A culture that showcases the dysfunctional as comical: the need for positive creativity

Women are the core of FOX’s newest sitcom, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, that made its debut this past Wednesday. Two divorced mothers try so hard to be liked by their teenage daughters, for whom they desire the popularity that they never had in high school. Result: the daughters are spoiled brats who run the show and bully their moms.  Hmm, how would you rate the quality of this “comedy”? Thank you, FOX, for your contribution to American television and American culture!

This only gives further support to Franco Olearo’s recent article, Adolescents in series published through Family and Media’s web portal. Olearo says that we’ve moved far from the sitcom style of the 70’s, the Happy Days era, “where parent-child confrontation never became a dispute. Love was always sought, and it lasted a lifetime”.

Sometimes, laughing in the face of difficulties can help us get through them. It is a good sign when a person can trip over their own two feet, lock their keys in the car, or get caught in the rain without an umbrella and in the end, laugh about it all. I wouldn’t say that it is a bad thing to take lightly the insignificant and silly troubles of family life that everyone goes through. I would hold though that there are some realities of human suffering or cultural illnesses that really are not funny.

It seems that the show does try to teach a lesson, in a twisted way. The mother’s warped parenting approach ends in a disaster. It is important to expose problems for what they are. But there is a way to do so. A mother’s hatred toward her daughter ought not to be taken lightly. A daughter’s complete disrespect and dominance over her mother shouldn’t become our entertainment.

Society’s leisure reflects the values of their culture. What kind of culture are we propagating by this kind of entertainment? What is dysfunctional is portrayed as common and comical. Embedded into the culture, it becomes seen as normal and insignificant, not worthy of our worry.

What we need is the creation of positive culture. Ideals ought to be presented. We need models that embody these ideals, give us hope, and indicate the way to reach these ideals. Being far from the “happy days”, it is quite difficult to implement positive culture into the mainstream. But little steps, and small contributions, are better than inactivity and no contribution. That’s why we ought to applaud and support even the small efforts create a positive culture. As the old Chinese proverb goes “it is better to light a match than to complain about the darkness”.