The New Normal and the Acceptance of Bigotry

Lately, it seems like everything producer and writer Ryan Murphy touches turns to gold, spanning the range from the thrilling (Glee) to the seriously chilling (American Horror Story). But could his latest series, The New Normal, tarnish that stunning record of success? Unlike Glee, the show only takes stabs around funny -- though most similar to Glee as a situation comedy of sorts, the New Normal is not based around a group of basically immature highschoolers punchily belting out pop hits, and since the characters of the New Normal are left without the props of song-and-dance numbers to boost their charm, Murphy's forced them to rely solely upon their dialogue. And with just dialogue, it's easy to see a couple things more subtly disguised in Murphy's Glee: a legitimization of racism and homophobia, with no backdrop of show tunes to lighten the mood.

Let's take it from the top. The New Normal, in case you haven't watched the Pilot episode or read all of the press, is about an Ohio mother, Goldie, who realizes, through a series of conversations with her caustic mother Jane and an unfortunate walk-in on a cheating boyfriend, that she wants more out of life for herself and her daughter. Thus, she impulsively moves to California. With no high school or college degree to speak of, Goldie comes to the conclusion that the one thing she's good at, and can make quick money at, is reproducing (let's not even get into an analysis of how demeaning that is to similarly disadvantaged women everywhere... yet).

Goldie, played by Georgia King, decides to become a surrogate mother
after an attempt to "drive to Honolulu" on half a tank of gas. 

A few sentences ago, I mentioned a caustic (grand)mother, Jane. Here's a sample of  the racist, homophobic, and generally bigoted dialogue that Jane provides to the episode:

"Would you look at that. Just strutting down the middle of Buckeye Road in broad daylight, proud as gay peacocks." (While gazing at a pair of lesbians)

"I happen to love the gays. I could never get my hair to look this good without them."

"Oh, and now with the PDA? Those ass-campers have some nerve."

"I am extremely tolerant to all peoples! When they opened that Chipotle here, I was the first of my friends to go. And that is Spanish food." (After her granddaughter says she's 'unfriending' her on Facebook due to her bigotry).

"You people are so darned good with computers. And thanks for helping build the railroads." (to a young woman of Asian descent).

"Oh, no. You are not growing one of her kind of eggs in my granddaughter." (referring to the eggs of NeNe Leaks).

"I feel like I ate a black and gay stew right before falling asleep. This is a nightmare."

"I never could stand going into that store. Leon gave every hamster some queer name from a Broadway musical."

None of this inflammatory language is truly taken seriously by the other characters, and Jane's bigotry is accepted as merely part of her character, an integral piece of her identity that cannot be helped -- and is forgivable because of its darkly humorous content. But the fact is, this behavior is unacceptable no matter the age, race, or gender of the person it comes from.
Now, we could take the approach that by presenting such a character, especially in such a humorous light, Ryan Murphy is attempting to weaken the strength of such views, which, if never spoken, in theory become all the more dangerous and damaging. Read: if those hurtful and hateful view centered around homphobia and racism are never presented, they can never be challenged, and opinions can never be changed.
But if this is indeed what Murphy is attempting to do, it's a decidedly lackluster effort -- Jane's character,  which spins hate in as much a laughable way as Glee's Sue Sylvester, is never seriously admonished by a main character of the show. Her relationships to her family are never threatened, neither her daughter nor her granddaughter, who present to her the legitimacy of being white and are assumed to be compulsorily heterosexual to boot, say "enough is enough" to Jane's behavior.

Everybody just sit as you are and keep being backhandedly funny. Let's not actually approach the frankly life-threatening issues of homophobia and racism in a mature and thoughtful way. We might offend people if we did that. 

Just because Jane's character is meant to be humorous and just because her behavior is tongue in cheek and is meant to be interpreted by viewers as inappropriate, it doesn't mean that the other character's reactions to her, the legitimization of her homophobia and racism, is acceptable in any way. And as viewers, I would go so far as to say that we should not accept it, that we should demand more than a humorous approach and humorous admonitions to very serious issues.

Breaking Dawn, Part 2: Culturally Inclusive, or Culturally Insensitive?

