Aspirational TV

Television shows such as Sex and The City, The Cosby Show, and Gossip Girl attempt to portray the lives of working class or regular Americans. These shows try to relate to its working class viewers by portraying that they are in a sense no different from them. They attempt to portray that they go through the same problems that plague real working class citizens. What these shows do is the exact opposite though. These shows portray these supposedly ordinary working people with regular jobs, and sometimes no job at all, in big houses with nice décor and very active social lives. The lives that are shown on these television shows are in fact not relatable to its working class audience. These aspirational television shows give viewers the idea that if they work hard enough then they too can obtain the great success that the characters in the shows achieve. While these types of aspirational television shows can usually be seen in sitcoms, it can also be seen in the reality television shows that we watch also. Shows such as Jersey Shore and The Real World seem to show ordinary people living these not so ordinary lives, living in nice houses and having so much fun without doing much of anything.