The Dennis Gaze 

            It is my understanding from the world around us that women are looked at as more or less here to make the men happy and depend on him. This patriarchal ideology is not all that accurate in some cases. I also don’t agree with it, but this ideology is forced on us in almost all of the main stream media we see today for example Hodkinson quotes Dworkin, MacKinnon, on page 222:

“Other theorists have focused on more every day mainstream media depictions, which presented women as subordinate and to depend on men…”

This is again focusing on the male dominant norm that women fall under in today’s media.

Despite the prevalence of this I believe I have found one exception that somewhat challenges this norm. Episode 10 season 5 of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, In this episode one of the writers of the show Glenn Howerton aka Denis, develops the D.E.N.N.I.S system. What is this you ask? Well according to Denis it’s “a system for getting any chicks undying love and emotion, for life”.

            Lets start with the D of this system, and yes this is an acronym used to get women. In the words of Dennis the “systemic approach” or learnable step-by-step approach to getting any girl starts with Demonstrating your value to the women. In this case Kayle the pharmacist is Dennis’s target. He demonstrates his value to her by asking her to fill a prescription for his “very ill grandma” this, in Dennis’s mind is showing her he’s a caring good guy. Then comes the E in this system, which stands for Engaging physically. This is when Dennis knowingly takes the woman to a closed restaurant so he can het her back to his place and engage her physically.

            Then there’s the N, this is where things get pretty stereotypical on the man’s side of things. The N stands for Nurture her dependence this in Dennis’s head means scare the shit out of her on the phone so she comes running to you for protection because she cant protect her self. When Dennis introduces this strategy to the guys they all start acting like monkeys, flexing their muscles and literally making monkey noises. Now this might be an over exaggeration or even an under exaggeration, the point is it is assumed that in the male culture we act like a primitive species when it comes to women. We resort to things like need of ownership and or the expectation that the woman WILL depend on the man in barbaric ways. I believe us men are stereotyped like this because of the mainstream media and the way it is portraying femininity vs. masculinity as an uphill battle on the feminine part. Which is portrayed very creatively within this episode of its always sunny, when Dee tells ben (her online soldier boyfriend) that she’s independent and can handle her self while shortly after falling down a huge dirt hill, then crawling back up still chanting “I can do it by my self I don’t need help”. This, in my mind semiologically depicts the constant down hill up hill battle for respect for women in the mainstream media and over all culture.

            Getting back on track with the D.E.N.N.I.S acronym, I believe we left off on the N, which has quite an interesting meaning in the sociopathic mind of Dennis. Which is Neglect, by this he goes on in telling the guys that if you completely neglect her and make her fell threatened, for example with a phone call pretending to be a serial killing neighbor (which he did in the previous letter N) she will come running to him again for help but he won’t be there. This brings us on to our next letter which is I, inspire hope by after completely neglecting her you come back and bring her hopes up. Then quickly after engaging her physically again you, S, separate entirely.

This overly complicated, psychotic way to get a girl I feel is purposely put in place by the writers for a couple reasons. One it’s blatantly obvious that its really messed up to do this to a woman and chances are its not going to work. Two, instead of discretely pointing out the flaws in in modern media, the male gaze and the way women are wrongly portrayed in out society, I feel that the writers made the D.E.N.N.I.S acronym not out of tips to getting a woman, but out of obvious flaws in things such as the male gaze that are going unnoticed to the greater society. I believe they brought these flaws to fruition to make a mockery of what is happening to the societal relationship between men and women. I also believe they wanted us viewers to see how lost in the mainstream media we’ve all become. Which is why when everyone on the cast try’s Dennis’s system it fails miserably and they all end up looking like a bunch of primitive cavemen trying to get a women.  

