Certain character stereotypes have become so clichéd on television and in film that it is almost too much of a cliché to even speak about them. In this alternate universe, all cheerleaders are peppy, popular and glamorous; intellectuals wear glasses and have terrible acne; jocks are clueless and cruel, doling out the occasional wedgie to undeserving loners; and goths wear black for the sole purpose of "mourning" their generation. The creators of this world even have these really nifty derogatory-turned-hip terms like "geek" and "princess" (culled directly from The Breakfast Club, no less) to describe such stereotypes, words that have become verbal staples in a culture that is obsessed intrinsically, if not on the surface, with social hierarchies.
Television - as awesome, brilliant and generally life-changing as it is - often has one major problem: it pits the "good" versus the "bad" in a figurative fight to the death, and there is rarely an emphasis on the fact that these two sides tend to overlap in unexpected ways. A show either focuses on the plight of the noble and unpopular, or on the incongruity of a popular person experiencing unhappiness; neither side is fully represented in an accurate light. Listen to me, even; I'm actually pretending for a moment that there are two sides when we all know (or should know) that such a simple division does not exist. Forget anything and everything that compartmentalizes people into tiny little oh-so-manageable pods; in my own rarely humble opinion, people in their entirety deserve more than that.
There are, of course, televised examples in which these oversimplified stereotypes are put in their proper places. The aptly named former WB show "Popular," a satire of sorts that debuted well before its time and was consequently cancelled before its time, spoofed traditional social roles in a school setting, blurring the lines of moral right and wrong and displaying an amalgam of elaborate caricatures who really don't know where they fit in at all. Convoluted wars between the haves and the have-nots, between the smarties and the dummies, between all manners of people who are completely different from one another, really serve to prove a point in the show. These rigid roles are even emphasized further today by other shows aimed at young people; it appears that the under-30 crowd can't get much of a break in the individuality department. Seeing such ridiculous characters demonstrate a version of reality - or at least what such a reality must look like to people who are observant enough to point out its inherent silliness-is enough to make a person take a step back and wonder: where did these stereotypes originate, anyway?
2008 Woodie Awards
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