The popular CBS television show How I Met Your Mother is currently airing its ninth season. Through the example of this show and the lens of ideology, I argue that How I Met Your Mother has a sexist ideology that supports the stereotypes that women are stupid, easily manipulated, and “crazy”, especially when there is a man in her life. Crouteau writes that, “media texts articulate coherent… ways of seeing the world” (Crouteau, 153). I argue that this sexist way of seeing the world is counterproductive to gender equality and promotes simplistic stereotypes of women that are widely accepted by the audience because these stereotypes are packaged as jokes that make the show and specifically the character Barney Stinson, funny and popular. Ideological analysis focuses on “how the elite have legitimatized their interests, specifically through the enactment of posturing their political necessities as natural, universal, and immune to history, thereby insulating the social order against change” (Winslow, 277). In this example the elite are men and their interests (particularly the interest of Barney) are presented as winning women over through manipulation in order to have sex with them.

How I Met Your Mother runs on the assumption of the world that women are emotionally unstable, especially in relationships. There are many examples of the main character Ted dating women who turn out to be “crazy”. One woman sets his apartment on fire. Another physically attacks him during a date. This is an example of media selectively constructing social imagery so that stereotypes about women are displayed as common sense and universal. The show follows the sexist ideology by displaying “what roles are appropriate for different groups, and what is just” (Crouteau, 154). The texts displays that only stereotypical and simplistic roles are appropriate for women on this show, and these displays produce most of the comedy on the show. The character Barney, a hyper-masculinized womanizer, is the source of much of the comedy involving women. Barney uses many tricks in order to get women to sleep with him, and these women are easily manipulated. Their stupidity is seen by the audience as comedy and further supports the idea that when women are sexually attracted to men they lose their heads.

There are many broader sets of media images that also support these strict gender roles and stereotypes of women. The television show Bridezillas supports the idea that all a woman cares about is getting married and that having a man in her life will make her even more emotionally unstable than she already is. Through all these examples of broader sets of media images we see that this sexist ideology is indeed a ruling idea in media, the idea that women are “crazy”. “The accumulation of media images suggests what is “normal” (e.g., women must be preoccupied with their appearance if they want to be successful)” (Crouteau, 157). There are many media images that show that a woman’s aim is to be as attractive as possible in order to attract men and for the pleasure of men. Therefore the ideology in How I Met Your Mother reflects the dominant ideology of gender produced by the media today.

How I Met Your Mother, specifically the antics of the character Barney, is supposed to interprellate and attract viewers who are “bros”, truly masculinized, heterosexual men who will appreciate the value of attracting women and having casual sex with them by any means necessary. Material objects like the bro code are sold to the public and encourage fans of the show to follow strict gender roles of masculinized ideals of straight men. The character Barney is presented as having an “awesome” and fun life. Therefore the males viewers are encouraged to follow Barney’s rules so they too can obtain his luxurious lifestyle and sex life. “The more intensely and flawlessly… techniques duplicate empirical objects, the easier it is today for the illusion to prevail that the outside world is the straightforward continuation of that presented on the screen” (Adorno, 353). Shows like How I Met Your Mother are supposed to interprellate people who want to see the world in this simplistic, straight forward gender role view. “No independent thinking must be expected from the audience”, all audience members are expected to do is laugh at the jokes on the program and buy the merchandise of the show (Adorno, 361).

In conclusion, How I Met Your Mother is a television program that has a fanbase that supports the popularized stereotypes of gender, which often display men in positions of power over women, and women as overly emotional and unintelligent. “Ideological analysis… often goes hand in hand with political advocacy, as critics use their detection of distorted messages to make their own ideological points” (Crouteau, 156). This analysis supports my feminist views and why I therefore criticize the sexism in the show. I think it is particularly important to view media with an ideological lens in order to see not only the accepted norms that are perpetuated by media, but also to see how these norms can be overly simplistic and have negative affects on marginalized populations.

Bibliography

Croteau, David, et al. 2012. “Ideology.” Media/Society. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. 2002 [1944]. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as

Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Gunzelin

Noerr. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp. 94–136.

Winslow, Luke. 2010. “Comforting the Comfortable: Extreme Makeover Home Edition’s

Ideological Conquest.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27 (3): 267-290.