1950s Sitcoms

            As stated in my opening blog post my research of the progression of gender roles through television will start in the decade 1950. We decided to start with the 1950s because it’s during this era that the idea of a perfect suburban family was invented. It was advertised to veterans of World War 2 that they would come home to a large house in the suburbs with a wife and child waiting for them. This created an ideal of what the American home life should look like and we see this reflection in all forms of media during that time, especially television.

            The first television sitcom I will be looking at is I Love Lucy. This 1950s black and white famous television series stars Lucille Ball and Desi Amaz. The show takes place in a small apartment in New York City, where Lucy and her husband Ricky live. Lucy is a stay at home wife who dreams of making it big in Hollywood, much like her husband Ricky who is a singer. Most episodes of the show portray Lucy comically getting herself into trouble while trying to make it big in show business and Ricky having to come and get her out of trouble. This sitcom gives us a good look at what the dynamic was between husbands and wives in the 1950s. Wives stayed home – Lucy was always sure to have dinner ready for Ricky – while the husbands worked. It also gives us a look at how women were seen in the 1950s. Lucy is portrayed as a naïve and ambitious, always believing what she’s told and doing what she’s asked. Meanwhile Ricky is portrayed as stern and in charge of everything, including Lucy.

            The other television series I’ll be taking a look into is called, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett. This show portrays a Caucasian American family, complete with a mother a father and two sons. As the usual portrayal in the 1950s the mother is a stay at home housewife and the father is a businessman. This family portrays a more stereotypical American family in the 1950s. Much like in I Love Lucy the wife is a stay at home mom and is compliant with whatever her husband wants. She always has dinner on the table for her boys and her husband when they return home, and she’s always dressed in a skirt and blouse. On the other hand the husbands and even the sons in this case go out and work, or go to school and are seen as in charge, the men of the house.

            Both of these sitcoms give us a good look at how women were seen in this decade, compliant to their husband’s wishes and a good housewife. The wives in both these sitcoms were always dressed in skirts and often times portrayed as naïve. The husbands in both these sitcoms are shown as hard workers, and always in charge of the family’s affairs. We’ve seen this become the stereotype of the 1950s home life, and as I continue with my research we will see how long this stereotype holds true.

            Below I have attached two pictures, one showing Lucy from I Love Lucy cooking dinner in typical 1950s attire and the second showing Harriett from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett serving a dish to Ozzie and their sons. Both of these are examples of what I've discussed earlier in this post. 

Chris's Opening Blog Post

            This will be blog run by my peers and I. The goal is to examine the progression of the roles gender played in various aspects of life as seen through media from the 1950’s onward. The portrayal of each sex has changed gradually throughout history. In order to examine this progression of gender roles first the word gender must be defined. For the intents and purposes of this blog it will be defined as a set of social and behavioral standards that are considered appropriate for either a man or woman in a social setting. The blog will also keep in mind that these representations of life are just that, representations. It is often the case that these depictions and the real thing are not equal. Rather they are depictions of how the people of the time believe or wish the world were.

            For the blog the starting point of 1950 was chosen for multiple reasons. First of these reasons being that a great deal of change in the roles of both genders, male and female, has occurred from the 1950s to now in the United States of America. This was the result of various movements, organizations and events that have truly impacted modern society. The other major reason being that the great technological leaps made during this timeframe not only made the current forms of media more available to the public but also created entirely new forms of media. These leaps in technology put televisions and eventually computers into the home of every American.

            My peers and I will research this topic through different forms of media. Each person will focus on a particular form of media. These forms of media include advertisement, film, television, music and gaming. By gaming I mean anything from sports to modern video games.  The topic I will cover is the representations of gender roles in gaming. An individual blog will focus on one of these topics in a specific decade. Starting with the 1950s to modern day.

