During the Course of your Study, What have you Discovered about the Individual and the Family?

Similarly Income plays a major role in the individual and the family’s life as indicated in the course of study of the individual and the family. One of Josie’s dreams is for her to be ‘accepted’ into the ‘world of… upper-class privileges…’ If Josie did have ’Money, prestige …’ her life would change dramatically and she would be meeting different people and hanging out with different people altogether because in the ‘upper-class’ world ‘Money, prestige and what your father did for a living counted’ ‘brains didn’t count that much’ in St Martha’s, the school Josie attends. ‘The Simpsons’ family could do with more money because of the low income they have. To afford an appointment with the doctor the family must sell the most worthy possession in the house, which is the TV. The TV’s importance to the family is recognized when the children beg the father not to sell the TV. Money is also an issue to Pink’s family because she says the parents ‘fight about money’ so this illustrates that money is a big issue to the family because money is one of the reasons why the father left. Income has a big importance to the individual and the family.

 Likewise during the course of study of the individual and the family it has been discovered that the environment that the individual and the family grow up in has a significant value to one’s life. In Pink’s family the fights between her parents have got her confused because usually love is a special thing but her family doesn’t display the traditional way of love little girls expect so she doesn’t know ‘what love’ is and hopes ‘love’ to ‘destroy’ her as it has to her family. In ‘The Simpson’ household Homer displays a lot of acts of violence when he strangles Bart and his addiction to TV. This influences Bart and Lisa to watch TV and even care more for the TV than for Homer shown during an episode where Bart and Lisa hug the TV. Homer’s violence also influences the whole family to be violent represented during the harsh zapping session at the clinic. In Josie’s family her environment is full of Italian culture so her family have certain expectations of her such as: marrying as a virgin, not going out with unrespectable people, dress appropriately, date people that the family knows well which is illustrated when Josie says ‘She wouldn’t understand why mama’s letting me out with someone she hardly knows’ referring to grandmother, marry a Italian described when Nonna tells Josie ‘Eleanora’ and ‘Bob’ divorced ‘because he’s Australian and she’s Italian, of course’ and attend Tomato day. The environment has a huge impact on the individual’s life as well as the family’s.

Through the course of the study of the individual and the family one point discovered that reoccurred frequently was the individual wanting and trying to fit in or belong. In ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ Josie is forever ‘trying to fit in somewhere’ she and her mum were born in Australia so Josie wasn’t ‘completely one of them’ referring to Italians. Since Josie’s ‘grandparents were born in Italy’ she isn’t ‘completely Australian’ as a result she isn’t accepted as Italian or Australian. In Primary ‘the reaction of the Italian mothers to my mother being unmarried drove’ Josie ‘crazy…’Because of that ‘no-one was allowed to come and stay at’ Josie’s house this made her feel unaccepted. In St Martha’s ‘ there were no Europeans like’ Josie. ‘No Europeans who didn’t have money…’ and ‘Ones like’ Josie ‘ didn’t belong’ so she did things ‘for acceptance’ because she felt like an ‘ outcast’ of her ‘own kind’. In ‘ The Simpsons’ during the work picnic Homer is trying to fit in with all the other families at the picnic by stressing the importance of the whole family to act like normal families. He tries to fit in by making Bart lose the potato sack race to Mr. Burns and bribing Bart to kiss him so they can look like a real family although they aren’t. In ‘Family Portrait’ Pink wants her family to ‘look pretty normal’ to achieve this Pink wants her family to ‘look pretty happy’. This is Pink’s personal interpretation of fitting in and looking ‘normal’. Throughout all these texts the individual and the family are trying to fit in or belong to a certain group of people.

Something learnt during the study of the individual and the family was the ‘perfect family’ image. In ‘The Simpsons’ Homer sees a perfect family and realises this is the kind of family he wants. When the father from the ‘perfect family’ says ‘ I pity you’ it makes Homer sad and from then Homer becomes determined to make his family a ‘perfect family’ not caring if his family wants to or not. Later on it is seen the ‘perfect family’ from the bosses picnic at the clinic so the ‘perfect family’ wasn’t so perfect after all and the ‘perfect family’ image is just a false impression. In ‘Family Portrait’ the family is obviously not happy because pink wants her family to ‘play pretend’ and show all the other families that the happiness ‘goes naturally’ in her family. This suggest her family is in a unhappy crisis and is on the verge of separation because a real happy family doesn’t have to show happiness ‘goes naturally’ in their family. Josie is also affected by the ‘perfect family’ image because at her school one of the reasons she is not accepted is the  ‘absence of a father’ and because she doesn’t know whom her father is. The ‘ perfect family’ image is just an artifice and as Lisa said ‘The sad truth is all families are like ours’ meaning all families aren’t perfect.

Thereby Media plays a key position on modern lives understood when studying the individual and the family. In Pink’s family the only reason she is trying to make her family ‘normal’ is because the media have influenced her to think that ‘perfect families’ or ‘traditional families’ are ‘normal’ families. She says ‘can we be a family?’ the question isn’t a proper question because there are whole varieties of meanings for the word ‘family’ these days. Whatever happens she will have a family although it won’t be the ‘perfect family’ or the ‘traditional family’ she sees on TV. Pink doesn’t know this though because young children tend to believe in the TV and thinks if her family breaks up then she won’t be part of a family. In ‘The Simpsons’ Media simply rules their lives because they watch TV so often. The media have changed the traditional way of having dinners with the family to having dinner in front of the TV. The ‘best Ad.’ Homer could find was from the TV so this shows how much Homer depends on the TV because the only resource he used was the TV. The media have influenced our lives by means that are not notice because they have become habitual to us.

In Conclusion there have been many concepts and ideas learnt from the study of the individual and the family. Many of those will come to be of important use when harder and more complex topics occur in the later years to come.