Adolescent discourses in The Hard Times of R.J Berger

The Hard Times of R.J Berger does a great job in my opinion with showing the different discourses that surround adolescent high school students, as well as showing the issues involved with gender, race, and sexuality that surround adolescence. The show generalizes around a 15 year old boy named R.J Berger. R.J is considered to be very nerdy and isn't accepted by the popular crowd at his high school. R.J has two main friends that he hangs out with, Miles and Lily. Miles is very loud overweight kid that only thinks about one thing and that is scoring with the ladies. Miles always seems to get R.J in some kind of trouble that he has a hard time getting out of. Then you have Lily, who is extremely sex-obsessed and does nothing but lust after R.J every chance she gets. I chose to do this blog on this show because it is extremely heavy on the stereotypes of high schoolers which makes it very easy to point out different discourses associated with them. For example you have your typical jocks and cheerleaders who are the most popular kids in the school and then you have your nerdy kids that are the less popular ones.

In the show there is a character named Max. Max is your typical meat-head jock who can care less about anyone other than himself. Max gets most of his pleasure from picking on R.J and just basically making his life a living hell. For two whole seasons of the Max can be seen as your typical heterosexual high school teenager. In the last episode of the second season Max is discovered by R.J, kissing a guy and later tells R.J that he is gay. This goes back to the discussion of compulsory heterosexuality. Which explains how heterosexuality is so naturalized as the norm and all people are considered to be heterosexual unless they "come out" (Queer Desire, Romantic Comedy, and Citizenship Power Point). Max explains to R.J that he is afraid to come out because he doesn't want everybody to treat him different. This shows how hard it is for adolescence to express their sexuality because there is such a big deal with acceptance in our young culture. It is easy to not be accepted by your peers if you are "so called" different than the generalized norm in society.


Also in the show there is a character named Jenny. Jenny is a cheerleader and the most beautiful girl in school. She is considered widely popular by everyone. Jenny is the stereotypical blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl who is all about purity and all around being considered to be a good girl. Throughout the first season Jenny dates Max, which also ties into the stereotypical idea that all good girls like bad boys. While Jenny would love to stay pure and keep up on all of her morals she falls to the temptation to have sex with Max just so that she can keep him and feel accepted. This goes back to the discussion on adolescence and sexual desire. Girls are not represented as full sexual subjects and girls feel like sex is required in order to keep a boyfriend (Youth Studies Power Point). I feel that adolescent girls that want to be good girls but then go and date bad boys are very insecure with themselves and focus on what other people this of them entirely too much. Every girl and guy for that matter should just be themselves and shouldn't care less about what other people think of them.

To finish up my discussion I would like to talk a little more about Jenny. I feel that other than R.J, she is the most important character in the show and she really keeps the show going. The show is based around a lot of strong sexual fantasies of adolescent high schoolers and Jenny usually seems to be right in the middle of that with pretty much whole school lusting after her. I wanted to relate her character to Harris' article on the can-do girls vs the at-risk girls. A can-do girl is explained to be a girl that is middle to upper class, is a good student, wants to be pure and wait until marriage to have kids, and has access to unlimited resources. An at-risk girl is explained to be a girl that is more lower class, more likely to get pregnant early, and not having as much access to resources. I think that Jenny would fit into the category of an can-do perfect (Harris). However by the way that Jenny acts and how she wants people to think of her you would think that she was an at-risk girl. I think that the character of Jenny is a very good example when it comes to talking about the sexual desires in adolescent girls and as well as good representation of girlhood in adolescence.

Work Cited

Brown, Adriane. "Intro to Youth and Pop Culture” Women’s Studies 230 Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture. 23 May 2011


Brown, Adriane. "Queer Desire, Romantic Comedy, and Citizenship" Women's Studies 230 Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture. 23 May 2011

Harris, Anita. "The "Can-Do" Girl Versus The "At-Risk" Girl." Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Routledge, 2004. 13-36. Print.

