Examples of Positive and Negative Shows on Sexuality

September 4, 2013
Television Shows There are two T.V. shows that can show positive and negative views on sexuality. The T.V. show that can show a positive view on sexuality is the show How I Met Your Mother and the T.V. show that can show a negative view is Spartacus. Each show is completely different from the other and there are different views on sexuality based on their content and stereotype in each one. How I Met Your Mother shows a more humorous look to it while Spartacus shows more of women being objects and accessories. The show, How I Met Your Mother, is a sitcom about the main character, Ted Mosby, in search of the woman he would fall in love with and marry in the future while he narrates it as his future self. Along the way his four best friends help him out in his journey through a lot of hilarious situations and misadventures. One of the best friends is named Barney and he plays a role as a womanizer who has a record of sleeping with various women through pick up lines. Though he is what you would call a “player” he always made sure he has the consent of women to agree to sleep with him in the funniest ways. He always seem to persuade women to go home with him whether it was through magic tricks, a flamboyant lie about his occupation, or just being very convincing. Never in the show has he forced a woman to sleep with him or take advantage of them when they’re drunk. It would never be violent or crude but rather humorous to think these women would be naïve enough to fall for his tricks to have sex with him.
This show is a parody of how relationships are when it comes to singles having casual sex. People who experience this see this show and realize the schemes and role-play of how they would play the “game” as in flirt with women when it comes to “scoring” as in to get a woman in bed. It never showed any scorn or depression towards how Barney treated the women. It never showed that the women had to go throw any negative phase after sleeping with Barney. It showed that Barney is a true player at the game and even had a playbook on how to get with women, which a lot of people found very interesting and funny. It made people realize that the “game” is a stereotype in America and how some singles act in society. This is why the show is really popular. However eventually Barney does settle down with one of the main characters named Robin. Spartacus is a show that is set in the gladiator era and is from the network Starz. Each season is different because it portrays different timelines of the story but it is mostly about the life of gladiators and their hardships that they have to go through. However the concept about it’s negative sexual display is the same. The setting of the show is 71 to 73 B.C. where gladiators were public entertainment whether they chose, bought, or forced to be there. The gladiators go through a hard life of discipline, training, torture and sometimes death. When they would win, they would be awarded with money or a prostitute to satisfy their needs. However most of the women in this show are portrayed as sexual objects, servants, or deceiving wives that cheat on their husbands.
This shows contains explicit violence and excessive sexual content. The show seems to advertise itself through sexy and bloody scenes that would attract viewers. Most of the time it would be through the physical, gruesome violence but the storyline also contains romance. Although the romance would usually portray defiance because the wives in the story would often cheat on their husbands for another attractive man. As if they were the husbands’ bored accessories that want more lust in their lives. There are also servants that have sexual relationships with their masters or the gladiators but it was primarily for sex and nothing else. It degrades women and shows total male dominance. It portrays women as slaves and sexual objects. The show displays male, aggressive, sexual behavior that makes them seem like misogynists and sexists while the women are quiet and take in all the sexual activities, which is why this show portrays negative sexuality.
How I Met Your Mother seems to have a humorous way of displaying casual sex as a game while Spartacus portrays women as sexual objects in a sexist way. However How I Met Your Mother made sex seem positive and stereotypical of today’s society while Spartacus made the men look dominant and powerful against women. Both shows demonstrate polar opposites of sexual behavior that we may still experience today.