Rolie Polie Olie is a children’s prorgram that is androcentric in the gender stereotypical roles that it portrays in the main character and the supporting characters on the show, as I will explain. The planet Olie is inhabited by robots, which made me think at first that it would be futuristic and possibly somewhat liberal. But this is not the case. There is one major contradiction to the stereotypical depiction of men on the show and that is that none of them are breadwinners because none of them work. In fact, none of the characters work at paid jobs. It is interesting to note that most of the characters are round and live on the round planet. Some of the robots are square in shape and it is made known that they are different and come from the planet Squarey. This is reflective of the white race being considered the norm in today’s society while any nonwhites are noted to be different from the norm. Difference between round and square robots is also depicted by where they live. The round robots live in tea pots and the square robots live in square homes. In this paper I will first analyze the main character and then many of the supporting characters using examples from various episodes of how these characters are gender stereotypical.

The first character to examine is Olie. He is the main character. He is all boy. His appearance is evidence that he is a boy. He is always in shorts and suspenders just like his dad on the show. He dresses in blues and browns just like his dad and this contrasts with how the women are dressed as will be explained later. This is an example of gender stereotypical colors worn by men and women. The characters are dressed the same on every episode. Olie, as do all of the male characters, has the typically thought of lower tone voice than the women on the show. He is depicted has playing with stereotypical “boy” toys as is evidenced on every episode when he plays with robots and space ships. There is one episode in which Olie is shown playing with dolls. But, this particular episode demonstrates how boys do not usually play with dolls. On this particular episode, Olie and his best friend, Billy are board and cannot think of anything to play with or any games to play that they have not already played recently. Olie’s sister suggests that they play with dollies. The boys immediately groan, roll their eyes and tell the little girl that “bigbot” boys don’t play with dollies. As the episode continues, the boys out of desperation, end up playing with the dolls, but in a stereotypical, adventuresome way. They were never displayed as nurturing, tender or loving while playing with the dolls. Instead, they were portrayed as boys rescuing the little, helpless, girl dollies from danger. The message is clear. Boys do not play with girl toys like dolls and if they do it is to be done grudgingly and then in a non nurturing but typical way, such as rescuing them from danger. The whole rescuing the girl dollies from danger is a message in itself. Strong boys/men rescue weak, helpless girls/women.

Zowie is Olie’s younger sister and she is portrayed as a gender typical girl. She is always in a hot pink dress. She is never in anything other than a dress. She always plays with dollies as they are called on the show and she is frequently portrayed helping her mother in the kitchen.

Space Boy and Space Dog ( also a male ) are the children’s super heroes. There is no female super hero on the show. In one episode Olie is pretending to be Space Boy. When Zowie asks if she can play and be Super Zowie, Olie tells her no that she cannot play. Zowie sits on the porch watching her brother play, when she falls asleep and dreams of being Super Zowie. Later she wakes up from the dream. She never does play at being a super hero, she only dreams it. This suggests that it is okay for females to only dream of being like super hero males.

Spot is the Polies male dog. The only other pet on the show is the neighbor’s cat, Dicie and she is female. As the saying goes: dog is man’s best friend. And in this show man’s best friend is male. There is also a saying that states that women are catty. It is no mistake that the cat in the show is portrayed as female and even it’s name, Dicie, has somewhat sketchy connotation.

The neighbors are the Bevels and they are the square shape robot family mentioned in the intro to this paper. The Bevels have two sons. The only female in their family aside from the previously mentioned cat is Mrs. Bevel. I mention this to give just one example of how the male characters are more in number than the female characters. Why aren’t the Bevels portrayed as having two daughters instead of two sons? Billy Bevel is Olie’s best friend and is an important character in the show. Note that the most important characters in the show are male. This indicates androcentric thinking that males are more important than females. If this were false, then their would be more female characters on the show than male characters and the female characters would have a more important role.

Uncle Gizmo is Olie’s and Zowie’s uncle. He is potrayed as an Elvis type of person who is always having fun. He is single, he drives a motorcycle and is always playing games with the kids. In one episode he picks up Mrs. Polie and swings her around in a dance type fashion all in good fun making her blush and giggle. Uncle Gizmo’s character makes a statement that males are more fun than females. Because all you see females in the show doing are household chores, errands, child care…work. Males have fun while females work.

This brings me to the last character that I will describe and that is Mrs. Polie. She is a robot version of June Cleaver. She is always in a dress and pumps, even when she vacuums. She has an exaggerated high pitched voice and frequently says the words, “oh, my.” She is always portrayed doing housework, especially baking in the kitchen, running errands like going to the grocery store and providing the child care. This gives a message that supports androcentric, gender stereotypical thinking that it is the female’s job to perform the household chores and childcare (reproductive labor.) After all, you only see Mrs. Polie acting silly and not doing work in one episode. That particular episode is about a holiday that they call Silly Willy Day. The message here is that females can act silly, have fun and not work only on special holidays while the male characters like the above mentioned Uncle Gizmo can and do act silly and have fun any day they want to.

The examples that I could go on giving seem endless. The only female friend of Olie’s is named Polly and as we learned in our text, this name has negative connotation. Their grandfather, Pappy, is another example of a fun loving male. He lives on a farm and is never portrayed doing any work, not even organizing work. Farms take work, but all of Pappy’s work is always just mysteriously done while he has fun with the kids. The milk cow on Pappy’s farm is female. The work horse on the farm needs glasses, has low self esteem and is female. This is an example of male ownership of females, females portrayed as a milk cow and pathetic horse with emotional problems. Why aren’t the animals male? Why isn’t there a Granny instead of Pappy? I will tell you why. Rolie Polie Olie is a children’s show that portrays androcentric thinking behind the plots and characters, characters that are gender stereotypical indeed.