David Ortega

ENC 1101
10/22/2015
Compare and Contrast

How television has portrayed the family is important because television is a source for
learning about family: what families look like, what an ideal family is, how spouses are
supposed to behave, how parents are expected to treat their children, and how families
resolve problems. Most research has focused on capturing rich descriptions of the
portrayals of family structure, the presence of diverse portrayals, and types of relational
interactions within television facilities. Because U.S. media products have dominated
international programming, most analyses of family portrayals have been of U.S. programs.
Family structure and diversity. The portrayal of family varies by type of programming.
Situation comedies, family dramas, and soap operas are often about family, and are the
subject of most research into the portrayals of family. Programming types such as action
adventure are less likely to use family as the core of their program appeal. Some
programming reveals real families' dysfunctional structure, communication, and conflict.
For example, distorted relationships, fighting, and jealousy among family members are
often displayed on daytime television talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show.

In a challenging time for networks and scripted programs, Modern Family burst on the
2009 television season as a potential ratings winner. Using faux-documentary style to tell
the interweaving stories of three families, the half-hour comedy satires conventions of both
the family sitcom and contemporary family life in the United States, gathering critical

acclaim in the process. The show offers a critique of the traditional family constructed over
the last 60 years in comedic television by depicting flawed and stereotypical characters in
three situations: a traditional heterosexual family with three children, a gay couple who just
adopted a baby daughter, and an older white man recently married to a Latina woman who
brings a young son to the family from a previous marriage.

Modern Family represents something different. Rather than deriving humor from touching
on cultural anxieties about a changing society, the show employs satire and stereotypes to
critique the discourses about traditional families that we might expect from television and
to comment on the contradictions of contemporary family life. The series pilot introduces
Phil and Claire Dunphy, who have three children. Phil tries in vain to appear cool to the
children and awkwardly makes attempts at being their friend while Claire exhibits a mix of
embarrassment and frustration with his approach. Phil brags about texting and being current
with the youth slang in a fictional interview. In some ways, Phil resembles the buffoons of
who act with immaturity in the face of loosing ground to women. But rather than diving
deep into boyishness, Phil is the well-meaning, earnest parent whose flaws speak not only
to the impossibility of living up to the clarion calls of self-improvement gurus and modern
living coaches, but the silliness of conventional parenting discourses themselves.

Similarly, effective stereotypes abound in the show. Sofa Vergara, who plays Gloria
Delgado Pritchett. Gloria is a voluptuous, emotive, thick-accented, outspoken, and
dominating young woman married to a wealthy, older man played by Ed ONeill. The
stereotype would stand bare and possibly provoke rejects from Latina/o groups outside
Modern Familys satirical context. Instead, it earned Vergara an Emmy nomination. Gloria

offers a sweet confidence, and often serves as the moral anchor in her marriage, pushing
her grumpy husband back to his familial responsibilities. The satirical effect of fauxdocumentary style allows the use of what might usually be regarded as negative stereotypes
to critique mainstream assumptions about individuals and families. In Glorias case, the
character lampoons both the negative regimes of representation that constitute the moral
panic about Latina/o in at this conjuncture, as well as the liberal multiculturalism that itself
has become a dominant ideology in U.S. institutional and popular culture. As we view the
handheld camera and the fake interviews, the stories are not so much a window into the
fortunes and fiascoes of the Pratchetts and Dunphys, but a window into the lives of modern
families everywhere perhaps even those watching the show.