For the first four movies of the Twilight saga, the answer to the title question is obvious: yes, this series is one of the most culturally insensitive movies about Native Americans since Disney's Pocahontas:

My face is this sad because now millions of children will think that Native Americans run
around the forest in sexy, short dresses,  paint with all the colors of the wind, and have a special ability to understand native wildlife.

While it's tempting to be hard on the high muckity-mucks who apparently engineered such cinematic missteps, especially since it's cases of racism we're dealing with, it's helpful to recall that the ignorance that causes racism is not a crime but a shame. Yes, one might indeed argue that Stephanie Meyer's portrayal of Native Americans is one-dimensional, narrow, and diminishing, but, then again, so is the entire Twilight series, to just about everyone in it (unless you happen to be a white male). Thus, it would be silly to suggest that Stephanie Meyer "has it out" for the Native Americans -- though, yes, she clearly failed to do her research and represented the Quileute tribe as both caricatures and, perhaps most offensively, actual animals (supernatural, yes, but still animals). No, instead it is a shame that Meyer did not do her research before molding an entire culture to her storytelling whims, for she could have had the opportunity to present tribal life in a much more beneficial and realistic way. The Quileute tribe actually exists, by the way, which adds a whole new level of colonial oppression and horror to the scenario. Do you see what I'm getting at? While bigoted or reductive interpretations of other cultures is upsetting, it's more of a shame (caused by ignorance, remedied by education) than a direct and pinpointed affront deserving of our critical anger. Good, now that that's clear....
Look at these pictures. They're of South American vampires Senna and Zafrina, who will be introduced in Breaking Dawn, Part 2, this November.

According to the Meyer's novel version, Senna and Zafrina arrive in Forks as representatives of "the Amazonian coven." To Meyer, it seems that the Amazon is some great, unexplored, unnamed wilderness and so one can just say people are "from the Amazon" like they're "from Africa" or "from Europe." No. Geography lesson:

See that place marked "the Amazon Basin"? It covers most of South America, 1.7 billion acres, and belongs to nine nations. But Zafrina and Senna? Who knows where, exactly, they're from. It's not important, right? It's just important that they look ethnic.

Hopefully, the movie will reveal the characters' exact origins, but so far, Zafrina and Senna roles appear to be relatively minor; they are described in various Breaking Dawn wikis and write-ups to be "from South America," which obviously is an even broader area than "The Amazon." Though we could spend quite some time on how angering that whole debacle is, let's get off of that tangent for a minute and focus on one of the most superficial issues here. To be honest, I can't believe that no one in the media has protested this yet, and by "this" I mean the attire of the so-called "South American vampire coven." Here's one of the actual stills released from Breaking Dawn, Part 2, and it's worth at least a thousand words:

Here, Zafrina (played by Judi Shekoni) and Senna (played by Tracey Heggins) are having a conversation with Bella and Edwards' offspring, Renesmee.  To put the actors' attitudes in context, here's an excerpt from an interview appearing on breakingdawnmovie.com; Judi Shekoni stated "I went to the London Zoo pretty early on and met up with Tracey [Heggins].  We came up with the idea of them [Senna and Zafrina] having these animalistic qualities.  We actually went to the LA Zoo together before we started shooting.  We looked through all the animals and decided which animal we can pick our movement from. We came up with the black jaguar, because there are a lot of them in the Amazon and they have these beautiful bright eyes that very similar to vampire eyes.  We’d go to the zoo, using video and watching the animals in real life and taking pictures, deciding which aspect.  Basically, they have a lot of power and a lot of energy in their shoulders."

There you have it: the actors came up with the idea of acting animalistic in order to portray a specific (yet unnamed) race of people, and the directors did nothing to discourage what was a potentially offensive choice -- to be honest, they probably encouraged it: "Actually, it’s quite funny on set, Stephenie Meyer came up to us at one point and said she noticed our vampires are really different from the other ones.  She really noticed us and thought it was really pure.  It was all a success for it to be noticed by Stephenie," Shekoni's concluded in the aformentioned interview. 

And finally, I get to say it: WHAT ARE THEY WEARING?