Birds of War

Throughout many of the episodes in the TV series “its Always Sunny in Philadelphia” it is apparent that the TV show is a comedy that generally makes fun of certain aspects of every day life. Although this is seen a lot throughout the series in some episodes such as the birds of war episode (season 5, episode 7)

The gang is trying to appeal to an audience of war veterans who like wrestling by making a song and organizing a wrestling match that they hope these veterans will attend. Naturally for this show it is not that easy and some stuff goes wrong but the overall idea of this episode is for the gang to appeal to and attract war veterans to so called “give back” to them by organizing this match.

            They introduce this idea by starting the episode off with Dee receiving a message from an Iraq war veteran. Once Mac, Charley, and Denis see this they feel horrible for the veteran because he has to come back from war to see Dee. This gets the gang thinking and causes charley to say something along the lines of “let’s celebrate the troops, us, and America and what better way to do this then with good old American wrestling.” As one can see the topic of America and stereotypical patriotism is stressed by the gang. They hint to this American patriotism as wrestling and drinking beer.

            One can also look at this appeal to the audience from a signified and signifier point of view. For example in a lot of the shots of the gang talking about patriotism and what they should have at the wrestling match someone is drinking/holding a beer and the colors red white and blue are within the frame. Although they don’t stress the fact that beer is a big part of the event I found that sense a glass of beer is in almost every shot it is just implied, not in a drunk way but in an American dream way. Almost like when you think of backyard grilling, one thinks of burgers hot dogs and a beer its just natural.

            These are all reasons why I feel like this episode appeals to Americans as a whole and can give the viewers a sense of belonging in the community of America. Although the show is not 100% serious I also feel that the show most defiantly appeals to people with a sense of humor because I personally have not watched an episode that I didn’t find funny. 

Semiological Analysis of Its Always Sunny

Have you ever wondered why signs, advertisements and even videos have the certain objects and graphical images they do? Well I have, and I found that everything you see in a poster or advertisement is in that specific spot for a reason. Throughout watching Its Always sunny I have realized that aside from the hilarious writing and directing of this show there is actually some underlying meanings and themes portrayed thought out the show. When we look at or analyze these themes and implied meanings this is known as semiotics. This term deals with two things, a signifier (physical object) and a signified (meaning/idea). Above is the example I will be analyzing, or pointing out the signifiers and what they portray. 

In the above picture you obviously see the cast of Its Always Sunny, some caution tape, the TV network the show is aired on and a date and time for when the show will be played and that’s it right? Well this is almost correct, although most viewers of this advertisement can look at this and immediately find out what they want to know about the program they may not know why they inferred what they did or how they even found it out. This is because we as viewers tend to automatically look at these things and know what they imply. Although we do this, one may not know that all of the things listed in the picture are considered signifiers and what you just assumed they mean is your idea of their signified meaning.

These individual objects, people or graphic art are strategically placed throughout this picture. For example the caution tape over the cast’s mouths signifies that the people in the show most likely swear and probably say questionable things, their eyes in this photo look a bit crazy which can signify that below the caution tape their smiling and even laughing which means the shows funny, and also the fact that only their heads are showing could even signify that their a bit egotistical.

All of these signified meanings are used to give the viewer a taste of what there getting into before they actually watch the show.   

It is also important for one to do a syntagmatic analysis on this advertisement; this can help with making a connection between different signifiers in the advertisement. For example the caution tape by its self would just signify caution but once placed over the heads of the cast it signifies that the show may have some questionable content.

On the other hand if we do a paradigmatic analysis, then the meaning of the advertisement could change. For example if the photo did not have caution tape all over it the advertisement would then be the cast of Always Sunny smiling which could again misdirect what the shows about which is primarily a darker type of comedy.  

Always Sunny Hot or Cool?

