feminism

It was a quite subversion as humour was acceptable to men and women equally and did not offend sensitivities of a dominant class. Mellencamp views the emergence of situational comedies in the 1950s US society as a secretive push by sections of women society in the US at the time to escape and subvert the male patriarchal dominance of the time with television narrative of humour. ’ (Owen, 1999; 26) However, despite the arguments of racial specific programming the authors conveniently forget that there are other ethnic based programs such as all black, all Muslim or all Asian programs that offer consumer choice for racial groups via cable and satellite television subscriber networks (such as Asia Star network, etc). However, as in the 1950’s productions of Lucy and Gracie, the modern productions confine themselves to ‘commitments to heteronormative relationships, American commodity culture, and a predominantly Anglo perspective. She presents it as a resistance, as the personalities of Lucy and Gracie where images of a suppressed ideal for many women who were drowned by the tide of society’s push for an ideal woman being the quite housewife in the working father in the nuclear family model. Gendered relations are freer, offering possibilities of a new ideal in gender relations that can offer itself to multiple interpretations including economic, political and social areas (Wayne, 2000; Lafky, 1999). n because of the development in the feminist debates surrounding those critiques.

Television programs produced decades later did not attempt to show a façade of unreal idealism, but rather has focused on a narrative where women, in particular young women, have independence of mind and power of self will (Owen, 1999; 25; Lafky, 1999; 7). However, Owens (1999; 25) comments on the link between 1950’s type family oriented idealism thus ‘Ironically, the story lines are steeped in television nostalgia, the public forum in which the idealized American family was imagined and perfected’. The popular dramatic teen series such as Dawson's Creek, Felicity, and Party of Five are illustrations that Owens uses to show how women have a place of independence and liberty from social ideals of family and relationships. They depict with subtle humour the narratives of friends as family, ‘because the traditional family unit has fragmented’ (Owen, 1999; 25). But more than just drawing the link between past and present, the productions of contemporary times feature the new American ideal of adolescents embodying the spirit of freedom and choice that the country is proud to call its core values. Not enough was made of this point, which it perhaps should have been.