            The topic I will cover in this blog is gaming. I chose this topic for several reasons. First being that growing up I was an avid fan of both sports and video games to the point that they have both became an integral part of who I am today. For sports I ended up latching onto tennis where I competed throughout my life until I graduated community college and have connections through my uncle into the professional scene of the past. For video games I have played various games including Counter Strike, Street Fighter and Ultimate Marvel versus Capcom 3 at a semi-professional level. Being in the various communities associated with both of these major parts of my life give me a unique insight into the topic at hand over someone looking into it from the outside. I will look into the roles of both men and women in this topic for a change in gender roles.

The research done for this blog will be done in a few different ways. First being archival research on the topic at hand. Archival research will be done through university resources as well as outside resources. The next being interviews with members of these communities. Primarily being the tennis community for sports and the fighting game community for video games.

This topic depicts very well the ways of thinking towards gender roles in society and the issue some have with the changes that have occurred. Hopefully through research of the various decades will show a general trend. I believe this trend will prove to be in favor for gender equality in not only this aspect of society but in society as a whole. That being said this progress will not be linear. I believe there will be many set backs to go along with the progress made throughout the decades.

Michelle's Opening Blog

1950s- Present: Gender Roles

            Gender role plays a big role in our society today. From the 1950s to present day, the roles of men and women changed tremendously. In the early decades, men always are allowed and have the first priority over everything including women. The intimacy between men and women have evolved throughout the decades from closed relationships to a public and opened one. How did that exactly changed? There are many factors that contributed to the transformation of gender roles. Factors such as the introduction of media usage greatly influenced the lives of human beings. In our group blog, we will explain in detail of the specific factors inside media that can and did already affect the gender roles.

            In our group, we’ve decided to focus on the progression of gender role in periods from 1950s to present. In doing so, we selected a focal point on several factors that encouraged and portrayed the role of men and women. In particular, women will be our main focus point; however we will also discuss the transformation of men.  To get more depth of the issue, we selected several categories to explain the process of gender change. We selected television shows, films, advertisements and video games to further explain the progression. Everyone in our group will focus on one of these factors and as for me; I am going to further research the advertisements that portray the progression of both men and women.

            In the early 1900s, women were usually indoors and had the role of housewives who takes care of everything inside the household. However, when World War II occurred in 1938, women’s role shifted a little from bring themselves into the work field. Thousands of men were drafted into the military and left the work field empty; women took the role as head of the house and started working in factories, shops, and stores in order to maintain functioning of a household. After the World War II, society got more stable and men’s return to home replaced the jobs of many women. Even though some women remained in the work field, many were still expected to be good house wives. These images were usually visualized through the use of media. Media is a powerful source ever since technology was introduced. In the 1900s, the increase usage of technology forces media to become more powerful and influential. One type of media source that become efficient in the 1900s were advertisements. Advertisements were not only images and words printed or shown on television, instead they are like magnets that attract audiences into the product or message producers are trying to convey. 

The usages of media have greatly impacted the lives of Americans in the United States since the early 1950s.  Advertisements as one of the essential source of media have become more productive in the society. Many owners of businesses started using advertisements to introduce their product and try to attract more consumers to demand the supplies. As soon as the United States gains peace from war and other struggles, many industries begin to produce necessities for households.  Many home appliances and food industries uses female to persuade audiences to consume their product. In doing so, I believe the store owners uses women to reflect upon their gender role in this era. The advertisements suggested and proves women to be housewife and child bearing materials. Also, some other advertisements also portray the role of men, whereas little boys were the attraction when being placed in the same portrait as their female siblings. These advertisements suggested that men usually were the head of the society where they are always considered to have the first priority over women. The intimacy between men and women in the early 1900s from advertisements depicts the gap between them from first men then women.

