Tag Archives: tv shows

Question from Real Housewives: is getting evicted from a McMansion worse than living in one?

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From the Real Housewives of Atlanta comes this intriguing question: is getting evicted from a McMansion worse than living one in the first place?

There have been plenty of things said about Kim Zolciak’s sudden move from her “dream home” (which she was actually renting from Kendra and Antonio Davis), but she want’s everyone to get one thing straight: her family was not evicted from the McMansion.

In one of her last BravoTV.com blogs of her career on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Kim drives that point home yet again. “We were not EVICTED! We ALWAYS paid our rent. Our lease was up; it’s that simple,” she declares.

And in a direct response to what some of the other Housewives have been saying about Kim’s housing situation, she writes, “Yes, Kandi, NeNe, and Cynthia, it was once my ‘dream home’ and my credit has NOTHING to do with me moving. I’m blessed to have never had trouble financially unlike some of the other girls, but they can make whatever comments they’d like.”

McMansions are often thought of as status symbols: their owners want to show they have plenty of money and can afford a large house. Some critics of McMansions have argued that the purchase of such homes is all about new money and displaying status. The architecture of the McMansion tends to feed into this as they have imposing entryways and fronts with less attention paid to other parts of the house.

But, getting evicted from such a house suggests the owners can’t afford this lifestyle. In a country that tends to promote homeownership, getting evicted for financial reasons is usually not a happy topic for people but it could be even worse for people who have lived for years with the appearance that money is no problem. From what I’ve read about the various Real Housewives shows, their participants tend to fall in this group: spending money to keep up appearances matters so not being able to “keep up with the Joneses” in terms of their house would be a big deal. In other words, for some Americans, living in the McMansion in the first place is not a problem but not being able to live there long-term is.

A note: the various Real Housewives shows have generated a number of mentions of McMansions over recent years.

Female characters in recent movies and TV shows still marginalized

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A new study shows female characters in recent movies and TV shows still play very different roles than men:

The study, lead by sociologist Stacy L. Smith, analyzed 11,927 speaking roles on prime-time television programs aired in spring 2012, children’s TV shows aired in 2011 and family films (rated G, PG, or PG-13) released between 2006 and 2011. Smith’s team looked at female characters’ occupations, attire, body size and whether they spoke or not.

The team’s data showed that on prime-time television, 44.3 percent of females were gainfully employed — compared with 54.5 percent of males. Women across the board were more likely to be shown wearing sexy attire or exposing some skin, and body size trends were apparent: “Across both prime time and family films, teenaged females are the most likely to be depicted thin,” Smith wrote in the study’s executive summary. The ratio of men to women in STEM fields was 14.25 to 1 in family films and 5.4 to 1 on prime time TV. Perhaps most telling are the percentages of speaking female characters in each media form: only 28.3 percent of characters in family films, 30.8 percent of characters in children’s shows, and 38.9 percent of characters on prime time television were women.

In a summary of the study’s findings, the researchers reported that they found a lack of aspirational female role models in all three media categories, and cited five main observations: female characters are sidelined, women are stereotyped and sexualized, a clear employment imbalance exists, women on TV come up against a glass ceiling, and there are not enough female characters working in STEM fields.

This reminds me of the video Killing Us Softly 4: similar images of women are spread throughout advertising and other areas. Television and movies don’t exactly depict reality but we can still ask what values they are portraying. It is not just about entertainment; sure, people want to escape from the real world from time to time but any sort of media is creating and working with values an ideas. Of course, the real values portrayed by television and movies may be consumerism (for example, in the latest Bond film) and making money.

Seeing low-density Nashville as well as its revived core on TV

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Nashville may be about country music but it also provides some views of sprawling Nashville:

Nashville remains one of the lowest density cities in the United States, and both film and series rove widely over its suburban homes and scattered music venues. ABC’s principle location, the Bluebird Cafe, occupies a strip mall in traffic-snarled Green Hills, surrounded by chain retail and McMansions. Reyna James lives in snobbish Beale Meade, a former plantation turned moneyed bastion that pointedly excluded the music community in the 1970s. Then country was considered the music of loud and ugly bumpkins. But as legendary Nashville producer Tony Brown observes: “Money can kinda pretty you up.”