The Native American tribes of the Twilight saga aren't forced into traditional garb; why do the Amazonian coven? And is that clothing accurate? Who's to say, because we don't actually know where the characters are from, exactly. How fair is it for the producers, directors, and everyone involved in Twilight

to support an image of another race that (unfortunately, because of the minimal amount of ethnic diversity in the cinema) will unfairly be seen as representatives of their people? And why must that image be as sexualized as possible? Other vampires get to keep all their clothes on:

Interestingly, this is the only still that I could find of the whole group. I'm not sure what they're doing, maybe being stunned by their awesome whiteness.

These are issues that need to be taken more seriously in today's cinema, and I find it both disturbing and distressing that no critic has commented on such an obvious shortcoming; in a series as popular and influential to today's youth as the Twilight saga, there really is no good excuse for such a bizarre and parochial portrayal of non-white culture.  

This Just In: Hooking Up is a Culture Now!

Hey everybody, I'm thrilled that we've finally decided what to call my generation. Hanna Rosin of the Atlantic Monthly figured it all out for me in her newest article, and after reading it, I'm led to believe that I no longer belong to Generation Y, I'm not an Echo Boomer, not a Millenial or Generation Next-er. No, I am a member of what Rosin calls "the hookup culture."

Just what we needed after the romanticized "No Strings Attached" and
"Friends with Benefits" -- a vaguely authoritative article on how awesome
it is to have fun buddies during one's formational years! And let's assume,
since you're reading the Atlantic after all, that you've been to college.    

.... Really, though?

I tried to put aside my biases and read the article thoroughly, hopeful that it wasn't going to simultaneously accomplish what it's title indicated -- criticize our "oversexed" generation of Americans, and then claim that sex has a unique and defined tie to feminism/women's liberation that college women are acting out in some kind of (beneficial) body politic. But it did.

Where to start?
Well, Rosin claims from the beginning that sex and the "hookup culture" of today's age is not harmful to women at all (even younger, college women, which her article focuses on) but is actually an "engine of female progress -- driven by women themselves." I've taken this as her thesis statement, criticisms aside.

Again at that crucial beginning/hook section of her article, Rosin states that today's young women (and these are young women; again, she's largely talking about my generation, women under thirty, with a particular focus on women in college) are "proud veterans" of the hookup culture that she says, "over the past 15 years or so, has largely replaced dating on college campuses and beyond."
Now, I'm not exactly sure how Rosin determined exactly what a "proud veteran" of hookup culture looks like, especially with all the gratuitous mental images that this supposed hookup culture entails. Which raises, actually, my major criticism:
It's silly, and more than a little myopic, to assume that women are using their sex lives, even in retrospect, as motivational or formational.
It seems that it isn't Rosin's point of view that young women have found this supposedly a-la-carte sex to be somehow professionally or personally motivating through a thought-provoking experience -- rather, she appears to believe that the same young women not taking sex "seriously," hardly thinking about sex, having fewer boundaries around sex and detaching the emotional thought connection to sex, are proving in their thoughtlessness that they are empowered.

I can't right now, darling, I'm busy studying -- since I don't think about
sex all the time, I get to fill up all that extra space in my brain and maybe
accomplish things that, you know, a relationship would keep me from.

That's nonsense.
First of all, it's ridiculous to assume that sex is in the forefront of every young woman's professional and personal experiences with the world. Yes, it is a near-constant confrontation in most colleges, but  to say that "feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of hookup culture," as Rosin does, is perhaps attributing too much power to the role of sex in the young woman's life. And it is not to be seen as a kind of liberation that some women do not participate in the hookup culture -- women have had the ability to refuse sex for years. 
Furthermore, in spite of her claims that the hookup culture is liberating, Rosin also appears impressed by the fact that women can put their life goals before sex. Again, all respect to feminist role models, this is not a new phenomenon. It shouldn't blow someone's mind that women can have sex and still keep their brain on their career or other personal goals, any more than it should blow someone's ind that women can have a career and personal goals to begin with. There's a female secretary of state, for crying out loud. There's women in congress. And you can bet that all of those women are over forty, most of them have had sex, and yet ... they maintain their success. Shocking.

