The Shifting Feasibility of the American Dream As Seen Through Television

This image displays the American Dream of the 1950s. Figure 1

If you work hard you can attain anything… right? A nice house and yard with a white picket fence, a happy family, and a jolly community in the suburbs is waiting for you so long as you work for it. This ideal, the American Dream, has been a driving force in our society and culture for decades now. After World War II, the GI Bill alongside strong economic growth caused by the war led to the rise and prosperity of a strong American middle class. Families such as the one in the image above thrived in their “cookie cutter” suburban homes. Families did not necessarily live lives of riches and luxuries, but they had what they needed most and lived comfortably.

This video, the intro to The Donna Reed Show, shows the idealized American family of the 1950s. Figure 2

Somewhere along the line though, between the 1950s and the 2010s, our country fundamentally changed. Today, homeowner rates are decreasing, divorce rates are increasing, and we have collectively begun to perceive a morally base and corrupt country crumbling around us. How did this happen? How did we reach this point where we work incessantly but achieve nothing? Where down the road did we make this turn?

In 1973, as a result of careless monetary policy, rising oil prices, and currency speculation, inflation significantly rose. This contributed to stagnant wages, growing social inequality, and strongly skewed income and wealth distribution. Workers were forced to work longer and harder, women entered the workforce to support their families, and many new changes arose in the perceptions of wealth, greed, hard work, and ingenuity. From my research, I have determined that this series of events has significantly contributed to the changes we see today. This is the story of the death of the American Dream on a wide scale.

This data chart from the Economic Policy Institute shows the stagnation of wages in the early 1970s.

How can we perceive this shift though? Many different elements of our culture have captured this American Dream ideal including TV shows. They remain as time capsules that allow us to step into different eras and the attitudes of those times. By examining TV shows, old and new, we can see the shift from focusing around the American Dream and the happy traditional nuclear family to breaking the illusion and showing the more hopeless reality of our world and modern day. Think of the transition from shows like Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best to shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Mad Men specifically breaks down our perception of the Dream in the 1950s, showing that even for the rich, our desires never end and nothing is ever how it seems.

This video from YouTube compiles clips from Mad Men to represent the falsehood of the American Dream. Figure 4

I have chosen to focus on this paradigm shift of the feasibility of the American Dream because it is relevant to all of us today. All Penn State students will be entering the workforce in a few years, and soon, many of us will have dreams of home ownership and fulfilling lives spent with our families too. However, no matter how you look at it, our country is changing. Our attitudes have changed to reflect the increasing economic hardship and the growing skepticism towards our past ideals of recent decades. Our future as a nation and our futures as American citizens and workers rely on the health of our economy, and if the truths told in modern TV shows remain as such in the future, we could very well be worse off than our parents in a downwardly trending society.

Shameless shows a modern working class family struggling to survive. Frank Gallagher (played by William H. Macy) is in steep contrast with the ideal American Dream dad. Figure 5

Thanks for reading this post! I hope this overview of my paradigm shift has intrigued at least a few of you. If you would like, you can read my essay when I am finished or watch my TED talk. I hope to see you again when we read, think, and share!

Image Credits:

Figure 1: Image 1

Figure 2: Video 1

Figure 3: Image 2

Figure 4: Video 2

Figure 5: Image 3

2 thoughts on “The Shifting Feasibility of the American Dream As Seen Through Television

  1. I really like your idea for your paradigm shift! It will be a cool concept to analyze throughout history. I liked the Mad Men video- it perfectly demonstrates how TV has changed. I think this concept will be well supported by lots of facts, statistics, and interpretation. Good job!

  2. I love this idea for your TED talk and essay! It seems like you’ve really thought about this a lot, so it’ll be great to see how you expand on it. I completely agree that there has been a big shift when dealing with the American Dream and how it is portrayed. Just reading your article made me think of how different movies that are set in the early to mid 90s are to movies set in the present day. I can’t wait to hear more!

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