I think the most interesting thing about all of the pieces we looked at is how they either scrutinized women as a population or men as a population. There was never a piece that made fun of the idea of a 'Mr. or Mrs. Right'.
In the one-act, the men are extremely degrading to the women. The attorney makes snarky comments about the women, insinuating that he believes them to be silly and only worried about sewing and cooking and other household nuances. In reality, it was the women who solved the mystery to who is the murderer - or for the most part. At the very least, the women came closer to any interesting evidence than the men did. And how did they do it? By simply discussing the situation sympathetically, and thinking about a woman similar to themselves like women do. Another thing I found interesting about this piece is how sympathetic the women were. They wanted to see the best in her. It was almost as if they were fighting for her innocence for the sake of women in general. The constant chastising from the men may have sparked some resilience in the women, and made them want to be sympathetic and hide the canary because maybe they understand on some very small level that she was fed up with her husband and his coldness. She needed some light in her life. The women probably felt similar about the men, and therefore were more sympathetic to her.
In the piece on CNN about the online dating profile, men as a population are chastised. They do say in the video that she did not want to isolate men completely, but one cannot help but make implications based on the fact that hundreds of men messaged the most terrible woman on the planet for a date. Was it because she is hot? Regardless, the men still messaged someone with zero morals. What does the say about these men? Or, maybe in this piece there are more implications about dating in general. Is it so impossible to find a date that men are messaging women at random to try and get one? If so, it is seemingly extremely difficult to find 'Mr. or Mrs. Right' and if students saw something like this, they might be inclined to lower their standards or start dating at a very young age because they are afraid of being alone for the rest of their lives if they ignore some opportunities.
Similarly, the YouTube video "It's Not About the Nail" paints a picture that women are infuriating ad unreasonable about the world and the way they seek sympathy. Viewers would see this and think: if I get married to a women, this will happen to me. She will be unreasonable and illogical, and there will be no getting through to her. It's a common stereotype that women just want to be sympathized with, they don't actually want help. This is a ridiculous notion that all women are like this. While people may feel this way sometimes, no one really wants to go about their life without any solutions and feeling sorry for themselves. When someone is down, they will eventually want it fixed.
So- after seeing that these pieces all isolate and scrutinize one gender, how does this relate to Mr. and Mrs. Right? Are our standards too high? Are we too critical? I would say that the media paints a picture of marriage in a way that isn't always accurate. People joke about their wives or husbands as the "old ball and chain." Why is this? Well, perhaps its the cynics out there that aren't married or who do have a failing marriage that like to make these jokes to make their situation seem better. But in general, I think the message I would want to get across to my students is that people are extremely critical of different gender types, especially when it comes to marriage. I would encourage my students to not feel as though they need to grab on to someone as soon as they can - the media inflates the idea that marriage is impossible. While it isn't easy, I guess I'd want to give them a little hope and not always buy in to the stereotypes of marriage and married men and women they see in popular culture.
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