Gender Issues in the TV Program, Retired at 35 - Case Study Example

 Gender Issues in the TV Program, Retired at 35 This is an evaluation on the influence media has on sensitive and non-sensitive issues within our society today, what effect it has on our cultural lifestyles and what meaning is on and under the surface of TV shows, movies and the media at large. This review will primarily look into gender issues arising in the TV programme, ‘Retired at 35’ focusing mainly on gender stereotypes, gender reversals, heteronormativity, world’s modern view of gender today as opposed to cultural view, male gaze versus objectification of women and other issues that may arise within the main concepts. The series is about a prominent New York City dweller named David who decides to leave the city and visit his parents in a Florida retirement community and also to attend his mother’s birthday celebration. On arrival he meets both his parents in a jovial mood and receives a warm welcome. His attention however is split between his folks and his job as he is receiving numerous calls from his boss back in New York, something his father is not so happy about and this leads him to him quitting his job to decide on what he really wants with his life. His decision is taken well especially by his mother, Elaine Robbins who claims to have been inspired by it so much and decides to leave his father, Alan Robins to go to Portugal and pursue her dream of becoming a painter. David finds himself in between a rock and a hard place as he juggles between his father’s interests and his mother’s, who comes back to Florida after her Portugal endeavour proves a failure, after the two choose to remain separated. Coming back to his parents place also opens a new chapter in his life with relation to his childhood best friend, Brandon his love life and the fact that he is now retired at only the age of thirty five. This TV series generally shows the oddity of having a successful business then retiring at the age of thirty five and having to live with one’s parents, an elderly couple who are having issues in their marriage. It also shows what impact friends can have on someone and how too much bonding with ones parents at this age can affect the normal day to day routine. The target audience for ‘Retired at 35’ in my view, would be young people of the age late twenties to early forties both female and male with a slim positive bias to the male audience as the jokes in the series tend to be capitalized on David’s bad luck, who is a thirty five year old male. Also the inclusion of the words ‘texturing’, ‘tittering’ and ‘facial book’ would mostly be funny to the younger generation using Facebook and Twitter as opposed to the ones who do not. This series may have come to be because of the fact that in the current times we find many young people still living with their parents in their thirties instead of on their own or with their families, something perceived as normal by the society. In the first episode of the first season, we find a gender stereotype that depicts women as a more sharing and selfless gender and that they are more aware of other people’s concerns than men, clearly shown by how Alan, David’s father indulges in a self-destructive life style of eating bacon for breakfast, smoking the morning cigar, dropping cigar ashes on the floor drinking scotch at 8.30am and general untidiness a day after her wife’s departure, something that his wife would not let him do as she is more concerned with his health and the tidiness of their home. Men are generally disregard details like ashes on the floor and choose to feel good as opposed to be healthy and that’s why it’s easy for Alan to have bacon and scotch for breakfast, which is a stereotype (New York Times n.p). Another bias arises when after separation David gets to do all the work that his mother used to do for his father and asks his mother his mother to come back as his father is overworking him and making him do things he believes should only be done by a woman. It is shown in this episode that it is the attitude that’s the issue other than the capability of man doing chores culturally perceived feminine. Attitude theory is used to give a conceptual study of how attitudes toward both genders relate to sex stereotypes and after research, it was demonstrated that attitudes toward the sexes coupled positively to the evaluative meaning of the matching gender stereo-types (New York Times n.p). Consequently, this is seen in the women that were paying to go out on dates with David’s father, one woman says the reason she is rich is because she had several husbands who were all rich and are all dead. The stereotype here is that the woman could not have gotten rich out of her hard work alone and had to become rich through successful ex-husbands, showing success as obvious to the male gender but as some sort of luck in the female gender. Because of gender stereotype and the way in which it impacts evaluations in work settings, it is argued that being proficient does not ensure that a woman will progress to the same organizational level as an equally performing man. In the text, more focus is given to the men for instance their hobbies, their relationships with other men friends, their influence on women’s lives among other things while women are mostly fitting in to the men’s schedules and lifestyles, citing an example of the period it has taken David’s mother to realize that they, her husband and her, have not been having a happy marriage. Logistic regression analysis established that gender characteristics, family membership and target audience all significantly inclined the likelihood that a character would express stereotyped behaviours. Moreover, when David’s mother decides to leave her husband and move to Portugal to pursue her passion in art, this decision is not warmly welcomed by the husband and the son since this is taken more like a husband’s doing than a wife’s where men normally leave their homes in search of livelihood and leave their wives home (New York Times n.p). Additionally, after staying with both the mother and