Advances in Journalism and Communication 2013. Vol.1, No.1, 1-12 Published Online March 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ajc) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajc.2013.11001 Feminism Ain’t Funny: Woman as “Fun-Killer,” Mother as Monster in the American Sitcom Jack Simmons1, Leigh E. Rich2 1Department of Languages, Literature and Philosophy, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah, USA 2Department of Health Sciences, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah, USA Email:
[email protected] Received February 1st, 2013; revised March 2nd, 2013; accepted March 10th, 2013 Whether America has realized President Herbert Hoover’s 20th-century vision of a “chicken in every pot”, there is a television in nearly every home. Powerful and accessible, television programs, whether explic- itly, convey values and messages to viewers and, thus, can play a role in reifying the status quo or affect- ing social change. Given comedy programming’s roots in radio and Vaudeville, it is no surprise that a re- current theme in situational comedies is the “war between the sexes”. Despite a surfeit of studies ex- amining specific programs, however, there exists no comprehensive project exploring how gender depic- tions have changed since television’s proliferation in post-WWII America. This time span is especially important because it is bisected by second wave feminism. Regarding gender, TV shows need not fortify traditional ideals. But how far has television come? Findings from a pilot study employing a Grounded Theory analysis of selected US sitcoms from 1952 to 2004 suggest that, regardless of the progressive na- ture of some programming, the most-watched sitcoms reaffirm mainstream stereotypes of women.