Ability Identity in Media

Summary: I watched the show Modern Family which airs on abc from 9pm – 930pm. In this episode Jay helps manny with a school fundraiser that involves Manny selling wrapping paper in order to raise money for his school’s drama club. Gloria lets her and Jay’s dog out (Stella) without closing the gate and Stella runs away. Cam also makes a huge mess in his and Mitchell’s kitchen and neglects cleaning it. Also Claire tries to petition to get a stop sign placed in a dangerous intersection without much help from her husband and kids.

Analysis: This show had a wide age range and also depicted a minority race. The things that stuck out to me is that most of the characters did whatever they wanted even if they were asked to do otherwise. Every character had the ability to do the right thing (some did end up doing the right thing) but didn’t. An example would be Jay and Manny, Manny wanted Jay to just buy his wrapping paper instead of going out and selling it himself. Another example would be when Claire asked her family to help get signatures to help but up a new stop sign but they all conveniently found something else to do. Gloria also left the gate open resulting in Stella running away, and Cam not cleaning up the kitchen because he doesn’t like to even though he made the mess. With all this being said all of these characters had the ability to perform the tasks that were presented to them but didn’t, and I believe this feeds into the stereotype that all Americans are lazy.

Response: To me there were a lot of identities portrayed as well as stereotypes in this show. For example you can say that overweight man/boys are lazy because Cam didn’t want to clean up and manny didn’t want to sell his wrapping paper because he didn’t like walking up hills. Another one could even be Jay trying to teach Manny to be a salesman and not to give up, and giving Manny scenarios like “what if your about to lose your house are you just going to give up”. This is example of men doing whatever it takes to provide for their family. Another stereotype that was brought up and actually debunked was that the husband was the leader of the family and actually even though Phil is the breadwinner of his family he says that Claire is actually the quarterback of the team, and the rallies the rest of the family to get signatures for the stop sign. With all this being said I actually believe that the moral of this episode is not to give up so easy, and to think about how your actions may effect others.