Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection Part 9

 For class this week, we myths about social expectations about men and women and how they are perpetuated in specifically entertainment media.

A big topic of this unit was SCWAMP framework, or Straight, Christian, White, Able-bodied, Male, Property Owner. The idea is that films enforce these ideologies subliminally through its characters and their relationships, themes, story and other instances. Lind analyzes the Twilight series and how it enforces all of these tropes, which I found interesting, yet very far-fetched in a sense.

However, I cannot deny that these themes are present in a lot of older media, however hidden they may be. A show I am watching currently is The Sopranos, which is a very complex show told through its characters, yet does also reinforce a lot of the SCWAMP themes. 

The first one which is very obvious is that the show is very male-dominated. While Tony's wife Carmela plays a central role in the show, a lot of the other female characters take a back seat, or are all presented somewhat the same in the sense that they have stereotypical female attitudes.

Another present trope is that every character is straight and either has a significant other or is promiscuous with the opposite sex. So far in the show, there hasn't been any homosexual characters or storylines, and hasn't even really been a huge topic at all.

While these themes are present in the show, it also does a good job to play off of them and not just be another straight guy talk-fest. Tony Soprano, the main character, is not constantly shown to be a cool, stoic, hero white man, but is rather almost always displayed as flawed and needing therapy to deal with his anxiety.

Another reasoning is that while Italian-Americans are white, the show plays into the trope about how Italian-American's feel about their place in the country, which is that of a discriminate minority rather than a simple privileged white man. The theme of them being a minority is a big underlying theme throughout the show and another way I think the show doesn't rely on the SCWAMP framework.

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