And I only became the highest-ranking female politician in American
history by remembering to separate sex from my personal goals!

What we should be most concerned with, I think, is Rosin's use of "sex sells." While it's probable that she was simply trying to investigate my generation's apparent obsession, I'd challenge anyone to find a generation (ever) that hasn't been sex-crazed. Our ability to get it doesn't mean that we're mature enough to understand it, to put the experience to use, or even to have it either of the ways that Rosin believes we do. According to her, my generation has the opportunity to feel nothing about sex (how exciting...?) or to feel empowered by it. Both options severely overestimate, again, the maturity with which sex is considered by the average college student, and underestimates women's character as not purposeful without consideration of their sex lives.

image credit 1, image credit 2, image credit 3

Call Me Maybe: Your Summer Song about Courtship Conformity

All the boys only try to chase her, because she can outrun them even in those heels. True story.

Call Me Maybe, anthemically sung by everyone from Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber to the US Olympic Swimming Team, to (sort of...?) President Obama, has launched Carly Rae Jepsen’s career and ruined my summer radio.  And it’s a little difficult to look beyond that, at first – it’s upbeat, perky, and catching like a staph infection, but the saccharine pop lyrics can surely be taken at face value. Additionally, given that the song’s mercilessly mocked as much as it’s hopelessly beloved, there isn’t much new we can say. Right?

No, and no.  When examining the actual song lyrics as they compare to the instagram-esque music video, we can see that there’s more than poppy sweetness to this song – regardless of Carly Rae Jepsen’s intentions, Call Me Maybe (and its music video) reinforces outdated standards of courtship demeaning to both parties involved.
Don't believe me? Have a listen, and review the following step-by-step analysis.

So here we have Carly Rae Jepsen, wiling away her dull summer by reading romance novels and playing with her otherwise all-male garage band. Suddenly, enter love interest: the next door neighbor rippling with muscles and fulfilling all standards of conventional media masculinity. That’s where her song hits its stride:

I threw a wish in a well / don’t ask me, I’ll never tell / I looked to you as it fell / and now you’re in my way.

Yes, the ladies wish for me all the time.

Basically, Carly Rae wishes for a love, but true to conventions of courtship, cannot express her feelings to the object of her affections (don’t ask me, I’ll never tell). To play the devil’s advocate, maybe she’s just shy – there’s no need to imagine that she’s actually taking the burden of hackneyed courtship rituals. But then we get to the next few lines (after, of course, she described ripped jeans and skin showing):

Hey, I just met you / and this is crazy / but here’s my number / so call me maybe!

It’s hard to look right / at you baby / but here’s my number / so call me maybe!

Through this montage, the music video shows that as much as Carly appreciates her desires’ physical attributes, it would be improper for her to make her feelings truly known.

What are you doing?! I'm honor-bound to, like the Christian maiden
that I am, pretend that I dislike you and rebuff your advances until we are
wed! I bet this will stay in style for at least 500 more years, just wait and see, Reginald.

Here, too, we reach the crux of the problem. We’re also apparently supposed to find it crazy, out-of-this-world bizarre and quirky that Carly would dare give her number to someone and suggest that they noncommittally “call her maybe,” an offensive suggestion – Carly doesn’t come with a dowry and a chastity belt, so what exactly is the issue with her (and therefore, any woman) showing how she feels about a man? Answer: there is no issue. But doing so would superficially challenge courtship norms, in which the man is supposed to take the initiative even if, in Carly’s situation, she is doing her best to not seem interested. As the rest of the lyrics say, all the other boys / try to chase me.

Perhaps catching onto this, instead of portraying Carly as simply shy, the music video shows her as over-the-top in trying to catch the neighbor boy’s attention – she writhes and gyrates on a soapy car, making a fool of herself until she eventually blacks out.

Well, at least the car's clean. A small price to pay for a few brain cells.

By pushing the character of Carly into that of literally “a fool for love,” the music video further emphasizes the notion that it’s silly for Carly to challenge heterosexual courtship norms and continue to suggest that the neighbor boy “call her maybe.”

Thus ends the song’s assault on female empowerment, but the music video takes it a step further and tries to make a mockery of homosexual courtship as well.

