My Favorite

One of my favorite television shows is the TV series Shameless that debuts on Showtime. The series originally premiered on January 9, 2011 and is going into its fourth season. The series takes place in the south side of Chicago, Illinois and is based on a poor dysfunctional inner city family whose father is an alcoholic and tries to beat the system by faking Workers Comp claims. It is a remake of the award winning British series.

The series depicts poverty and is chocked full that of stereotypes from the father Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) who is an alcoholic and when he is not out at the bar spending the last of the families money he is trying to come up with his next scam or mooching off his neighbor Shelia Jackson (Joan Cusack) who is a complete germaphobe and is afraid to step foot out of her house due to a near fatal accident. Then there is Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum) whom is the eldest of the six children, she had had to drop out of school to take care of her siblings due to her mothers absence and father’s battle with alcohol and drugs and there’s Lip (Jeremy Allen White) who is a genius but lets his attitude and reputation for finding and getting into trouble get in the way of his education. There are several other characters but these are my favorite and the series tends to focus around them.

The reason I like this series is because it shows a family functioning under extreme circumstances, it’s not about the working class nature but about more serious problems, and how someone stares alcoholism in the face. Although their mother left them and their father is worthless they still manage. Even though Fiona had to drop out of high school to raise her siblings she still attempts to get her GED and look for a more serious job in order to take care of her siblings. She encourages them to go to school and stay in school. And Lip, even though he tends to find trouble he is a straight A student and gets accepted to MIT.

I think the stereotype here is that just because you may be a victim of circumstance doesn’t mean you have to live up to that label. All of us have stereotypes of people who we believe are different than we are from skin color, dress, stature, gender, and accents. If we are to truly value differences we must become aware of the stereotypes we hold of others, examine them and discard the behaviors we demonstrate due to our stereotypes of others.