle?
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting to consider whether the “bumbling idiot” father trope applies to Jim Anderson in Father Knows Best. In some ways he is a little bumbling, like by allowing Betty to become “BJ” (as Carley points out). I’m curious whether the Time or Philip Wylie, the author of Generation of Vipers, would consider Jim Anderson to fit this bumbling father mold. Our perceptions of what a competent father and healthy masculinity are different from the time period, and I wonder if Jim Anderson is competent in that the rest of the family defers to him and ultimately agrees with his decisions. Or is he bumbling, since Betty tries to be “BJ” in the first place?
ReplyDeleteMrs. Henderson certainly fits the “momism” model; she’s overbearing and prone to overreacting while the father is more laid back and reasonable. Like Wylie claims in his book, women not only “had become overbearing, domineering mothers who turned their sons and husbands into weak-kneed fools,” there was also “an unholy alliance between women and big business [that] had turned the world into an industrial nightmare” (Spiegel 61). In the opening scene, Jim Henderson laments how silly women buy silly dresses. Mrs. Henderson reveals that those silly dresses lure in silly men. She may just be a wife, but she’s still a manipulative consumer. Although dresses are not television sets, a television can confuse and turn a man simple, just another trick up a woman’s sleeve.