task 3

Bewitched
From the Opening of the show we can see what values are being portrayed and what was seen as the norm in the 70-80's. As the show starts we hear the quote "once upon a time there was a typical American woman", and we see the image of a good looking,blonde and smartly dressed woman. We never really know whether she was a working woman or not, which relates to the manic pixie girl trope where the woman is only there to satisfy the men of society so they can save the world. Furthermore they portray a woman's life as a fairy tale (Propp character types), as we never really hear about her ambitions or anything we just see her falling in love and then getting married. Also throughout the first episode of when the husband finds out his wife is a witch he asks his friends for advice, where instead taunting comments are made by the friends saying how "all women" are witches.which brings the question up  of, as how the writer and director is male is he trying to refer to his thoughts of women (showing his prejudice thoughts) or he is parodying the views of American society during that time, relates to the quote “dream through the dreams of men”, ‘make herself object’ and ‘renounce her autonomy (Jenainati Cathia, Groves Judy: Introducing Feminism (2007). However if we look at SHEP during the 1960-1970 there was a improvement in women's position during that decade,as they became more independent and more career oriented. But also there was a increase in negative aspects to society, as we saw less women have children,increase in crime rate and increase in inflation, so as relating to women's position in society we can see that bewitched is actually "demonising" women in the sense they are the "witches" of society as they are going out of the stereotype, and it can also refer to how all american women should go back to the norm of being the typical housewife.furthermore this relates to contemporary texts such as in 30 rock we see Tina fey being the independent, career oriented woman, and how her colleagues make fun of her and think she's a lesbian etc.. .Which relates to bewitched as how the main female character as how societies view of liberating women is portrayed as negative representations of females. Also within the show bewitched we see how every negative stereotype of female is represented in different female character for example the seductress is represented in "Sheila", and the arrogant and rude mother in law. As we have negative representation and then Samantha who is shown as flawless and beautiful but as a witch which gives the idea females can't always be perfect. This relates to the Big Bang Theory in the sense of how the traditional roles of females and males in the sense of the stereotypical "American females" and American dream/meritocracy. We see how Penny And Elizabeth are "manic pixie dream girls" in the sense how perfect they are and they are just there for visual pleasure (Laura mulvey) , we never really know any important details about their characters as we know about the male character, also we see in Bewitched how Darrin and in Big Bang theory Leonard is the victim from the female mind games and how men suffer from never understanding the complicating women. Relating it to SHEP we see how in today's society women are seen has more liberated and we are in the "third wave of feminism" and how women are proud of their sexuality and like to flaunt it however we can say that even today American society is conservative as for example the idea of "retro sexism" (tv tropes article) and how all these old sexist views of women are just presented in a contemporary way, for example how Benerdette and Amy don't fit the typical stereotype of a "perfect american women" and are hence shunned by men and society and are isolated by men. Which shows Zeitgeist and how over the time women's characters have changed but the representation of women hasn't changed.