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...occupation TV, there is a small but limited relationship to how that occupation really is," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Learning about an occupation from watching a TV show is like learning how to parent kids by watching sitcoms"--there's some truth, but you can't take it too seriously.
Still, television can be occupationally instructional. "What people actually learn from TV is enormously more important than the inaccuracies," says Jim Elkins, professor of law at West Virginia University and a featured author in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture. "TV provides a broader general public understanding. It demystifies occupations."
This article separates fact from fiction by exploring how occupations are presented on television. It discusses the occupational portrayals most often shown on TV: those in the healthcare, crimefighting and crimesolving, and legal fields. The focus here is on conventional shows that are works of fiction--primarily dramas, which usually feature more occupational portrayals than sitcoms do--although some of these observations may apply to other types of programming, including documentaries and television's "reality" genre.
Keep reading to learn what television gets right, what it's not showing, and what is fantastically unrealistic. The last section directs you to sources of career information that are more reliable than the small screen.
TV characters at work--sort of
If you're channel surfing for occupational inspiration, you aren't likely to encounter an ocean of choice. That's because the average U.S. worker usually isn't in the script, according to a study published in the winter 2001 Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. The study's authors, researchers Nancy Signorielli and Susan Kahlenberg, found that, during the 1990's, nearly half of the characters in prime-time TV shows were professionals, such as lawyers and doctors, or in law enforcement--a disproportionate representation of the roughly 20 percent of U.S. workers who held such jobs.
The Signorielli-Kahlenberg study underscores the obvious: a primary goal of almost all television shows is to entertain. "Does TV romanticize everything it touches? Of course," says Elkins. "Stories romanticize everything. There are even stories that romanticize war. The ordinariness of things is made vivid and compelling by TV."
To romanticize what workers do, television zeroes in on some of the more riveting aspects of the tasks done by people in these occupations. In doing so, however, TV does not show what the jobs fully entail. As Thompson says, "People on TV are never doing the minute-by-minute work that they have to do in real life." Television's world of work omits what its creators consider to be boring visually, despite the fact that workers in the real world may enjoy those aspects of their jobs.
An occupation that is shown only partially is easily relegated to the background. As a result, TV characters' jobs seldom get a starring role. "Most shows don't have the occupation as a central feature," says Thompson. "Rather, the occupation is on the sidelines."
Sidelined occupations that don't fade away might become minor script devices. For example, waiters, waitresses, and bartenders are occupations that are often used symbolically, says Thompson: "The way they're presented, it's the equivalent of never quitting college, of not having to grow up." In reality, people employed in these occupations work hard and can gain a lot of satisfaction from their jobs.
When depicted on a superficial level, TV occupations might also reinforce stereotypes--including negative ones. Among those who have tracked their unfavorable television portrayals are scientists, information technology workers, and government employees. A June 1999 study by the nonprofit foundation Media Research Center identified a recurrent bias against businesspeople. "Businessmen are just about the easiest thing to make impersonal villains of," says Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the center. But not all of the negative stereotyping bothers him. "We're always more concerned about serious dramas than comedies. The more realistic the show is, the more you have to worry."
Workplace dramas:
Factual, but fictional, TV The camera zooms in on emergency medical technicians briefing the nurses as they rush a patient through the bustling emergency room and into surgery, where doctors and other specialists perform a complex...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
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