The popular FXX T.V. show its Always Sunny in Philadelphia also known as Always Sunny is going to be examined in this blog as ether a hot or cool type of media. This classification process of "hot or cool" is coming from McLuhan's interpretation of (hot) being high-intensity, low participation and (cool) being low intensity high participation. McLuhan also states cinema as being in the hot category due to the quality of the medium and the dimly lit setting of the cinema, this makes one more focused and engaged in the high quality images and audio produced at the theater with a very minimal amount of participation needed. Television shows such as always sunny are considered cool due to the home setting of the media. This setting provides opportunities for a social gathering like having friends over to watch the show or having a snack and being more engaged in the participation aspect of the medium. These two aspects can become easily blurred by many factors such as the individual watching the show; the viewer could be fully engaged in the show and not so much engaged in talking during it due to the fact that he/she wants to know what’s going on. This, I feel is going to happen more often in a series because of you miss one episode your lost for a good portion of the next or even some later down the road. Another example of this hot or cool media getting blurred is the television shows increasing their picture quality to HD. In some instances high definition television can look almost identical to the cinema quality. In my opinion the newer episodes of always sunny are right up there with cinema quality images but not quite, also I don’t think I would classify this show as hot or cool because when I watch it I’m not in a dimly lit theater with audio that you can feel and images that look real. Then again I am also not constantly talking to people or socializing during this show mainly due to the fact that I mostly watch it on Netflix and there are no commercials. Therefore I would classify this show as both hot and cool with some underlying cool properties due to the commercials cause lets face it no one is going to sit on a couch and not talk during a commercial your going to get up and eat something like everyone who watches T.V. That being said I feel commercials are a real game changer for this hot and cool scale, a game changer that places always sunny more on the cool side of the spectrum while still a little on the hot side due to the hilarious engaging plots of the episodes.   

get rich quick

Get rich quick 

For this post I will be offering my own ideological critique on the show ItsAlways Sunny in Philadelphia. In doing this I will be pointing out the main hegemonic or underlying dominant theme that I feel happens throughout almost every episode.

The Frankfurt School describes ideology as:

…persuading people to support the status quo by propagating a particular set of ideas, the culture industry directly blinds or cements people to the system by crushing their capacity to think critically or independently at all…

I chose to use this description of ideology because in my opinion this idea of blinding people from thinking on their own about the show is extremely prevalent in most episodes. The only difference is the way they do this is not bad or promoting Marxist hierarchical ideas, but instead in my opinion, the writers do a great job in casually convincing the audience that the get rich quick schemes that occur in almost every episode are the best possible option at the time.

Now we all know that most of the things the gang does on the show wont work and we know this from the time the idea was presented to the audience, but the writers present these ideas in such a way that I sometimes find my self thinking “yea why wouldn’t that work?”.

I feel that this is because the writers portray these get rich quick ideas in such a way that it makes the audience feel like this is the only option. Or, in the words of The Frankfurt School they “propagate a particular set of ideas”, as we can see just by watching one episode of its always sunny there are a plethora of dub ideas thrown at the audience as if they are the only options, not to limit our views and trick us into doing some of these stupid things in real life, but to make us laugh and by the end of the show realize how dumb the idea really was.

A perfect example of this can be found in the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fP4emqw7O4 about kitten mittens. We all know cat’s barley make noise and when they do its not that loud. In this video charley tries to convince us to buy kitten mittens by portraying the cat as loud and annoying he even shows a clip comparing the cat’s noise to a lion eating a gazelle. It is obvious cats are not that annoying and are no where close to as loud and aggressing as predatory lions, but he shows us this to try to tell us yes they are buy my kitten mittens. This is a great example again of the writers jokingly trying to “crush our ability to think critically” by only offering one set of beliefs. I also find it funny that they own a bar and if they put half the time they do into these insane ideas, into marketing the bar they would make a good bit of money, but there would be no show if that were the case.   

Finally if I were to critique this show I honestly don’t know if I would change anything. The stupidity makes it great and brings attention to how funny the show really is. Without these get rich quick ideas going wrong the show would just be about a group of rich people who own a bar, and that doesn’t sound like it would be that interesting.