TV Series - Shaping the evolution of behaviors?

Recently I was re-watching a TV show I used to love a few years back. 8 simple rules is an American comedy that went on from 2002 - 2005. While watching this show I noticed the family’s situation, and the first thing I could think of was the breadwinner system, and how this show defied it. The breadwinner system basically states that since the dawn of time, the man has always been that one that earns money to feed the family, while the woman stays at home and takes care of the kids and the housework.





For those of you who don’t know this show, it’s about a family of five, the parents, two girls, and a boy. The parents are trying to control their two teenage girls, while juggling work at the same time. But, opposite to the belief of the breadwinner system, this TV show does it differently. The mother is a workingwoman that sometimes has morning and night shifts in the same day. The father has a job too; but he works from home as a sports writer for a newspaper, and he’s the one who’s responsible for taking care of the kids, and sometimes cooking and cleaning. However, when the mother comes back from work, she is still expected to make dinner and clean.





A decade ago TV series like this one were viewed mostly in the west. When people watch TV shows that challenge and change social norms, eventually over time based on the cultivation theory, these new ways of living portrayed on television, become the social norm. This is one of the many reasons for this change.

Similarly, when we started watching these shows in the Middle East, the same thing began to happen. We started challenging these social norms, changing them, and calling it “modernization”. Due to the fact that not a lot of people in the Middle East speak English, only the ones that do have received this ideology from TV series. That is the reason why this new way of life hasn’t spread as much as it has in the west. However, I do believe that in the near future this change will spread drastically in the Middle East just like it has in the west.

Risk Management in Television Shows

Its seems to me that television networks realized what people want and they give them that in order to mange the risk of having a failure television.  There are 13 risk management ways that the studios use to minimize the chances of having a flop for both television and cinema. I will provide the examples from television that producing studio used to manage the risk of having a flop and it worked! They had/having a successful television show.

 

1-    Fringe: 

The first risk management that was used here is using J.J. Abrams who is a winner of two Emmys. Also, he is a famous producer and director of

Star Trek and Lost. Attaching the name of J.J. Abrams to the show gave it the credibility of being good. So people starting to tune it making it a hit TV show. The second risk management technique that was used in the show was the product placement of Sprint mobile devices.

2-    Dark Angel:

The producer of that show was the mega famous James Cameron. The show was a big hit making the actress Jessica Alba very famous during and after the show stopped airing. So when the name of Cameron was attached to the show, people were excited to watch it. Making it a hit television show in the early 2000’s.

 

3-    The Walking Dead:

 The walking dead was produced and developed by Frank Darabont. Frank wrote the screenplay for both The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. This is one of the reasons that the show is one biggest hits that are currently running on television. The second risk management technique for this show was showing the product placement of the car Dodge Changer.

4-   The Vampire Diaries:

The Vampire Diaries revolves around a girl who is confused about her feeling between two guys and doesn’t know who to pick. Sounds familiar? Yes it sounds just like twilight.  The vampire diaries came out after girls were going crazy for the mythical creatures of vampires after the first movie of Twilight came out.  So it had a big built in audience for that genre, which is one of the risk management techniques.

Another one that was used for this television show was the product placement of Apple devices, such as phones and laptops.

Negative Sanctioning Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD)

One of my favorite TV shows, the American comedy-drama “Monk” is about a detective who suffers from a variety of different phobias and has an extreme case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I love the show because despite how people treat and view this detective, he still manages to crack tough investigations and his determination triumphs over everything else.

In this show the detective, Adrian Monk, experiences mainly negative informal sanctions. Sanctions can be negative, positive, formal and informal. Sanctions are basically how people react towards someone’s behavior or appearance either approvingly or disapprovingly, representing the positive and negative. Rules, laws or regulations back formal sanctions and an individual can either be punished or rewarded. Informal sanctions are the ways in which people spontaneously react towards an individual’s appearance or behavior, and this is what can be generally applied to Detective Monk.

Detective Monk, also known as Mr. Monk, has over 300 different phobias, of course this is exaggerated, but it shows how different people handle different scenarios and what people regard as normal and abnormal. Overall Mr. Monk is a “neat freak” and a “perfectionist” and cannot bear to see a painting askew or a speck of dust on a glass surface. People usually stare at his incredulous behavior or if he continually does the same thing the negative sanctions generally increase.

People tend to get even more annoyed when an individual continues to carry out their abnormal behavior. However this is entertaining for people watching the show, in reality it is far from amusing.

Although for Mr. Monk there is a reason for his OCD, the murder of his wife, people neither understand nor empathize with him, and still continue to treat him negatively. This just shows that no matter what circumstance an individual is facing, people will still continue to sanction them.


The show “Monk” completed its eighth season in December 2009, much to my dismay. I will still remain a fan of Monk, even though it has stopped airing on TV. “Monk” provided a good example of the way people sanction deviant behavior, despite whatever made them act deviant.