Minoritizing discourse in Family Guy

Family Guy in general is pretty known for having very strong minoritizing discourse on race, gender, and sexuality. One episode that I felt have one of the strongest cases of minoritizing was episode: Quagmire's Dad. In this episode Quagmire (who is known to be very aggressive with women and having sex with multiple partners) invites his friends Peter and Joe over to meet his dad, who is coming to visit. Before Peter and Joe go to meet Quagmire's dad they are excited because they expect him to be as much of a ladies man as his son is. Peter and Joe soon find out that that is not the case when they realize that Quagmire's dad is gay. Peter and Joe become concerned because Quagmire seems to not notice that his dad is indeed a homosexual so they tell him what they believe and Quagmire is forced to confront his father. Quagmire's father tells his son that he is a women trapped in a man's body and that he wants to have a sex change. So his father has a sex change. The episode concludes with Brian meeting Quagmire's father and sleeps with her not nothing that she used to be a man. Brian finds out after the family tells him and he is disgusted with himself.

Minoritizing discourse on sexuality believe that heterosexuality is the norm and everything in society should be about what works for heterosexuals (Transgeneration Power Point) and this episode clearly shows a minoritizing discourse of sexuality. When Peter and Joe first come over to meet Quagmire's to meet his father they show his father dancing around and wanting to drink a Cosmo, as if it is not manly to dance around to festive music and drink Cosmos. This immediately shows stereotypes of gay men and when Peter and Joe begin to poke fun at Mr. Quagmire for being gay it shows that homosexuality is something to make fun of and is not considered to be the norm. This can also go with Moddelmog's argument that

Minoritizing discourses of transgeneration explain that gender binaries are highlighted and refined and also it give ideas that characters are fixing an internal problem (Transgeneration Power Point). In the episode it gives a clear representation of this when Mr. Quagmire comes out and says that he is not happy being a man and he feels that if he stays a man the rest of his life will be miserable. Another way that this episode shows minoritizing discourse of sexuality is the reaction that the Griffin family has towards Mr. Quagmire after he has the sex change. Mr. Quagmire is invited over to the Griffin house for dinner and immediately the first thing out of Peter's mouth is "Hey so do you miss your penis?", another example of how transgender is seen as some what of a joke and shouldn't be taken seriously.

Lastly another minoritizing discourse of sexuality that appears in the episode is when Brian sleeps with Mr. Quagmire not knowing that she used to be a man. Before Brian finds out that Mr. Quagmire used to be a man he believes that she is his soul mate and he feels that he has finally found the one that he will spend the rest of his life with. Brian tells Peter and Lois about what a wonderful time he had with a women that he has met and then proceeds to show them a picture of her. Peter notices who it is and then begins to laugh hysterically. Brian later has to find out Mr. Quagmire's secret from Stewie and he puts to the pieces together and finds out that that is who he had slept with. He begins to vomit for a ridiculously long time and immediately goes to take a shower to show just how disgusted he was with him self. I believe that this showing minoritizing discourse of sexuality because it makes it seem like that a man that had a sex change can not have any real relationships and can't physically be intimate with a man just because he is transgendered. This can also go with Moddelmog's argument speaking about how same-sex marrigage and relationships are seen viewed as evil in our society. She says that " A more troubling threat is the potential transformation of the way in which marriage functions as a disciplinary mechanism that not only regulates heterosexual desire but helps to produce it" (Moddelmog pp.9). What I think she is meaning by this is that he believes that it will turn into a bad thing for society if it continues to only accept heterosexual and not even to consider same-sex marriage or relationships as acceptable.

Works Cited

Brown, Adrienne. "Transgeneration." May 2011. PowerPoint.

Moddelmog, Debra A. "Can Romantic Comedy Be Gay? : Hollywood Romance, Citizenship, and Same Sex Marriage Panic." (2009): 162-72. Web.