Sendy – Analysis Paper 1 – Evelyn Harper(Two and a Half Men)

Analysis paper Sendy

The character I chose is Evelyn Harper. She is a high-powered Los Angeles broker/realtor in the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men, which had a great impact on American sitcom. The show began in 2002, when everybody thought the comedy was stuck in gutter.It soon became the No.2 show of that year, and was rated as the hope of comedy.Two and a Half Men was about how a jingle writer Charlie Harper’s free-wheeling style life got completely differently when his divorced brother Alan moved into his beach-front Malibu house along with Alan’s 7year-old(in the first season) son Jake.

As a mother of two men, Evelyn shows love to her sons, but her love is always superficial and difficult to understand because her way to express it. Besides that, Evelyn is cold-blood as Charlie said in this sitcom. Also, she is extremely greedy about money and power, but she seems to be weak sometimes.

In season 1 of this sitcom, when Alan had a difficult time dealing with his divorce she showed up right after she got the news, insisted Alan to live with her so she can get closer with Jake. But Charlie and Alan found out that she didn’t even let them sit on the couch, they realized that it was like the childhood nightmare coming at them, they run away. Thus, her sons and grandson always returned her favour and avoid interacting with her.She quickly replaced Charlie and Alan with a new family when they told her that no one would attend her funeral because nobody loved her that much. She tended to be happy about the death of celebrities because when people dying, she saw business. Alan described her business like this: “Grandmommy doesn’t just prey on the death, Jake. She also profits from the pain of devoice and the humiliation of bankruptcy”(Lorre & Aronson, 2003). However, somehow her cold-blooded character brings her wealthy. Evelyn lives a quite a noble and comfortable life and insist others to live like her when Jake spend a night over her place. The conflict became more obvious when Alan borrowed money from her but it turned out that he was not living a glamorous life as he thought. Though she thinks women should get their own business and money, she tends to marry rich men who are dying so that they will leave her large amounts of money when they pass away.Though she is strong and powerful, she is still woman. She turns to be vulnerable when her lover left her for other young lady. But nobody will ever understand that is she crying for the money her lover own or just for love.

Here I would like to analyse this very different woman using the connection between her family and her business. In the family side, Evelyn Harper is never a good mother, she’s never a conventional housewife. On the contrary, she is successful and powerful in the business side. Evelyn Harper plays the typical “new women” role: “take-charge roles rather than [women’s] usual embourgeoised family roles” given by Robert Deming. (Lotz, 2001, p107) Her love for family is superficial and aggressive because she shows up as an empowered woman who wants to express her love to family just because she wants to show her importance in the family. It is just the way she shows her power, or even, it is the desire for controlling everything.Money actually means power in this sitcom though the writers put this in an exaggerated way. Lotz (2001) states that marketers believe successful women controlled most of their disposable income, and I would like to say here Evelyn not onlyuses money to show her love and live a wealthy way, butalso, as a new woman who does not depending on any men for a living, she needs to be looked rather successful to live a life like this.

What about her identity in her business? Though the sitcom never showed Evelyn’s office or working condition, it did reflect the identity of her in the workplace. She is like the operator but also the secretary. As a money worshipping woman, Evelyn makes herself as a money making machine. She is like an operator who “has a voice”(Marcellus, 2011, p95). She can actually express her thoughts while “she herself might listen in on other people’s [private thoughts]” (Marcellus, 2011, p93). She has her own thoughts (like which house to sell, how much, whom to sell to) and voice so she is independent unlike the Office wives whose do not have own idea but only express her boss’ ideas. “The secretarial work was seen as a temporary interlude on the way to getting a husband—who might just be the boss himself…”(Marcellus, 2011, p95). Not only will the secretary use work to get a husband, but also Evelyn will. Though there’s difference between those two. The secretary sees finding husband as the most important thing in her career, it is an final goal of the secretary’s job. But Evelyn doesn’t think so. She takes her job as a chance to seek rich people and marry them for the things she wants, money or love.

Evelyn is a bad mother, but a successful businesswoman. It seems that women can never be good at both family and business. Senda-Cook (2009) analysed six films that all talk about successful women and promote feminist ideals.What these films have in common is that women come to their career’s success point, however their male lover against their career. Senda-Cook (2009) analysed the choice by using Gregory Bateson’s concept of the double bind (asituation in which no matter what a person does, he [sic]‘can’t win)(Senda-Cook, 2009, 19), Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s articulation of the double binds that women face (women are unable to be feminine if they are successful in their career), and other theories of postfeminism.

Evelyn Harper is a good example of double bine. Though she is a total failure in taking care of her family and her lover or husband, she takes that as nothing because she is very successful in her business. She behaved as a “professional non-woman” (Senda-Cook, 2009, p19). Go back to the connection between Evelyn’s family role and her business role, she plays the new women role as Lotz(2001) states in family, she fits both secretary and operator’s role mentionedin Marcellus(2011)’ article, the connection between these roles which is failure to be a good mother but success in being a businesswomen completes the double bind theory. Whether she chose to be that way or not, we never see her struggle. She tried to show care for the family because the society needs her to, she’s really not care about how her family is influenced by her actions also because the society needs her not to. The sitcom set an exaggeratedly warped society in which money means power and normal people never get good result (as Charlie’s brother Alan in the sitcom) as the background, yet the characters seem to be comfortable with such settled society system.She completes the double bind theory by accept the outlined social term.

References

Lorre, C. (Creator), & Aronson, L. (Creator) (2003). Two and a half men, the complete second season [DVD of a television series]. Burbank, CA, USA: Warner Brothers Entertainment.

Lotz, Amanda. (2001). Postfeminist television criticism: Rehabilitating critical terms and identifying postfeminist attributes. Feminist Media Studies, 1(1), 105-121.

Marcellus, Jane. (2011). Business girls and two-job wives: Emerging stereotypes of employed women. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. (Ch. 3 office machine, office wife)

Senda-Cook, Samantha. (2009). Postfeminist Double Binds: How Six Contemporary Films Perpetuate the Myth of the Incomplete Woman, Rocky Mountain Communication Review 6, no. 2, 18-28.