Three Directions Male Bashing Can Go

 College Writing I: Response #3

Student: John Gibson

Professor: Michael Baron

University Of Massachusetts, Lowell, 

Fab 24, 2024

Three Directions Male Bashing Can Go 

- Response To PopMatter.com’s “Male Bashing On TV”

Author Michael Abernethy brought a new view to the popular culture of the early 2000s, showing male bashing can have different intentions and directions. The TV sitcoms and shows mentioned are King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, According to Jim, The Simpsons, Reba, Spring Break, Seinfeld, and Will And Grace, among others.

One direction the bashing leads is the general incompetent portrayal of men after the sexual revolution of TV. In The Simpsons, Marge is a considerate housewife who attends parent-teacher meetings, and Homer’s mischievous adventures with Bart, the son, provide the comic backdrop. The power dynamics shift when women become intelligent and provide anchors to the family, and men lose the anchoring role. Homer makes the signature sound “doh” when things don’t go his way and he needs to go around and bounce around obstacles, and there are many incidents of “doh” per episode.

However, the bashing promotes the mentality that men in the family enjoy the work product of wives without the need to prove their worth. Raymond often stands around his wife while his wife bumbles in house chores. Raymond couldn’t get over his waning youth as he aged from a 6-foot-tall former self to a middle-aged man slightly shorter than 6 feet. And Marie, his wife, handed him 2 pairs of shoe insoles from the laundry basket, conveniently in her arms, and gestured to Raymond to add to his shoes to bump up his height, solving problems. Raymond is loved even when he is incompetent. The power dynamics shift again to pamper men’s egos.

But the power dynamics can shift in dark directions. The mischievous TV personality Joe Francis, the creator of Girls Gone Wild, has pled no contest to child sexual abuse cases and spent hard time in prison (Fox News, 2015). The Spring Break brand logically needs to walk on the tight ropes between mischievous and failure or legal liability with a similar theme. And, when changes occur rapidly unchecked, TV comedy scripts can stray into the realm of “stereotypes” when there is no fun in the comedy with “countless crises” (Abernethy, 2023).

Abernethy’s narrative starts with sarcasm “The following article contains big words and complex sentences.” There is a paradox in big words published on a popular media website. “Pop” refers to something popular with the majority of the population, and the majority of the population are logically average citizens who use average vocabulary to communicate ordinary matters, not big words. One possible explanation of the paradox of PopMatter.com’s willingness to publish the article is that the general population is mature enough and sophisticated enough to engage in the concepts. There is “hope” for improvement of the American way of life, as Abernethy revealed near the conclusion paragraph. But, keeping track of power shifts will need to be on the reader’s radar.

Works Cited 

Abernethy, Michael. “Male Bashing on TV.” PopMatters, 9 Jan. 2003, www.popmatters.com/male-bashing-on-tv. 

Fox News. “‘girls Gone Wild’ Founder Joe Francis Pleads No Contest to Child Abuse, Prostitution Charges.” Fox News, FOX News Network, 14 Jan. 2015, www.foxnews.com/story/girls-gone-wild-founder-joe-francis-pleads-no-contest-to-child-abuse-prostitution-charges.