Anne and I were talking recently about the depiction of men on sitcoms today and why so many shows feature the same basic plot: the boorish, incompetent buffoon of a husband messes something up and tries to hide it from his inordinately cute, quirky wife. Usually the husband has refused to take the wife's advice on some issue, causing the mess. By the end, the husband grudgingly admits the wife was right all along.

Homer Simpson leads the pack in this category, but shows that fit this pattern include King of Queens, Family Guy, Everybody Loves Raymond, Home Improvement, George Lopez, and others, I'm sure.

Don't get me wrong, I'm neither complaining about the depiction of men, nor arguing these shows are inaccurate. In fact, pretty much once a week I have to clean up some mess and grudgingly admit to Anne that I should have done it her way. (Because it's my blog, I'll leave aside for now the troubling question of why I don't just do it her way to begin with).

But it's curious to me why this pattern is so popular. My own theory is that traditional masculinity is becoming more and more inappropriate and obsolete in advanced capitalist societies, and that these shows are how our culture gently deals with the frustration and confusion men feel at being so ill-prepared for domestic life. Being told repeatedly as a child "I'll give you something to cry about" doesn't really prepare one for empathetic relationships.

Anne argues instead that those shows are popular because they make women feel better about the fact that men are in charge. She says if the position of men in society were really being questioned, we'd be a lot more sensitive about it and wouldn't be seeing it playfully treated on television.

I did some brief digging around on the internets and found only one essay on the subject, a snippet of which follows:

In contrast to the Father-Knows-Best-Simulacrum Father and to the outdated penchant for paternalism, the flawed-yet-penitent father type epitomized by Homer Simpson represents sitcoms’ progress in the 1990s. Sitcoms that distinctly feature the Homer Simpson father type include Home Improvement, Malcolm in the Middle, and Grounded for Life; like Homer, this father type consistently proves imperfect and reformed by his patient and wise wife. A prominent theme of The Simpsons is Marge Simpsons’ struggle to improve Homer’s parenting, etiquette, professionalism, spirituality, culture, and physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Similarly, Home Improvement’s Jill Taylor sought to update her husband’s archaic macho attitudes with feminist ideas toward their marriage, family, and social relations, resulting in the show title’s double meaning.

Feminism’s impact on television also manifests in this father type through these men’s sharing delegated power in a matriarchal family. Aside from economic roles, the wives of these fathers dominate the parental, ideological, and sexual politics of their families. Because of their wives’ significance, the shortcomings of these fathers produce comedic rather than detrimental results: Homer’s, Tim’s, and Grounded for Life’s Sean’s mistakes in their breadwinner roles have only emphasized the matriarchal rule of their wives, to whom they must repent, akin to their mothers. Like the prototypical Marge, Lois of Malcolm in the Middle shines in the disciplinarian role of their children that proves the Homer Simpson father type complicit, negligent, and/or responsible: this more accurately represents contemporary family conditions and portrays women in an empowered rather than subordinate role, in which these fathers support them. Probably the most positive trait of this father type is his apologetic nature regarding his faults as a father and husband, a tendency that probably resulted more from modern theories of gender relations than practices.

(http://caxton.stockton.edu/Juxtaposition/stories/storyReader$91)