After Carly’s serenaded her great love, literally performed what we’re meant to see as adorable craziness to him, she turns away to write down her number. But – what a shock! The neighbor boy gives his number to one of her bandmates.

What are we to make of this?

First of all, we can’t, no matter how hard we try, conclude that the video is attempting to make some grand gesture of acceptance toward homosexual relationships; if that were so, Carly could have been flirting with a woman the entire music video, or her bandmate could have been coached to not respond to the hot neighbor’s come-on with such a shocked and horrified expression. Instead, the music video has obviously attempted to add another layer of the ludicrous to show just how “crazy” and mixed up Carly has the potential to make people’s love lives – the hot neighbor’s attempt at love with Carly’s bandmate is a parody, and is not to be taken seriously by the viewer. Rather than actually contributing something meaningful to the cotton-candy fluff of Carly’s song, the tiny sliver of a scene merely makes a sad yet demeaning punchline to an already disappointingly conformist song. That's all, you can go back to trying to enjoy the music now.

"Political Animals" misses the Title Mark

Am I the only one to think that everything in this title should be in the same size font as "MOTHER"?

Within this election year (is it really a coincidence?) “smart” television shows have made a startling yet pleasing comeback, and one of those top shows is USA Network’s Political Animals. The series, now on its fifth episode, focuses on the struggles of a political family a cross between the Kennedeys and the Clintons, that lives in and out of an alternate universe White House in which Adrian Pasdar looks oddly presidential and it’s evidently plausible that Americans voted for an Italian to lead the greatest nation on earth. Apart from starring Sigourney Weaver, a feminist favorite ever since her iconoclastic roles in just about every science fiction movie since 1979’s Alien, the aggregate acting talent of the remaining cast smooths out a show that is still relatively rough around the edges. The heady ensemble of characters don’t have to be talking politics to hold the viewer’s attention or make an impact, as the scene-stealing Ellen Burstyn proves as the alcoholic mother of Elaine Barrish.

"They never let me speak on record," Burstyn's Margaret
proclaims, a martini in her hand. "I'm always too drunk, or
too honest, or God forbid, both."           

And it’s a good thing that the characters don’t talk politics, because that’s an evidently huge gap in the knowledge of the writers of the show. Elaine’s Secretary of State title actually seems to denote a dedication less to foreign affairs in and of themselves but rather “extreme humanitarianism” work that forces her to save others – one week, forced to go outside the payroll of the White House to save three kidnapped journalists, the next, convincing the president to provide aid to a woefully downed Chinese sub filled with a helpless crew (in both scenarios, Ellen is cast as  the only person to understand the importance of a human life, a singularity underscored by continuous references and flashbacks to her son TJ’s attempt at suicide). Had true political knowledge been bestowed on all Political Animals characters, then the show would have more to run on than what quickly becomes the fumes of antifeminism – for Ellen, as an unintentional figurehead for working women the world over, does not debate and take advantage of the machinations of the political system. Instead, she quickly goes outside the box of the government she could use to her advantage in order to “mother” away at foreign affairs difficulties, ardently proclaiming what is right and wrong in whatever situation happens to have reached her attention rather than lobbying, consulting her colleagues, or ever letting the viewer know just how much government power is at her disposal.  

Carla Gugino's journalist, Susan Berg, was clearly meant
to bring a context and translate politics for the viewer;
however, Political Animals lack of politics forces the
impression that  she's not the hardened reporter we want her
 to be, but little more than an empathetic gossip columnist.

Thus, the Political Animals title seems like a teasing misnomer as politics quickly takes a backseat to the dramas of Elaine Barrish’s life. Again, the writers have made the decision that it’s ultimately most important to Elaine’s story that we delve into her personal life as well, to understand what motivates and hinders such a powerful woman and to, perhaps, further remind the viewer that Elaine is indeed a woman who cannot step outside the bounds of traditional feminine roles. Elaine as a Politician is portrayed as inseparable from her role as Elaine the Mother, Elaine the Divorcee, and Elaine the Daughter, and the show becomes such a complex puzzle of those sometimes purposefully contradictory roles, that the most we ever learn of politics is that all politicians ever talk about is their former terms or their plans to run again. Even Elaine’s plans to run again for president have less to do with broad political decisions and more to do, again, with her “extreme humanitarianism” and her attempts to fulfill the role of moral center.

