Ralph, Fred, Archie and Homer: Why television keeps re-creating the white male working class buffoon

Strewn across our mass media are portrayals of class that justify class relations of modern capitalism. Studies of 50 years of comic strips, radio serials, television drama, movies, and popular fiction reveal a very persistent pattern, an under-representation of working-class occupations and an overrepresentation of professional and managerial occupations among characters.1 My own studies of class in prime-time network television family series from 1946 to 1990 (Butsch, 1992; Butsch & Glennon, 1983; Glennon & Butsch, 1982) indicate that this pattern is persistent over four decades of television, in 262 domestic situation comedies, such as I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, All in the Family, and The Simpsons. In only 11 % of the series were heads of house portrayed as working class, that is, holding occupations as blue-collar, clerical, or unskilled or semiskilled service workers. Blue-collar families were most underrepresented: only 4 % (11 series) compared with 45 % of American families in 1970. Widespread affluence was exaggerated as well. More lucrative, glamorous, or prestigious professions predominated over more mundane ones: 9 doctors to 1 nurse, 19 lawyers to 2 accountants, 7 college professors to 2 schoolteachers. Working wives were almost exclusivel