Skip to main content

The (Re)Productive Body/Self, Motherhood, and the Family

Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore)


Images of women in television have changed to reflect cultural expectations of modern women, but these changes have often been met with controversy. In the 1960s, TV mothers were housewives and had sometimes given up careers to take on the expected societal role of full-time homemaker and mother. For example, The Dick Van Dyke Show's Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) gave up her career as a dancer to become a homemaker and, eventually, a mother, while her husband Rob continued to build his pre-marriage career. She was always stylish and exemplified the motherly ideal of the 60s.


Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad)

It was not until the 1980s that we began to see working mothers on television. Elyse Keaton (Meredith Baxter) was an architect and mother on Family Ties, and Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) was an attorney on The Cosby Show. These families depicted two working, middle- or upper-middle-class heterosexual parents, and Elyse and Claire were moms who "had it all." They were able to balance careers, relationships, and families with ease (most of the time). These depictions did not cause major controversies because they were still part of traditional, nuclear families. 

Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen)

The 80s also brought single moms onto the small screen, and these depictions did cause controversy. The most divisive TV mom of the decade was also perhaps the most progressive: Candice Bergen's Murphy Brown (1988-1998). Murphy was a single woman with a high-profile, powerful career as a broadcast news anchor. In 1992, the character became pregnant and decided to have the baby and raise it as a single mother. This storyline caused then Vice President Dan Quayle to denounce the character, claiming that this depiction of a single, working mother would contribute to the breakdown of the nuclear family (Gajanan, 2018). Murphy Brown helped to normalize the idea of nontraditional families at a time when conservative politicians were running on campaigns of "traditional family values." 

“Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. It doesn’t help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown — a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman — mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another ‘life-style choice,'” (Vice President Dan Quayle discussing Murphy Brown)


References

Claire Huxtable (image). Accessed at https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/140507113448-02-tv-moms-restricted.jpg?q=w_2520,h_1659,x_0,y_0,c_fill/h_618

Gajanan, Mahita. "What to Know About Murphy Brown's History of Making Real-World News." Time, September 27, 2018. https://time.com/5405100/murphy-brown-cultural-importance-reboot/ 

Laura Petrie (image). Accessed at https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFuJNKiqqlygeMiEvzBh4mFugVpw0vxoMfFmAiuskS4dYng00d_ZeosmXkTRj6JU0qH-TY576NtQVkrVlCnXh8Rw40X1uUxt39ItErc7YfqNRX70q58Z1h-Bhi5fCj2Vs6py9ZzrrtbeA/s1600/ritchie+milk.jpg

Murphy Brown (image). Accessed at https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/newscms/2018_11/1325348/murphy-brown-today-180316-tease.jpg

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Silencing Women, Viewing Women

If you watch mainstream films within the United States, you are familiar with the stereotyped images of women they feature. The Trophy Wife (or Girlfriend). The Man Stealer. The Sassy Latina/Black Best Friend. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The Sexy Secretary. The Evil Stepmother (or Evil Sister). The Asexual Career Woman. These stereotypes have been seen on screen so many times, for so many years, that many people do not notice their underlying sexism. How have filmmakers been able to perpetuate these stereotypes for so long? When we look at gender inequality in the film industry we can begin to understand why women continue to be stereotyped and objectified on screen. Only 9% of directors and 15% of writers are women .  Gender inequality in the film industry. Data and infographic by filmonomics @ slated One way that we can begin to change this is by supporting films that are written and directed by women and that pass the Bedchel test . The Bedchel test was created in 1985 by graph...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gender in the Arts

While researching depictions of women in art, I came across a section of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) website entitled " Constructing Gender ." According to the site, "Many artists have used their work to examine, question, and criticize the relationships between gender and society." As part of this section, MoMA presents seven images that address the social construct of gender, ranging from the 1920s to the 2000s by artists such as Frida Kahlo, Laurie Simmons, and Joan Jonas. It is fascinating to see how both women and men have commented on gender through their art.  Self-Portrait, from Bifur, no 5 (1930) by Claude Cahun; lightsgoingon , CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons One such creative is Claude Cahun, a queer, gender-neutral, French-born writer, photographer, and performer. Cahun produced much of their work in the 1920s and 30s, but most of it was destroyed after they were incarcerated for resisting the Nazi regime. Their work challenged binary social const...
Post a Comment
Read more

LGBTQIA+

Modern queer artists are helping to express the challenges and experiences of being queer in the United States. Two such artists are Max Binder and Mo Crist, whose performance of their work "Real Boy/Real Girl" speaks to the experiences and feelings of trans men and women, touching on expectations of gender and how they are often forced onto young trans, non-binary, and queer people.  Kay Ulanday Barrett's " song for the kicked out " is another powerful piece about the queer experience:   the streets are not paved with gold, they lied I got a rough throat, i got a rough life the streets are not paved with gold, they lied I got too much queer in me to live their way tonight.      she found me waist up in you she had found me mouthful, drinkin’ you   mama said that I was the devil, made this journey here a waste, made too American and too unruly couldn’t I just wear dresses, make money, and behave?      mama said leave this house, her spir...
Post a Comment
Read more