Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Is It Really A Modern Family?

The television show Modern Family has won many Emmy's and Golden Globe awards for Best Comedy. Ever since the show started in 2009, this comedy series has been a hit. It both promotes and breaks a variety of racial stereotypes, that is covered up by the use of comedy. For example, is making fun of certain races and where people come from. The show isn’t necessarily racist but can use certain racial comments from time to time. On the other hand though it does show positive sides of having a diverse family.
The main use of racial comedy used in the show is making fun of the character Gloria who is from Colombia. She has a very strong accent and has trouble saying certain words in English, and they use that to make fun of her at least once in every episode. They also make fun of her culture a lot and her son Many as well. So the show does strongly stereotype Hispanic people and Colombina culture. Also they bring in the factor that she is married to a much older, wealthy, white man. Along with that there is another character they utilize for racial comedy, Lily. Lily is adopted from Vietnam and they bring up her culture and her race sometimes in the show. For example, in one episode, one of her dad's say’s. “Leave it to the gays to raise the only underachieving Asian in America.” In this particular line they are making a reference to a basic Asian stereotype. Not only do they make fun of specific characters, the title of the show, “Modern Family” is a stereotype in itself. It’s telling america this is what the average family should look like, which is mostly white and revolves around a white family.
However the show does break some racial ideologies because it does show diversity in race, age, and sexuality, but almost tries too hard to where the family isn’t really “modern.” The stereotypes exemplified in Modern Family appear in many other types of media and all works of culture as well. Overall this comedy show breaks some racial stereotypes, but mostly reinforces them. 

No comments:

Post a Comment