[So called] Life 101: A Prof's Perspective

Wendy Luttrell, assistant professor of cultural anthropology, has shown clips from "My So-Called Life" in her Sexuality and Society class to illustrate concepts taught in the course. Here she talks about why she likes the show and why she uses it as a teaching tool.

"I attribute my access to the show to my daughter. She's 15 and her and her friends talk in detail about every episode. Once she described one of the episodes to me and I realized that it's dealing with school culture and the cross-currents of peer pressure, and we had been talking in class about sexuality in schools. So I watched the next episode and just couldn't believe how rich a description they were providing as far as showing different types of girls with different reputations. It also really illustrated well the social hierarchies that were formed based on a person's sexual activity or lack thereof. We gain a sexual identity as a member of a social group, even though we like to think that we're more autonomous in forming ourselves.

"I showed a clip from the episode in which there are rumors that Catalano and Angela have gone all the way. There's a national obsession right now with the assumption that all teenagers are sexually active. The show points out the cultural models of teenage sexuality and explores and reproduces standard class and race biases. The show's unwitting gender stereotypes are a good example of how our society's much more sophisticated in dealing with gender than in class or race.

"For example, there's a class distinction and a tension between Angela's family and her friends' families. A huge part of Angela's identity is tied up in her family. Angela's the middle-class girl, sexually inexperienced, and Rayanne is the working-class girl who's very sexually experienced. Could you imagine if Angela was the one who was with a lot of different boys? If there's going to be an unusual sexual figure, it's not going to be a middle-class white kid. That is also supported through the character of Rickie. Rickie is ambiguous both in race and sexuality, and we don't see any of his home life; all we know is that he doesn't live with his parents and has no siblings. In fact, both Rickie and Jordan are `family-less,' they're much more autonomous than Angela or Rayanne as far as family life; they stand on their own, which is another stereotype getting played out.

"It's just a perfect example for seeing these things get played out and is a useful show to critique because it's such a good show even with all the expected stereotypes and blinders."