Saturday, February 6, 2010
Essay 2 proposal
For the second essay in woman and writing we are suppose to select a television show, advertising campaign, or a web page. Then we are suppose to critique how gender and sexuality are represented. For this essay I would like to write about The Secret Life of the American Teenager. I watch this show religiously! I think it is also an excellent TV show to critique because it touches on numerous sexual topics, such as teens having sex, masturbation, homosexuality, marriage, teen pregnancy, and peer pressure to date and have sex. I also think this would be a great topic for my research paper. Even though it is still a relatively new show, only on its second season there is a lot of information about it and many people with different opinions and view points on many different aspects of the show.
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I think this would be a great topic to write about. I used to watch the show all of the time too, but I just can’t keep up with it enough to follow who is dating who and who died or got in trouble last episode. With that being said, I think you will have plenty to write about even though it is a relatively new show.
ReplyDeleteI think you should really hit on the topic of heteronormativity. I feel that this show is the depiction of the box society creates. There are mostly heterosexual couples. There is a lot of male dominance. There is only one gay guy (at least when I watched it there was only one) who is the typical best friend of one of the girls on the show. There are just so many topics you could talk about for this show. I think the Yep article will probably be on of your best choices in terms of information. You might also want to use “Taming Brian: Sex, Love, and Romance in Queer as Folk.” I think both of those articles will really help you come up with some great ideas for your final paper. Both have a lot of information that relates to the situations on the show.
From the looks of what you have proposed I think this will be really easy to write about. I feel that shows such as the one you have picked contain so much of what we learn in this class in their weekly episodes. Being that this show is fairly new I really don't know much about what goes on, I also would really like to know how they portray the various themes we discuss. As the comment suggests above I also think that the Yep and queer as folk articles will do fine.
ReplyDeleteRachel,
ReplyDeleteThis should be an interesting show for you to write about. There is so much going on with regards to sexuality AND representations of male and female gender ideals.
At this point, I am curious to know more about what you are thinking regarding the show. Are you interested in focusing on how the show portrays sexuality? If so, which characters do you think you would focus on, and why? At this point, I think you need to work a little more on figuring out exactly what you will critique. You are right: this show addresses many of the points we have covered in class. My only concern is that you try not to do too much, and perhaps focus on a few episodes and see what common threads emerge. ~Megan
This is an awesome choice. I got the chance to watch the entire first season....which I will never do again. There is just so much going on that you will have plenty of episodes to choose from. I think The Secret Life of the American Teenager was made to show regular-day teenagers how difficult it is to raise a child, but the storyline is not relatable. It doesn't send out the message that you should wait to have sex because so many of the characters are having sex...and regularly I might add. And if they're not having sex, they're talking about sex. I definitely think you should talk about Adrian and Ricky's sexually-charged relationship.
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