Sprawl now competes with new urban designs in Nashville. Employing soaring aerial views, the series’ opening sequence scans acres of wooded hills and pasture, within which are carved oases of development, including the Opryland Hotel, the Mall in Green Hills and the Belle Meade estates. But no longer is Nashville a city without a center. The camera circles the downtown’s middling skyscrapers, zeroing in on Nashville’s resuscitated heart, the 120 year-old Ryman Auditorium, a former tabernacle and “the Mother Church of Country Music.”

The rest of the article provides some interesting insight into how Nashville has been viewed in movies and on TV.

One thought while reading about the changes in Nashville and how it is portrayed on Nashville: TV and movies tend to show the “high points” of urban and suburban life. In other words, we tend to get sweeping shots of urban cores that show off tall buildings and lights. When showing suburbs, we tend to see big houses and well-kept lawns. Both sets of images tend to promote a more glitzy image. What we tend not to see is the more mundane aspects of suburban and urban life. In the suburbs, you don’t see much of the big box stores or strip malls or fast food joints or local institutions like churches, schools, and civic buildings. (I’m also thinking here of Modern Family – we don’t see much of their actual community as most of the action takes place inside of several large houses.) In the city, we don’t see “normal” neighborhoods but tend to see neighborhood hangouts, which always tend to look like nice bars or coffee shops, as well as cool apartments or condos. Perhaps “normal life” is too boring for these story lines but movies and TV shows aren’t exactly providing an honest image of places.

What television show will assume the role of “sociological experiment of our time”?

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MTV’s Jersey Shore will run only one more season. This reminded me that I have seen several sites refer to the show’s sociological nature. Two examples:

1. From Gawker.  A number of their recaps have included this claim about the show (including this March 9, 2012 post): “the greatest sociological experiment of our time.” As it is probably meant to be, this is quite hyperbolic.

2. From the New York Post:

We are gathered here this evening to celebrate and memorialize the death of an era in MTV history: The Jersey Shore era. As both a former employee of Lord Viacom MTV Networks (full disclosure: from 2008 – 2011) and a viewer, it feels as though a chapter in its life has come to a close. The pages have turned and the sun is setting on our tanned up guido friends. And for a few years, this sociological experiment defined MTV and defined the audience it cultivated. We all watched in slackjawed horror/glee the day it all began, and now we must lay it to rest. And so with it goes the days of MTV’s most polarizing programming. Let us reflect.

I’m not quite sure why this show was repeatedly tied to sociology. Perhaps some simply couldn’t understand why the show had good ratings considering the content. Perhaps it is because a lot of people wanted to hold up the show as a mirror to make claims about the excesses and ills of our larger society.

But we could also ask which shows might take up this spot in the future. I hear that Honey Boo Boo character is getting a lot of attention but there is no shortage of reality TV shows that portray interesting characters in interesting situations. Was Jersey Shore really more emblematic of American life than other shows?

Shoddy McMansions provide good settings for books, movies

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A book review in the Christian Science Monitor suggests that McMansions lend themselves to good mysteries:

Forget crumbling castles or isolated mansions. The recession has created something truly rare: a whole new kind of haunted house. The summer’s best two mysteries are both set in shoddy subdivisions of McMansions – relics of wrecked hopes built just before the housing bubble popped in 2007. Both feature seemingly golden couples, one Irish and one American, who lose the ability to cope when the world suddenly throws out the guidebook to the good life. And both offer shrewdly written, darkly compelling stories that rank among the year’s best.

So there is at least one good thing about McMansions: they make for good dystopian settings!

I will note that this is not limited to fiction books. A number of movies and television shows also use McMansions as a backdrop. Think of The Sopranos or the Real Housewives series. As with books, there is some commentary here as well: McMansions are lived in by certain kinds of people.

Suburgatory nears first show; will it offer anything new?

