The television show, Scrubs, displays both perspectives of masculinity, dominant and subordinate. The dominant male in the show is Dr. Cox and subordinate male in the story is J.D. Dorian. Dr. Cox marks his own masculinity throughout the show by doing and say things that question Dorian's masculinity. For my masculinity paper I focused on the one episode called "Our Drunken Friend." There are so many times during that episode when Dr. Cox shows his dominance by intimidating many students in the Sacred Heart teaching hospital. A primary target of Dr. Cox just happens to be J.D. Since J.D. looks up to Dr. Cox he doesn't care how mean he is to him sometimes; he is still loyal to him and listens to every form of criticism he gives him. Here is the first part of the episode I focused on:
During this episode, the opening scene is very telling. It is already portraying which man is the dominant one in this show and which man is the subordinate one. Dr. Cox acts like J.D. doesn't even exist and is rather rude to him when J.D. tries to have a conversation with him. Then when he encounters the student he calls, #1, J.D. is extremely jealous of him because he wants to be recognized like that by Dr. Cox, but he never is. Not only does Dr. Cox mark his masculinity in the presence of J.D. but he also shows his dominance when talking to an intern, Lucy. She tries to hide from him, but he finds her anyway and gives her unecessary work that he wants done and also gives her a lesson on not getting involved with patients.
J.D.'s masculinity is questioned greatly when they show him up in the tree teaching his class and him needing his fellow doctor to come rescue him. He cannot get down by himself and is is caught like a baby when they shake the tree to get him down. No man wants to be called a baby.
I believe that Scrubs is a great example of dominant and subordinate masculinity and that is shown just in the first part of this episode. There are many more examples of marking masculinity later in the episode. I recommend checking it out!
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