Big Bang Theory – Marxism and Pluralism

The show that I have picked for my case study is ‘Big bang theory’ and I picked this because it’s related to my topic which is nerds. Nerds or geeky people are portrayed as people who are smart, have no social life, love games, Sci-Fi comics and superheroes. They can’t get any girls and stay within there social group, and this is stereotype have chosen.

Marxism –

Within the show 4/5 main characters are white while 3 of them middle/upper class with good jobs, the 5th member is Asian but also is middle/upper class who are all males, and the final member is white female and she has the lowest job which is waitress and is a failed actor. The show already links into males are the people who have to power over females as they have hire jobs in society and more important jobs, this is also broken as they have a Asian character.

The jobs of these 4 characters are scientist for one of the biggest universities, and this shows the power the characters have and how they are big in society as scientist is an extremely intelligent job. Marxism fits within the text later on in the series as the Asian character Raj loses his job and relies on the main white character for a job, so this shows that in the end of the day is the upper class white people are the people who help out everyone else.

The 4 characters may be all friends but they are groups within the group, the Asian (Raj) and the Jewish character (Howard) are the 2 close friends, and they 2 pure white people (Sheldon and Leonard) are the closer of the friends and show relies on them. As well as this Sheldon who is the smartest of all of the friends is the most powerful, and everything he wants to do he gets to do and he owns the group.

Pluralism-

The show tried to show different cultures to try to keep many different types of people interested. You have Raj for Asians, Howard for Jewish, Leonard for Christians and Sheldon for atheistic. This is how Big Bang theory tries to keep many different cultures and audiences so they continue to watch the show.

Also the job scientist is a high class job and by big bang theory making fun of it, this is the opposite of Marxism as they make these big jobs seem funny. Also as scientist is a rare job and much people don’t see much about it, they may want to find out more about it and how the scientist live and this may encourage them to continue to watch.