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Yesterday, I ran into a full-page promotional ad for Suburgatory, a new ABC sitcom which first airs on September 28. Here is the ad (image from DisneyDreaming.com):

Suburgatory Full Page Advertisement

Watch the trailer here and also read ABC’s description of the show (these are separate paragraphs but I think they are meant to be two different descriptions):

Single father George only wants the best for his 16-year-old daughter, Tessa. So when he finds a box of condoms on her nightstand, he moves them out of their apartment in New York City to a house in the suburbs. But all Tessa sees is the horror of over-manicured lawns and plastic Franken-moms. Being in the ‘burbs can be hell, but it also may just bring Tessa and George closer than they’ve ever been.

Tessa (Jane Levy) and George (Jeremy Sisto) have been on their own ever since Tessa’s mom pulled a “Kramer vs. Kramer” before she was even potty trained. So far, George has done a pretty good job of raising Tessa without a maternal figure in their lives, but suddenly he’s feeling a little out of his league. So it’s goodbye New York City and hello suburbs. At first Tessa is horrified by the big-haired, fake-boobed mothers and their sugar-free Red Bull-chugging kids. But little by little she and her dad begin finding a way to survive on the clean streets of the ‘burbs. Sure, the neighbors might smother you with love while their kids stare daggers at your back, but underneath all that plastic and caffeine, they’re really not half bad. And they do make a tasty pot roast.

As I suggested back in March, this show at least appears that it may cover typical suburban territory: an innocent person moves to a nice-looking neighborhood but finds that the people aren’t what they seem and hijinks or unpleasant events ensue. The suburbs are full of fake people and I’m sure the show will have some commentary about striving for social status, “authentic” living in New York City, and perhaps even takes a shot or two at McMansions and SUVs. Perhaps this show’s twist is that the main characters are a teenage daughter and a single dad but hasn’t this also been tackled by other shows and movies? A new prediction: if it simply updates Desperate Housewives or Revolutionary Road for the teenage set, I don’t think it will last until the end of the first season.

Thinking about this show, it would be interesting to compile a database of television shows that really tackle suburban living. To do this, one would first have to distinguish between shows that take place in the suburbs (say Boy Meets World – not sure why this popped into my mind) versus ones that revolve around suburban themes and issues. I’ve thought about doing something similar for popular music songs in order to look for patterns. In both hypothetical databases, I suspect I would find a generally critical (or perhaps “satirical”) take on suburbs even as Americans have continued to move into these places.

I’ll be tracking the fate of this show and may also have to watch an episode for research purposes…

A basic sociological take on The Smurfs

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In a piece that could be a  Sociology 101 analysis, here is the conclusion regarding Smurf society:

The Smurfs society is unusually strong. Many times their status quo has been challenged, most notably with the introduction of Smurfette, with the community prevailing. The identity roles of each member of the society are well-defined which creates a symbiotic bond between each member and their chosen paths. In relation to humanity and childhood, this translates into cooperative theory and play. When a group of kids gets together on a “mission” they choose a leader (or usually the strongest personality volunteers him or herself) and from there roles are assigned.

Where other cartoons focused on individual efforts, The Smurfs focused on the society functioning as a whole, with individual roles each playing a part in the machine. This is a great example of a small society functioning effectively, even if they lived in mushrooms.

Just invoke the name of Durkheim and perhaps we have a functionalist analysis.

Before the start of the analysis, here is how the author describes sociology:

In Part One of the Psychology of cartoons, I focused more on the individual psychology of certain cartoon characters. This is something that I will return to, but for the purpose of this post I’m switching gears and instead focusing on a large scale (or small scale) sociological study. As you may or may not know — the implication is in its name — sociology is the study of society. It’s a very broad psychological discipline, and there are many conflicting theories surrounding any hypothesis. Since I have no degree in psychology or sociology, and I’m just a geek that likes to pretend I know what I’m talking about, this is going to be one of the broader studies performed.

This could use some work, particularly the bit about sociology being a “very broad psychological discipline.”

New ABC pilot: Suburgatory

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Here is a short description of Suburgatory, a new comedy pilot for ABC:

Suburgatory has been dubbed a satirical look at life in the suburbs that centers on a New York City woman who moves to a cookie-cutter community only to realize that life there is much more frightening.

