Wide context

Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/Television is a giant media that is one of the flagrant purveyors of violence (The X-Files), ill-mannered humour (The Simpsons) and sex. One of American series Married... with Children which is in its heyday in Poland is full of dirty, scurrilous language and bickering. It forms an obtrusive stereotype of an American middle-class family; an unscrupulous mother, a dumb father and oversexed children. Other soap operas which are blockbuster films like Dynasty or The Bald and the Beautiful try to impose a picture of too beautiful and too spoiled people who are mainly preoccupied with plotting and spending money. However not all soap operas can be accused of being 'antifamily'. The Bill Cosby Show is about a friendly, well-educated, black family where parents and children coexist together wonderfully, working out all the problems with a smile and humour instead of irony and sarcasm. The same happens with periodicals addressed to teenagers. Some of them are full of features stressing the importance of having money, fashionable clothes and a perfect figure. No wonder that the girls who don't fit that ideal picture end up with inferiority complex.