Why How I Met Your Mother is so successful ?

In this last post, I want to discuss why How I Met Your Mother works so well.

In fact when you look at how the show is maid, you see that it’s the perfect representation of our lives, even if we are not New Yorkers or American. It represents a group of friends living, with the good and the less good things which can happen in a life. And because the main story is a simple thing, we can see us, in some way, in the episodes. When you can find a link with you, even a small one, you will be more focused on what you see.

When we focus on the communication aspects, you can see that, first, the characters well represents our culture. Not a single main character represents a minority. Obviously it’s racism, but when you look at the “real” world, you see that racism is still there, but in a minor way.

Also you have the representation of the complexity of the people’s mind. When you look at Ted character, you can see every people who think a lot (maybe too much). When you look at Robin’s character, you have the representation of the trouble to be a woman at work: you always have to choose between your family life and your professional life. By looking at Marshall and Lilly, you have the representation of the perfect couple in the 21^st century: they like each other, they try to talk a lot to avoid the troubles, they work as a team to make their couple work, but sometimes it doesn’t work and they broke up. It represents a “normal” couple who also have trouble. And when you look at Barney, he represents the people who don’t really know what they want to do about their lives and act like teenagers. But when he finds what he really wants, he does everything he can.

This show is full of bias because media are never neutral as is our culture. In How I Met Your Mother, you have stereotypes, arbitrary signs, sexism ...  But when you analyze a little bit the show and don’t look at it as an innocent viewer, you will learn things about your life and you can be able to improve that, and that’s why How I Met Your Mother is so successful, it’s that you can learn from yourself and try to be what you want to be.

Barney: representation of a gender

When you look at How I Met Your Mother and pay attention to the gender point of view, the character of Barney is perfect to analyze.

He is the perfect representation of the ambiguity of masculinity nowadays. 

On one hand, he is the typical men: dominant, powerful and sexually successful. He has a great financial situation due a job, we don’t really what he does in the company but he’s well paid and it seems that he is in charge of important decisions. For example, in one episode he was the project manager for the creation of the new building of the Goliath National Bank and he makes the decision to pick his friend (Ted) project. What also his dominant and powerful position, is that he has a man who will do what he wants. For example he has a man for his costumes and he even has a man to find a men. The presentation of Barney can’t be relevant without the sexual part. All is life turns around women. And he is really good at having sex with women. He is so good that he reached the huge number of 200 women with whom he had sex. And because all this is a game for him, to make it harder, he tries different techniques. In one episode he shows to his friends a book in which all he’s techniques are described. And because real men have to reach goals, he challenges his self all the time, to have sex with one different woman every night during an entire week for example.

And on an other hand, he also is the representation of the “new man”. He takes care of him a lot: he always wear suits, he gets manicure, massages ... And in the most recent seasons, be begin to see a Barney who show his feelings. He felt in love with Robin, thing that would never have happened before. Now even if makes jokes about his feelings, to still be “strong as a real man”, he opens his mind to his friends  and become more vulnerable to the life and he starts to be a “real person” instead of the patriarchal vision of the man taking of his family.

How I Met Your Mother and racism

How I Met Your Mother is a sitcom in which we follow a group of New Yorker friends.

Even if New York is considered as the most representative city of the melting pot, Ted, Lilly, Marshal, Robin and Barney are all Caucasian. It show that even if people try to be more equal in the tv shows or movies, the most recurrent African American man who appear more than once in the sitcom is Barney’s brother: James. This is a kind of racism and exclusion, because this group of friends is supposed to represent an average group of friends in New York and it seems that the average New Yorker is not African American. 