the father, David’s stay as no longer much appreciated as before where both parents have an argument of who to host David and how often, both wanting to have him on lesser days in a week. His mother, David, says she is too old to be a full time mother of a thirty five year old. Both parents show that indeed David should be living on his own and should be having a job. There is a gender bias in that nowhere in the first episode, are we told of Amy having a job of her own. Men of David’s age are expected by the general society to be working for a living and thirty five is an age considered to be very close to the peak of a man’s career. Further, gender reversal is seen throughout the TV programme where we find men doing things that are considered feminine and also cases of women taking in things that the society perceives manly. In the first episode of the first series, we see Amy’s boyfriend, Paul, enjoying cooking for the family. This is viewed by the rest, apart from Amy, as unusual given that as the other men are busy chatting at the living room after a game while he feels he would rather be in the kitchen. Also from the way Paul talks, it shows that he is quite feminine. In the general society, men are associated with spending their free times in things like sports, playing indoor games like poker as they are more competitive minded than women, who would rather spend time chatting with other women friends or in the kitchen preparing food just for the fun of it rather than necessity (New York Times n.p). In addition, the series reveals another incident of gender reversal when old women start paying David and his friend Brandon to get them a date with Alan. This is not usually considered a norm in the society as most people even highly condemn it when it is the case with women .Men on the other hand; though the behaviour is not encouraged will very easily pass as it is found tolerable in their cases. Further, another gender reversal is revealed when women pursue men. In the show elderly ladies are depicted hunting and enticing younger men, the likes of David, to link them up to men closer to their age brackets in this case Alan. This is contrary to cultural believes where only men used to woo their mates into intimate relationships and the other way round would be seen as very unusual. Gender reversal in this TV show tells us that there has been a huge change in how we view gender today as opposed to how it has been viewed culturally. Susan, Jessica’s step mother, does not seem to find it odd when Brandon, David’s best friend tells her that he has recently met an awesome and available man. She is not quick to judge or assume that Brandon has found her the available man, instead she congratulates him. This example can also be used to show how the world perceives the heteronormativity culture. It is now generally accepted by the society for a man to have an intimate relationship with another man. On the acceptance of diverse sexuality, the text also shows that though accepted, there is still an element of homophobia. This is seen after Paul introduces himself to David. The father, Alan does not seem to notice while the mother, Elaine Robinson, seems to be okay with it. This shows that the society has come to accept people as they are, irrespective of their perceived sexualities (New York Times n.p). Heteronormativity, which has been described as the ordinary fabrication of heterosexuality as the standard and natural type of sexuality, has turned out to be a social problem since 1970s when there was a rise of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered activism. This text stresses that point in the sense that most of its characters are not concerned with other’s sexualities. However, the series seems to be on the matter of gender and sexuality, women in this text continues to be viewed as sex objects. We see Alan seeking women partners, not for a long term relationship but just for sex, ‘Hit it and Quit it’ as the so often refer to their flings as. But on a general view, this TV show links gender and sexuality not on a permanent or personal basis but as a special quality of identity. In fact, that in how Elaine tries to stick to the ‘Hit it and quit it’ rule after she had an affair with her husband by not returning her husband’s calls even after her son tries to make her do it. This text highlights the male gaze by making most of the male characters the centre of the audiences’ attraction while the women are squeezed in between as lesser characters. David’s sister, Amy, is an example as she appears a very few times in the first season of the TV show as opposed to her brother. The text also fetishes its female characters and most women appear to be highly valued possessions by the men in their lives. An example of objectified women would be Lila, whom is regarded very highly by David’s mother only to be detested after Elaine’s incident with Lila’s mother (New York Times n.p). In conclusion, this review has looked into the effect(s) of the general media in our society where the following main points were the main guidelines, plain meaning of the text-the face value/understanding of the movie and also the audience to whom this TV show was meant to get to using the punch lines in the comedy to show the audience who the jokes are directed to. Moreover, it has also keenly examined whether there were gender stereotypes in the show and what stereotypes were present, mainly focussing on active passive and logical emotional types and it did not ignore any other that arose in the course of our study. Gender reversals has also been deeply deliberated on and various reactions to different unusual behaviours found with the characters emerged. In addition the easy compared and contrasted the view on gender, both culturally and in modern way. Lastly, the paper came into a conclusion that people’s views towards many things has changed with time. Views on people’s sexual preferences has transformed with time even though women are still objectified as observed. Works cited New York Times. Retired at 35. 18 January 2011. 20 November 2012 . Read More