Pop Culture Blog 5

A show that has recently became rather popular and is related to a cultural group I would consider myself to be a part of is "The Big Bang Theory". This show is about the social lives of two physicists that live together. This show utilizes several stereotypes of people within several different cultures. The first example of this can be seen in the following collection of clips at this link. The character of Mrs. Wolowitz is a stereotypical Jewish mother. She is always yelling at her son that lives with her in his mid to late twenties. She is always bringing up embarrassing things about him, even when he has company over. She also apparently babies her son and does a lot to take care of him still, even at his age in the show. She has a strong personality and has a masculine sounding voice. The next clip shows another stereotype of a socially unaware theoretical physicist.

This character is names Sheldon Cooper. He is a theoretical physicist that works at Caltech. He has terrible time relating to anyone around him. He often only thinks of himself and speaks without thinking about how others will feel about what he says. He often dresses up in costumes and likes to imagine he is someone he is not. Some might consider many of the things he does to be childish and question his maturity level. He is interested in comic books, video games, board games, and science. He also seems to have a need to be in control of everything. He is a stereotypical nerd and his friends are also quite nerdy themselves in their own ways. The last character I would like to discuss is Penny.

Penny lives across the hall from Sheldon and Leonard. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and is a stereotypical blonde Midwestern girl. She often gets lost when listening to Sheldon or Leonard speak. Her personality is a sort of opposite of Sheldon as she is very socially aware. The interactions between her and Sheldon can often be rather humorous. She moved from the Midwest to Los Angeles in order to pursue a career as an actress but seems to not get many acting jobs and works as a waitress. She collects bears and seems to be painted as an all around girly girl type.

As I have shown you, there are many different types of stereotypes of cultural groups exploited in popular media. This hit television show is full of characters which are all stereotypes of different kinds of people. These generalizations can often be humorous and that is why this show is a huge success. They play on the odd sort of interactions people can have when they have orthogonal personalities which are the result of stereotypes of cultures.