Blog 1

“Dennis and Dee Go On Welfare”

In this episode the setting starts at the bar where all the friends hang out. Dennis and Dee decide to quit their work at the bar because they are tired of working so much and want to pursue their dreams. They decide to use unemployment to work for their dreams but end up using the money on worthless things. After running out of money they decide to apply for welfare. During this Charlie, Mac, and Frank agree to use a Work for Welfare, government program, to hire potential welfare recipients to work for them for free. The workers are seen doing a lot of work while all three start to slack off. The episode transitions back to Dennis and Dee going to get welfare, the welfare worker tells them to have documentation to prove they need welfare. They turn to buying drugs to show that they suffer from an addiction but end up getting addicted and wasting all there money. They decide to go back to work at the bar to be able to recover from their addiction and get back to their normal lives.

This episode presents to us the ignorant perspective many people in society have about welfare. In the article Acting Out Culture it states, ” …we would next delve more deeply into these rules in search of what ideas they invite us to accept as norms, or widely held cultural ideas about what is proper thinking or behavior in a given situation.” The norm in society is that welfare has a negative impact on society because it enables people to act lazy. In the episode we notice how Dennis and Dee want to achieve their aspirations by cheating the system and obtaining welfare. Dennis and Dee represent the ignorant view people have because they believe that anyone can go and lie about having social problems like addiction and get welfare. When they get rejected they try to trick the welfare worker by using drugs to try to prove that they need help recovering. This leads to them getting addicted and wasting all their money which shows us the real suffering people with addiction face. The workers that are in the Work for Welfare shows us the difficulties they face when Mac, Charlie, and Frank exploit their labor. This scene can be compared to business who exploit government programs to increase their revenue. Welfare isn’t just given to anyone and people who receive it are trying to recover from the social problems they’ve faced and are trying to improve their lives.