From Friends to Modern Family

Abstract

Sitcoms have a massive influence on culture and on people’s perception of gender ideals. This thesis tracks the changing representation of American masculinty in sitcoms between the mid-1990s and 2010s by analyzing male characters from select episodes of two wildly popular American sitcoms; Friends (1994) and Modern Family (2009). The research presents various definitions of masculinity, and differentiates between a variety of its images and reconstructions in order to see how masculinity, with its different images and meaning has evolved from the mid-90s until present day.