Why do I always have to be the one with a heart and feelings to guide
my hand? It's because I'm a typecast matriarch, isn't it? 

As the show develops, it’s likely that the requisite family dramas will become ever more intense, regrettably obscuring the powerful role that Weaver’s Barrish could take on. Practically speaking, we’re a nation obsessed with the American elite that the Barrish family is based on, so of course we find the “insider” drama of Political Animals irresistible. As long as we’re getting our gossipy fill of the meat of a political family dish, with skilled actors accomplishing the seasoning, perhaps we’ll be able to ignore the fact that Political Animals contains some disastrous substitutions for a few key ingredients. 

Stay tuned, my next Political Animals post will probably focus on the show's highlighted roles of sex, sexuality, and gender.

We could be starving, we could be homeless, AND we could be broke, and I would still love you, probably for the same reason that I don't see the relation of those three conditions. 

Glee's True Colors and The Performance of Sexuality

Let’s think about Glee for a minute. I’ve loved the show, always have – I like to think of it as America’s guilty pleasure, because I also like to have confidence in the intelligence of the average citizen. But lately, I can’t keep my critical eye off of those characters with which Ryan Murphy populates McKinley High. Apart from the fact that the average age of the Glee club cast is about 23, Glee is well known for its representation of subcultures and countercultures, and I think that unfortunately we’re so proud of Glee for showing all ages a demographically representative portion of America, complete with Latinos, African-Americans, and Asians, and presenting a generally positive and radical (for television) view of homosexual relationships, we forget that there’s some prime examples of racism and, for lack of a better word, “closemindedness” going on. Early Glee discussed race and sexuality in a feel-good atmosphere that assumed that high school was a safe place to practice identity:

But now, Glee is beyond the whole "true colors" feel-good representations of gender and sexuality. And there were quite a few oversights of the two in a recent episode. The episode I refer to is the disco-themed “Saturday Night Glee-ver,” where, among other things, the majority of the characters continue to be conflicted about their future and sing out their stress through a variety of disco songs that prove to us: 



Yes, Puck. Yes, it does. We thought those dark times were behind us.

First of all, what’s with this representation of transgender Wade (played by the Glee Project’s Alex Newell)? In case you’ve forgotten, Wade wants to perform a song while dressed as his “alter ego,” Unique (let’s look over the fact that the Glee writers have chosen a stripper name for Wade’s character; while the name might actually have some relevance and carry an important message, it hardly presents an accurate image of a transgender’s individual’s decision to change their name to someone who they really feel that they are inside. Point in case: Chastity Bono to Chaz Bono. The name of Unique diminishes the seriousness of Wade’s decision). The Glee characters try to discourage Wade from performing as Unique, which they feel is perfectly reasonable: as Kurt says, “It is Ohio.”

"Thankfully, though, it's okay for me to be a unicorn!"

But despite their doubts, Kurt and Mercedes are just students, so by the logic of the television show, adult Sue is free to bully everybody into submission. Wade performs as Unique anyway.

Here’s the problem, though. What is at risk with the way that the Glee producers have chosen to show Unique? To begin with, there’s the shock that the characters feel that Unique “actually looks like a woman.” And Unique doesn’t just look like a woman – she sings like a woman, passes as a woman, “fools” the audience.

And so the message here might be, it’s okay that Unique performs, because Unique does pass as a woman. If Unique looked more male, then, connotatively, her decision to dress up in drag would have been condemned. But in performing the female gender in a convincing way, everything is okay because Unique can, in fact, “fool” an audience into accepting a gender identity counter to the one biologically assigned to her. Thus, Unique is made palatable to the Glee audience because they do not know her biologically assigned sex, and made palatable to us as viewers because the gender she wishes to be is flawlessly performed. It’s a little disappointing, isn’t it?
Maybe I should be more understanding of the fact that at least Glee's writers trying to present a transgender characters to audiences. But the matter of representing a character like Unique isn't to be taken lightly, even in a show meant to be light entertainment.