Hasn’t this “satirical look at life in the suburbs” been done a number of times before? From The Stepford Wives (review of the original and the remake) to Desperate Housewives, this seems like well-traveled territory. What will set this show apart and how frightening can the suburbs get? This could be just another piece in the suburban genre.

The premise of the show seems to go against what most Americans have sought in suburbia. For many, the city is the frightening place and the suburbs represent safety, good schools, and more space. This is not to say that the suburbs don’t have their problems; they certainly do. But to go so far as to say that life is “more frightening” in the suburbs seems strange.

And if the suburbs are a place like purgatory, where exactly would a show like this (and other stories like it) say heaven and hell are located?

American TV shows help limit extremism in Saudi Arabia

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The cables Wikileaks has put out contain all sorts of interesting information. According to the Telegraph, some American cultural products, such as Desperate Housewives, The David Letterman Show, and Friends, are valuable forces in combating jihad in Saudi Arabia:

In a message sent back to Washington DC, officials at the US Embassy in Jeddah said the shows, starring Jennifer Aniston and Eva Longoria, were successfully undermining the spread of jihadist ideas among the country’s youth.

Such programmes, broadcast with Arabic subtitles on several Saudi satellite channels, were part of a push by the kingdom to foster openness and counter extremists, according to the cable…

The diplomatic cable was headed “David Letterman: Agent of Influence,” referring to the US chat show host who is also being broadcast to a Saudi audience.

The May 2009 cable said: “Saudis are now very interested in the outside world and everybody wants to study in the US if they can. They are fascinated by US culture in a way they never were before.” American sitcoms and chat shows were said to be finding a popular audience even in remote, conservative parts of the kingdom.

I’m glad such shows can be put to use – but this probably wasn’t a use that American TV executives expected…

On a more serious note, this highlights how American cultural products can be exported to other countries. Whether these shows reflect “American culture” can be debated but they certainly can introduce new ideas and values. Our military power might be impressive but American TV, movies, music, and more often have their own powerful influence.

Critic compares quality and appeal of current TV shows and movies

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A.O. Scott, film critic for the New York Times, compares the television and movie industries. He seems to suggest that television, particularly in light of a poor summer movie season, has pulled ahead in creativity and captivating its audience:

The salient question is this: Will any of the movies surfacing this fall provoke the kind of conversation that television series routinely do, breaking beyond niches into something larger? This bad summer movie season, in what seems to be one of the best television years ever, reinforces a suspicion that has been brewing for some time. Television, a business with its own troubles, is nonetheless able to inspire loyal devotion among viewers, to sustain virtual water-cooler rehashes on dozens of Web sites and to hold a fun-house mirror up to reality as movies rarely do.

Look back over the past decade. How many films have approached the moral complexity and sociological density of “The Sopranos” or “The Wire”? Engaged recent American history with the verve and insight of “Mad Men”? Turned indeterminacy and ambiguity into high entertainment with the conviction of “Lost”? Addressed modern families with the sharp humor and sly warmth of “Modern Family”? Look at “Glee,” and then try to think of any big-screen teen comedy or musical — or, for that matter, movie set in Ohio — that manages to be so madly satirical with so little mean-spiritedness.

I swear, I’m not trying to horn in on my colleagues’ territory. But the traditional relationship between film and television has reversed, as American movies have become conservative and cautious, while scripted series, on both broadcast networks and cable, are often more daring, topical and willing to risk giving offense.

One wonders what has happened with both the television and movie industries to lead to this outcome. This could be just a temporary blip (maybe just a spurt in creativity in television shows?) or perhaps it signals something that will last longer.

A quick thought: a number of the TV shows that Scott mentions as noteworthy are ones that take advantage the extra time that television shows have to tell their stories. Even the best movie can only go on for so long and with most clocking in at two hours or under, writers and directors are limited in what can be conveyed. Story arcs are important to these superior television shows and viewers can invest more time (which leads to more conversations, deeper attachments, more money to be made in advertising, etc.).