Entire entertainment genres are built around portraying men as inept fools who can be looked down upon by the opposite sex. Seinfeld is one of the few sitcoms where a female character is as flawed as the men. You couldn't even do that show today.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Succession? Yellow Jackets? The Righteous Gemstones? Beef? White Lotus? House of The Dragon?
You could argue about percentages but it is in fact extremely easy to do a show with flawed female characters today.
To that point, culture is absolutely full of baseless attacks on women too, often in a far more damaging context. Lots of people still feel way too comfortable suggesting women are biologically unsuited for high status jobs and really only valuable for making babies. And the vitriol directed at women in the abortion debate, and the actual reduction in rights that rhetoric has led to, sort of puts dumb male sitcom characters in perspective.
I would venture to guess that's because you are not in the socio-economical bracket where this is not just something you see on TV but become how people actually treat you.
In my arm-chair and widely unqualified perspective, the life experience of men is very very bi-modal. A select few with whatever the characteristic du-jour are can have such a different experience that it become harder to related to the less fortunate.
> Humor at the expense of traditionally more powerful groups works
About the same remark, traditionally, the most the people with the most power were/are men, doesn't follow that most men have power or that even that the average men have more power than the average women. The distribution of power/social status is usually very skewed for men.
> because it can be seen as both a way of balancing the scales a bit
Two wrong doesn't make a right , and the sin of the father do not belong to the sons. The problem with balancing things like this is that you are punishing people who weren't not involved in a situation...
> it doesn't come with the uncomfortable connection to examples of people taking the underlying ideas way more seriously.
And racist joke were also justified before because they were just joke that nobody take seriously.
> Comedy about my gender is funnier because nobody actually thinks my gender is a weakness.
You would be surprised... Sure not weakness... But things like emotional maturity and basic organization skills that's a different story.
> To that point, culture is absolutely full of baseless attacks on women too, often in a far more damaging context. Lots of people still feel way too comfortable suggesting women are biologically unsuited for high status jobs and really only valuable for making babies. And the vitriol directed at women in the abortion debate, and the actual reduction in rights that rhetoric has led to, sort of puts dumb male sitcom characters in perspective.
This also a big problem every time men/boys problem are brought to the for front. It seems to always been turned into "but what about women... etc..."
I can only speak for myself, as fairly liberal man. We all understand (even if we don't always relate to them) the tribulation that women face. Those things should definitively be addressed and fought for. But we don't need to solve ALL the women problems before we give some attentions to men issues. And certainly shouldn't use that as excuse to continue detrimental societal stereotypes.
Stereotyping an entire gender as dumb, un effective buffoon is wrong and as you mentioned yourself not very funny. Let's just stop it and move on... there is no need for mental gymnastic to find bizare excuses.
We had a stunning lack of shows which tried to depict well adjusted male characters: i.e. people who could have emotions, who could have flaws and were allowed to work to correct them, but who could also be sources of wisdom or correct. Instead we had "sitcoms" and "drama".
And in Australia at least, our "drama" is...pretty god damn messed up - but at least that was obviously something you didn't want to watch.
It's why show's like Bluey have exploded the way they have: it fills that need for a middle ground of something in media to say "this is what you can be" in a way which isn't playing to stereotypes.
Though I suppose all of that could be summarized as: the death of boomer humor about hating your wife is long-overdue.
Yes, men are more privileged than women in many ways. But men are also disadvantaged in many ways -- many individual men are actual quite vulnerable! -- and negative stereotypes about men cause real harm. Yes, society is sometimes quite shitty to women; but that doesn't somehow make it okay to be shitty to men.
Feminism at its best treats both women and men with respect and dignity. Feminism at its worst uses "gender equality" to justify hurting men. Right now you're doing the latter. Please stop.
Oafish bumpkin of a husband, the wise and understanding wife always coming to the rescue.
I don't think the Munsters is about the wife rescuing the husband. The humor is often about the family thinking they are normal, and the reaction they get from interacting with actual normal people. None of the characters are "wise" they all misunderstand the basic nature of what a normal family looks and acts like and fail to realize they are scaring normal people.
MwC was definitely the oafish husband, again with the childish schemes, much like Ralph in the Honeymooners. It's just a raunchy version of the Honeymooners.
ILL is a rare exception - a reverse Honeymooners.
P.S. I still enjoy watching these shows. Especially the Munsters. Herman always makes me laugh.
The Munsters... well, I think I've seen a few episodes. I don't recall the wife (Lily) doing much in the episodes I watched, to be honest. I did see the recent Munsters movie, and Herman is both the cause and solution to their problems, Lily doesn't really do much from what I recall, if she has a comedic premise it's the ridiculousness of her falling for Herman.
Velma and Clone High have women as bad as the men and female villains. Wednesday is pretty removed from it's Adams Family roots and is only occasionally a comedy, but also features at least one female villain.
The recent Beavis and Butthead made for TV movie had a subplot where a female politician is chasing Beavis and Butthead through the country and trying to murder them to cover up a scandal. That's certainly not treating women as "paragons of virtue."
So you observed a whole bunch of modern shows and judged that none met the same standard... Which one of them did you watch that was closest?
> Misandry is normalized in society.
Is it?
I don't regularly (if ever) encounter "baseless attacks on men"... excepting situations where "reversing the roles" would result in the perpetrator still being a man and the victim still being a man.
> there'd be pitchforks for treating women as anything other than paragons of virtue.
Wait, are you doing a sarcasm?
Who wields the pitchforks? It's the husbands, right? Those who were wronged when their wives' virtue was called into question?
In fact, the sensational coverage of these very incidents you cited demonstrates the misogynistic standards of the society and media cycle. The reason you've heard so much about these "prominent karens"[0] perpetrating racist attacks is because they are women. Women being violent is seen as a scandal and ridiculed by society/media. The fact that it's not an everyday occurrence is (counter-intuitively) why it seems so common. Men are responsible for a much greater share of all violence. It is clearly the violence perpetrated by men, not women, that is normalised.
[0] and that there can be "prominent karens" in the first place