Beauty and the Patriarchal Beast: Gender Role Portrayals in Sitcoms Featuring Mismatched Couples

Drinking stories as a narrative genre: The five classic themes

“…Inverting traditional gender roles is a typical feature in comedy, particularly when females may be portrayed as physically superior to their male partners (Walsh, Fursich and Jelierson, 2008). The climax of Cecilie's story, was the image of the male friend passively standing with a purse and a Corona beer, two symbols of femininity.…”

“I Didn't See It, But I Know What It's About”: The Motion Picture Trailer and Problematic Synecdoche

“…To the first of these, fat humor in US media draws broadly from the Shakespeare's image of Sir John Falstaff, often depicting overweight characters as a mix of incompetence and classlessness. Kimberly Walsh, Elfriede Fürsich, and Bonnie Jefferson, for example, note that overweight men in sitcoms are often paired romantically with thin women who must tolerate and accept the men's ineptness and poor judgments. Moreover, Stephen Gencarella Olbrys finds that Chris Farley's large, male body provokes laughter because it revels in the excess flesh of a clown, who has no voice but only a body for ridicule (250).…”

Is it funny because it's not true? Chinese people's perceptions of aggressive female characters in Asian comedies

“…Meanwhile, the author argued that the power of those characters, which forced them to give up a normal life "of dating, relationships, domesticity" (p. 98), was actually imposed on them and thus indicated "they didn't all want it or like it" (p. 98). Walsh, Fürsich, and Jefferson (2008) examined gender roles in sitcoms featuring mismatched couples. They found that even though the wives and husbands were portrayed in a seemingly nontraditional way (namely, the wives were more intelligent and physically attractive while the husbands appeared to be overweight and dumb), the shows often reasserted the husbands' dominance by having the wives give in and agree with their husbands at the end of an episode.…”

“…To summarize this research, the findings suggest 1) media contribute to reinforcing gender stereotypes; 2) watching stereotypical images of females appears to be associated with holding stereotypical attitudes towards women; 3) nonstereotypical portrayals of women seemed to decrease stereotypical perceptions; and 4) audiences expect a female hero to be both masculine and feminine. In addition, researchers have expressed concern that smart, tough, sexually attractive, and seemingly nontraditional female characters in action movies and comedies have not served to break the stereotypes for women but, on the contrary, have emphasized them (Douglas, 2010;Lavin, 2010, Walsh, Fürsich, & Jefferson, 2008 RQ2: What do they think is the relationship between these portrayals and reality?…”

“…Many studies have found that women are more likely than men to be shown in domestic activities or romantic relationships and less often in professional roles (McArthur, 1975;Seggar, 1975;Dominick, 1979;Downs, 1981;Mackey & Hess, 1982;Lovdal, 1989;Atkin, 1991;Glascock, 2001;Gorman, 2005;Walsh & Jefferson, 2008;Feng & Karan, 2011;Siu &Au, 2011;Huang & Lowry, 2012;Brown, Zhao, Wang, Liu, Lu, Li, & Zhang, 2013;).…”