However, media slowly progresses the role of women as time runs. In the mid 1990s, women begin to wear little less than before. Many started to wear less covering clothing; making them more attractive to men. Unlike those women of the 1950s, women in the future decade became more ambitious towards everything such as men and money. Women were attractions for men. From there to now, women become the main interest. It is no longer about the products industries try to sell; instead they are using women’s seductiveness to persuade and blind audiences, men mainly, to consume the product. As each decade moves on, I am hoping to analyze that the advertisement field will begin to use less clothing wore women to advertise their products.

In the future blog post, I will explain in depth of several advertisements that portrays the gender role progressions in every decade from 1950s to present in media. In this blog project, I am hoping to further investigate the different types of advertisements that portray the transformation of gender roles.  

Dingmin Lin‘s opening blog

Topic: 
The Progression of Gender Roles in Media since the 1950s

Message trying to deliver:
Human senses are an essential tool, like a receptor, that receives information. Human receives a lot of information from the social Media like files, music, Television show, and advertisement have deeply affect the different gender behavior. Therefore, in this Collaborative Research Blog, I want to evaluate and understand the mediating impaction of gender and gender role self-perception on response to different type of music and music videos.
General question about the topic:
1. In this collaborative research blog, I want to find out how music or music video influences different gender roles? 
2. Why music and music video can affects mediating impaction of gender and gender role self-perception? 
3. Does different time period, the music and music videos can reflects the fashion and human’s desire? 
4. How does human influence the music or music videos?
Note:
Because of those questions, I decide to do search on 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s to find out the relationship between human and music or music videos,
1960 music
I remember some songs like “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by Shirelles, “Respect” by Aretha Franklin and “I heard it through the grapevine” by Marvin Garye, etc., most of these songs are soft and easy to listen to. In “Respect” by Aretha Franklin, she singed "Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me..." 
Questions of 1960’s Music/ main concerns:
1. Does some song like “Respect” by Aretha Franklin reflect to the history movement (woman’s right movement)? And how are they related?
2. Why in the music perform, singers all wears formal dresses or suits?
3. Why the love song music is the main stream music during the 1960s?
1970 music
From what I know there are some Disco and Club start to appear, and Rock music become more popular. The 70s songs created a trend of relaxing music as well as dance music, and people started go to Disco Club. Therefore many disco and rock music came out at that time period like “The Hustle” by Van McCoy, “I will survive” by the Bee Gees. “YMCA” by the Village People also helped to add to the popularity of disco music. 
Questions of 1970’s Music/ main concerns:
1. How did the disco and rock music affect different gender’s thinking? 
2. Does Woman going to nightclub shows that they get very success on woman right movement?
3. Does singers change the type what they wear? And how does they changed?
1980 music
From my knowledge, Disco’s popularity was relative short-lived, and the happy songs that are characteristic of the 1980s. There are so many different style of music are been created including new wave, Hair Metal, and Hip Hop. All of those different new genres are still affect music society today. 
Questions of 1980’s Music/ main concerns:
1. What cause the singer became more important than ever? 
2. What cause women wearing different color of cloths, unlike 50s and 60s, just black and white cloth?
3. Why does people consider people like Madonna Louise Ciccone, Michael Jackson, and Whitney Houston are “super star”? What cause that happened?
1990 music
From my past knowledge, I know that MTV was very famous at that time, and teenagers began to join to the music industry like one of the most commercially successful boy bands Backstreet Boys. And Hip Hop became the best-selling music genre by the mid-1990s, one of more well-known star is Dr.Dre. 
Questions of 1990’s Music/ main concerns:
1. What cause most of woman singer started to not wear full cover cloth u and even some start like Britney Spears wear most naked?
2. What motivates teenagers join to the music industry?
3. Does MTV effects genders roles? If so, how does it effects on gender roles?
2000 music
Based on what I remember during 2000, many Hip-Pop/Rap singers’ songs, especially from the male singers, they mention more about drug, party, sex, and money than any other year’s songs would. Also, male singers start to train themselves to be more muscular. On the other hand, woman singers try to be sexy and to make them look attractive. 
Questions of 2000’s Music/ main concerns:
1. Why does male hip hop star all mentions about drug, party, sex and money?
2. What cause male singer want to be more muscular? 
3. What cause female singer want to be more sexy attractive.
Research Tool/Source:
Begin of this Collaborative Research Blog, I will use internet as my main resource, and if I can’t find anything from the internet, then I will go to library to find different type of music in different time period. On the internet, I will find most of music or music videos on www.youtube.com. If I don’t find anything from the library and internet, my alternative source is going to buffalo city to search in the music store. In the English class, I will communicate my group, and ask something what they find out is interest, so maybe I can also use it on my research.