Even we think that the most know racism is toward foreigners, it also “works” with people in your country. Because the USA is composed of multiple states, each one can be considered as a small country. In How I Met Your Mother, we can see that with Marshall and the representations of citizens of Minnesota. If you look at how people from Minnesota are this sitcom, it’s a perfect representation of stereotypes. They are all 6.6, they are strong, they like violent games (as we see in an episode where we learn that Marshall and his brothers use to do free fight in the living room when they were young). In one episode, we also see that they like bad food: the special meal of the Eriksen family is made of mayonnaise, chips and candies. And there are also stereotypes we think are good but not obviously. In Minnesota it seems that people like tailgating a lot, they also love the Vikings and they are friendly with everybody. It seems to be “good” racism but in fact it can be analyzed this way: people from Minnesota are weak-minded because they act like children. They love everybody and they like sports, like hockey, as children do. 

In fact even people don’t think that this a also bad stereotypes, it can be considered like that from the people represented like that.

Ideological analysis of Robin

If you want to do an ideological analysis of How I Met Your Mother, you have to main characters that are perfect to analyze: Barney Stinson and Robin Scherbatsky. Today I will be focused on Robin.

She is the perfect representation of the active New Yorker woman.  She is a beautiful woman and tries to succeed in both her career and her love life. She is the presenter of the morning news (which is a job where the power of the image is huge) on Metro news one which is a small TV station. But nobody watch her show even her friends. On another hand she tries to have a serious relationship but she never find “the one” (even she doesn’t call him that way), and she lives alone with her dogs most of the time.

When you look at this presentation, it reinforces the ideology of the active women. She is nice but she can’t succeed just because of her body. In an episode, she wants to find a job because if she doesn’t have one, she will have to go back to Canada. And she tried to get hired for the national lottery. But she wasn’t “dumb” enough to say the numbers properly. Then Barney did a video resume for her. And he told her that she has to do a lot to impress companies because men don’t think that women can do anything. It shows that the ideology of the women who is too weak and not intelligent enough is still here.

And when you look at her love life, it shows that women can’t handle pressure, and even if they think they can be strong they are always weak compared to men. For example once because “she had too much pressure” from work and her life in New York, she quit and left to Japan. She also has a problem with men because when she is in a relationship, she “regains her natural instinct”. By this, I mean that it’s like she can’t think anymore because she is with a man, because she acts like a doll who can just say yes even if she’s strong and intelligent.

All this is the representation that the American culture has toward women. And it presents the hegemony of a culture which is still male chauvinist and where women are lower than the men even if they are more active. And by providing this ideology to the younger generation it will maintain this hegemony.

How i met your mother and arbitrary signs

When you first watch How I Met Your Mother, you will think that you are going to see a sitcom which simply shows the life of “normal” New-Yorkers.  But when you analyze the show a little bit more, you see that it’s more representative of the American culture than you expected at first.

In fact in developed countries, during a long time the women, men and family roles where separated. In the different situations we had to act in a certain way. Now the roles between men and women tend to be equal. And even if some people think that women and men are considered differently than in the 70’s, it’s not the case, and How I Met Your Mother is the perfect representation of the fact that arbitrary signs about genders are still current.

This show is really relevant of gender representation in our civilization.

With Barney, you have the illustration of the active single-men. He has a great job: he earns a lot of money by doing nothing (well nobody really know what he does). He has a nice apartment. And he doesn’t have a durable relationship with a woman. He prefers having sex with thousands of girls (more than 200) than having a stable relationship with somebody. His career and himself are the only things he takes care of.

In the show Robin is the representation of the women side: the dynamic woman who takes care of her career first but when a guy comes into her life, her arbitrary “women job” starts. You see that she refuses job opportunities to be with the one she loves when the men decide to take the job. You can also see that when she is with a guy she likes, she can’t help to become silly. It’s seems like a woman can’t use her brain when she is with a man.

 Then you have the representation of the “new generation” family with Marshall and Lilly. Even if the roles in the life seem to be equal, some stereotypes persist. Marshall doesn’t know how to cook well, because it’s “Lilly’s job”. And when they have a baby, Marshal is more a support than a real helper for Lilly. One more time the woman has to take care of the baby.

When you look at these characters, it represents our culture well. We think that women and men are equal but arbitrary signs are still there. Finally even if the role changed as we associate black with evil, they are still standards to represent men and women. And it will take a long time to change that.