A War on Men?

I've commented before on the characters on two cartoon TV programs, Homer Simpson on The Simpsons and Peter Griffin on Family Guy. These guys are stupid, they're foolish, they are disgusting fat pigs. And, not least, they're incredibly insensitive.

Their wives, on the other hand, are smarter, wiser; they embody all possible good sense and compassion. Their main lack of good sense might seem to be that they tolerate and forgive their husbands, as they always do, even when it's mind-blowing that they do. I'd like to see Marge or Lois say, "That's it, I've had it, this time you've gone too far. I'm through. I want a divorce." Don’t you think divorces have occurred with less provocation? So these women gotta be saints. And, even more strangely—here my non-mainstream sensibility might be coming into play—they continue to find their husbands sexy.

And there are a couple of TV commercials that depict men (a husband in one case, and a husband and father in the other) as stupid. In one, the husband set out to kill the weeds in the family's lawn, and killed the grass in the process. His wife has to indoctrinate him with the mantra, "weeds, not grass."

In the other one, for AT&T high-speed Internet, the husband—a middle-aged guy--can't seem to grasp that their new Internet service lets all the family's computers connect wirelessly, and keeps asking for his "Internet cord." Even his young daughter is far more savvy than Dad and keeps trying to explain to him.

It looks like there's a pattern here: at least four instances in which a male is depicted as stupid. The poor, patient, long-suffering females have to try to put up with them. I guess it's just part of the superior nature of women that they not only understand men and recognize all their foibles, they know it's woman's lot in life to forgive her man. Men are terribly flawed but hey, you know, they're good for something so we gotta keep them around.

I think the tables have turned: we used to have TV shows about shrewish, intolerable wives who got murdered by their husbands. And, as often happens, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

Nowadays, if it were women who were depicted as unfavorably as the men are in my examples above, we'd have all the feminist organizations up in arms and calling for a boycott of the TV show or the product sponsor. Note just the fact that we have the word feminism. What is the word for advocacy or defense of males? There is no word. I rest my case.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Feminist Viewpoint in TV Cartoon Sitcoms

The TV shows The Simpsons and Family Guy both have husband/father characters (Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin, respectively) who are pretty much stupid and worthless human beings. Homer in particular is foolish, lazy, irresponsible, insensitive, and driven by his appetites—for beer, for doughnuts. . . . Yet on both shows, their wives love them and are infinitely forgiving. The wives, in fact, are endowed not only with infinite forgiveness and love, but definitely have a monopoly on the intelligence, wisdom, and common sense in their respective families.

In a typical episode, the husband, Homer or Peter, makes foolish mistakes that send the family (or the town or the nuclear plant) to the brink of disaster. Something somehow always saves the day, the guy apologizes to his wife, and she forgives him, 'cause she loves him. (Some of these characterizations might fit The Simpsons better than Family Guy, I feel I ought to admit.)

We'll leave aside the issue of whether it's realistic for any wife to be so infinitely forgiving and infinitely patient. (I, for one, have to wonder how it is that a point never comes when the wife has simply had enough, and I'm sure divorces have occurred with less cause.) If you want to look at older television, The Honeymooners might be seen in the same vein as The Simpsons and Family Guy and thus a predecessor of the newer shows: Ralph Kramden is always doing foolish things, getting himself in trouble in one way or another (and the creativity of the show is precisely to devise new ways in which Ralph can get into trouble).

So, when the husbands are worthless and the wives have all the intelligence, strength, wisdom—all the virtues—think about this portrayal of men and women. This looks to me like a feminist view of the qualities of the two sexes. Well, convinced as I am of this idea, one problem with it is that in both cases, the originator of the show is a man: Seth McFarlane in the case of Family Guy and Matt Groening in the case of The Simpsons. I'm not sure that this totally viscerates my theory because it's certainly conceivable that a man can take a feminist viewpoint.

On the other hand there's I Love Lucy, where the gender roles are the opposite. Lucy is very clever, but in a perverted sort of way. She concocts improbable schemes to get what she wants and to get around her husband, Ricky, who rules the roost like a traditional husband. However, her schemes always backfire, and Ricky has to forgive her. This looks like a reversal of The Simpsons and Family Guy. However, Lucy challenging the husband's supremacy in the marriage may still be feminist.

Okay, three where the wife has to forgive, one where it's the other way around. The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy are both from the 1950s, but certainly modern feminism has roots that go back much further than that.
Copyright © 2009 Richard Stein