Waleed Malik-Opening Blog Post

           Society often has predetermined roles for both genders. These roles are often seen as the normal way in which a person should behave, and for the most part they are followed by the majority of people. However what society considers “normal” is subject to constant change, and there has been drastic changes in how each gender is viewed, and how each gender can act, in the past few decades. This has been the result of various movements, organizations and events that have paved the way for social change. For millennia the functions of each sex have remained constant, yet in the past 50 years, the dominant perceptions of what is normal behavior for genders has changed exponentially.

            Our group has decided to focus on how the portrayal of these roles in the media has changed from the 1950’s till the present day. We choose to begin with the 1950’s because we feel that it was a major watershed moment for the United States. People become wealthier, society became more integrated, and new technology allowed for new forms of media to develop. The framework for modern media was established in this time, with television becoming a common feature in homes, new news agencies coming into play, and sports becoming an integral part of American society. I think it’s obvious that our blog will focus on the Western world, as it is the only place that has enough media forms to actually write about.

            We decided that each of us would focus on one form of media. The sources we decided to blog on are television, film, advertisements, music and gaming (ranging from sports to modern video games). For each blog, one of us will focus on our form for a specific decade, starting with fifties and making our way to the present day. Each are present in all the decades we wish to focus on, so there will be plenty of material and information that we can research and write on.

            I myself have decided to focus on film because I am a fanatic when it comes to movies. I already have a large amount of knowledge on the medium and so I already know where to begin my research. I also think film is great form of media to write about, mostly because there is an overabundance of information. I also think it will have the most extreme portrayals of each gender, as there are a multitude of independent films and documentaries that are not subject to censorship and regulations. Almost every decade there is a controversial film that causes an uproar in society for touching on taboos that people choose to ignore.

            I have already decided upon the topic for my first blog. I have decided that I will focus on the American Film Noir genre that dominated Hollywood during the late forties and early fifties. All of the films in this category followed a certain formula when it came to male and female characters, and it seemed to be successful as the genre persisted for over a decade.

            On the male side I will focus on their appearance and personality. Often the male protagonist was characterized as being melancholy and innocent, that he was the victim of fate and his faults were forgivable. He would appear as the usual tall, dark and handsome made famous by actors like James Dean, John Wayne and Marlon Brando.

            For females, I will focus on their dialogue, body language and actions. Almost every noir film of the era portrayed as a femme fatale; she would be the male hero’s downfall. She was portrayed as a dark seductress who would undermine the protagonist while pretending to be on his side. This echoes the historical view of women by major institutions of male dominated society, that women are a source of lust and they are often at fault for problems in the family, hinting at the concept of the original sin of Eve and the blame that has been laid upon her since.

            In the first blog, I will compare and contrast two motion pictures of the era: Detour and A Streetcar Named Desire. Both share many similarities in style, cinematography and acting, but they have major differences when it comes to their portrayal of men and women. While Detour followed the more traditional views of the time period, A Streetcar Named Desire was near revolutionary in how it depicted family, love and gender relationships.

            I think the compare and contrast of several films is a method I want to follow for each decade. It will allow me to touch on all the views and thoughts of each decade, showing both the progression, reversion and stagnation of gender roles throughout the past 60 years. It might be difficult to find such direct comparisons for subsequent blogs, but it will be an interesting way differing perceptions that exist event today.

