On a general note, the overall treatment of men is what turned me off of primetime television, especially the sitcoms, as I got tired of seeing the stereotypical idiot husband/father as the butt of abuse that was never leveled at June Cleaver or Lucy Ricardo during those “Dark Ages” of television.
Actually, though she is revered by other comics, Lucille Ball’s comedy which is based around laughing at Lucy would never fly today. With all the sitcoms out there today can you think of one that even comes close to making a female character look as silly as Ball on I Love Lucy?
The irony is that while she played a traditional housewife as a screwball, she was a pioneering woman in terms of successfully owning and running a business. Desilu was a powerhouse in the 1960s, producing some of the biggest hit sitcoms of the era.
A couple of years ago one of the beer companies ran a Super Bowl ad (rarely seen since) where the concept was two play by play announcers at a football game commenting on the amount of verbal abuse from a coach that the referee was taking without reacting. “How does he stand that abuse?” they ask. And the scene cuts to the ref’s kitchen where his wife is screaming and raging at him.
When the Wall Street Journal did a follow up story on Super Bowl ads that year a marketing professor (female) at Eastern Michigan reacted very negatively to that ad and how it showed women in a bad light.
It seems that beer companies can make fun of men and men will still buy their beer (if it’s good beer), whereas if a merchant offends women, they will never buy their product, regardless of the product’s merit.