            Another form of media that I would like our blog to touch upon is literature. For centuries it was the only form of entertainment that people could rely upon. Novels such as The Awakening, which was released in 1890s to great controversy, often express views much too progressive for their time and they are also a major source of inspiration for other mediums of media.

I think a topic I would like our group to discuss at some point in our blog is whether the portrayal of genders in media is cause or effect of changing gender roles in society.. The answer to that question is currently unanswered and it will probably differ for each member of our group since our mediums are so different. In either case, media is a powerful, and sometimes essential, agent of social change. 

Rachel's Opening Blog Post

Through out the course of this blog my fellow students and I will be researching the progression of gender roles through forms of media. We decided to start with the decade 1950, taking a look at the family life during that time. The 1950s is a decade known for it’s typical American family unit, a basis to start our research on. From there we will look at each decade for proof of the progression of gender roles using different types of media such as television, films, advertisements and so on. I believe that I will find a steady progression to the equality of genders with every new decade bringing advancements for the roles each gender is seen in. My final out come will prove that over time the roles that each gender is suspect to play has changed to a more equal based idea of what characteristics belong to a certain gender.

            We have divided up the different forms of media that could have been used to produce gender role ideals. Each person in the group will claim one form of media and produce an article based off of the portrayal of a gender role through that media over time.

            The media I chose to study was television, and more specifically sitcoms based on family life. For each decade I will look at sitcoms of the time period and see how each gender is portrayed. It will also give me a look into how the styles of family life have changed over time as well. As I continue to move my way through decades of sitcoms I expect to see the progression of how each gender is portrayed eventually resulting in a more gender equal side of the spectrum.

            Starting with the 1950s era I will be looking at sitcoms such as I Love Lucy, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. I expect these sitcoms to portray the type of family life that was once believed to be the America dream. The wife of the family stays home and does housework, meanwhile the husband goes off to work and takes care of everything else.

            For the 1960s era I’ve chosen a television show that was played early on in the decade called Leave It To Beaver. In this decade I expect to find the same amount of gender stereotypes as seen in the 1950s decades. The second show I chose to look at is slightly different although has the same layout in terms of family as the previous sitcoms. Bewitched was a sitcom made in the late 1960s and I expect it to portray a slightly stronger woman role in the sitcom due to the radical woman’s rights movements of the 1960s.

            I will be researching two sitcoms to represent the 1970s decade, The Brady Bunch and The Odd Couple. Both of these sitcoms are a large jump for the progression of gender roles and the ideals of family life from the 1960s. I expect my research to reveal a lot of kick back from these two shows from the public as well as seeing major steps towards gender equality.

            In the 1980s not only did we start to see the equality of gender roles in sitcoms but we also saw the equality of races through sitcoms. One of the sitcoms I will be researching is The Cosby Show, which portrays an African American family in the 1980s. The second show I will be researching is also a significant step towards gender roles in the 1980s. It’s called, Three’s Company. With this sitcom I expect to see the ideals of the standard home life completely switched as well as a more gender equal ideals.

            I will only be researching one sitcom for the 1990s. This sitcom brings in many aspects from some of the previous decades as well as incorporating a fresh ideal of the male gender. The sitcom I will be researching is called, Full House. As I continue to research this television sitcom I expect to see the roles of men in a family setting change entirely as well as the dynamic of family life.

            Finally, to represent the start second millennia I will be researching the sitcom, Modern Family. The title of this sitcom is a good description of the show itself, it’s a realistic portrayal of what family life has become in the United States. With this sitcom I expect to see roles of gender being more equal, as well as a completely new dynamic to family life.

            Through out my research I set out to prove that over time the way America sees and portrays stereotypes of gender has changed. Starting with the 1950s decade which is known to portray the ideal family life, all the way to current day which shows a sitcom being open to gender equality and new types of relationships in the family life.