The other night, I watched the series premiere of Girls. It was amusing and it has potential to be a strong show. I’ll write more about it next week after the premiere of Veep, because I want to write about those two shows and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 together in one post. For now, I’ll only say that the show seems like a funny portrayal of a group of white women in New York City.
The world really needs another comedy about a group of white friends in New York City. We didn’t already have Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Sex and the City, and numerous other shows where every main character is inexplicably white.
This sarcastic comment is not an argument in favor of tokenism, or putting in a few people of color for the sole purpose of letting the show creators pat themselves on the back for being so liberal and open-minded. I said it because I’m befuddled that so many portrayals of New York City are portrayals of a really white New York City. In the pilot episode of Girls, there are only two people of color, and they each only have one line. One is a driven Asian woman who’s better at her internship than the lead character is, and the other is a crazy homeless black man on the street.
No, really. The stereotyping doesn’t approach the blatant cartoonish racist stereotyping on 2 Broke Girls, but it was jarring to see nonetheless.
Of course, the show could go the route of 2 Broke Girls, a show where the two white women encounter plenty of non-white people. Non-white people who are all lifted directly from the Ethnic Stereotype Playbook. On a show that also takes place in New York.
The extreme whiteness of New York in these New York City television shows is weird enough, but it’s especially weird when compared to other shows set in places other than New York that still manage to include people of color.
Take Glee, for instance – a (terrible) show that takes place in Lima, Ohio. The population of real-life Lima, Ohio is predominantly white, but the McKinley High School choir room contains more people of color than Friends had in its entire run. Lima is 70% white and 2% Hispanic, so having Santana be the only Hispanic person in the glee club is fairly realistic. (That is probably the first and last time you’ll see the words “Glee” and “realistic” in the same paragraph.)
Or look at two NBC shows, Community and Parks and Recreation. One show takes place on a college campus in…Colorado, I think? One takes place in Pawnee, Indiana. Both are set in fictional cities, but both cities seem to be predominantly white. Yet both shows include more than one person of color in its main cast. Community has Troy, Abed, Shirley, and Chang. Parks and Recreation has Ann, Tom, April, and Donna.
Or look at ABC’s Modern Family. This is a show that could easily have a cast that was 100% white. Television shows centered on one immediate family have a logical reason for being monochromatic. Yet Gloria and Manny are part of the family, and Cam and Mitch have an adopted Vietnamese daughter.
I’m noticing a pattern where shows that are not centered in New York City include a few characters of color, while shows centered in one of the most diverse cities in the world tend to focus exclusively on white people.
To be clear, this observation is not an accusation of racism against the people in charge of Friends, Sex and the City, How I Met Your Mother, or Girls. I don’t believe that anyone involved in those shows are/were actively excluding people of color – and frankly, I think erasure is preferable to the blatant stereotyping in 2 Broke Girls. The extreme whiteness of the first three shows, and the extreme whiteness of the pilot episode of Girls, does make me wonder what version of New York City these writers are living in, where people of color are barely a blip on the radar.
Then I put myself in their shoes, and my perspective changed a little – because if I had to write a show loosely based on my own experiences in New York City, the main cast would be almost as white as Girls.
I’m a straight white woman. Most of my closest friends in New York City are straight white women. Not all, but most. We didn’t all grow up in the city and we didn’t grow up with the same problems and struggles, but we’re a pretty white group. We all watched Sex and the City and played the “which one are you?” game, except each one of us claimed to be the Miranda of the group. (Like the humbugs in Abed Nadir’s Eastern Candy Time, we’re attracted to sarcasm.) If I wrote a television show based on me and my group of friends, the show would be almost as white as Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Sex and the City, or the first episode of Girls.
I’m not sure I can criticize show creators too harshly for simply writing what they know.
I’ve also heard the argument that, like Seinfeld, these New York shows should be more self-aware and comment on their lack of diversity. But I’m not sure how that commentary would come across onscreen. To use my real life as an example – I don’t spend a lot of time saying to my friends, “Hey, ever notice how we don’t have any Hispanic friends in the group? We should get on that!”
For the purpose of fairness, I should also point out that Glee, Community, and Parks and Recreation take place in schools and the workplace, while the white New York shows center on groups of friends. I imagine that groups of friends are likely to be more segregated than offices and schools.
In short, I have mixed feelings about shows that depict very white versions of New York City. I feel odd criticizing writers for writing about their own experiences, but I also feel contemptuous of New York-based shows that don’t even try to include people of color as extras, much less as important characters.
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>> frankly, I think erasure is preferable to the blatant stereotyping in 2 Broke Girls.<<j
Heh, I still disagree with this. I think trying and failing is better than not trying at all. Now I'm hesitant to characterize the writers of 2 Broke Girls as "trying", because no one should write the offensive crap they write and get away with thinking it's okay or funny or "good", but if writing bad tv/movies was a crime 70% of writers would be in jail.
On the whole I think do tend to think tokenism is preferable to erasure, because I DO think ultimately diverse hiring is majorly important. You have to have more people writing, more minority characters before they ever have any chance of getting *better*. So yeah on this single issue of trying to present a NYC that is in fact multi-cultural vs. one that is all white all right. I'm gonna give the Broke Girls the E for effort., and Judd an F for fucking try harder.
If you can't make the story *about* a black character because you can't write that right, than HIRE SOMEONE who can, someone who might not have your exact POV but is a professional and can write in your voice. Basically television staff writers are paid fanfic writers, they are paid to write in the "voice" of the showrunner, but they necessarily add their own life experience, and well, color to the story/characters/situations. Additionally there are the actors, collaborate with them, all my favorite shows have been about a writer partnering with an actor to "create" the character. And if they don't try the minority actor never gets that *opportunity* to have that conversation or of course the money and the career.
Workshop your shit, it's not that hard, or rather it is, but it's worth it.
Interestingly I thought a good "space" to add a POC perspective in Girls, was in the intern boss role. They cast Chris Eigeman instead, in I thought, a fairly obvious ode to Preppy White Guy director Whit Stillman, but even Whit, in his first movie in 15 years, Damsels in Distress, has incorporated a main character of color in it. So…yeah.
In terms of commenting on this kind of thing the best I've ever seen is The Larry Sander's arc with Dave Chappelle (it was well before the Chappelle show came into being, but speaks to why it took so long for him to "arrive" at a place he could do his thing his way, AND also fittingly anticipates why he walked away.)
I’ve been reading about Girls since before it premiered and I’ve continued to read about it after it premiered. I watched it a day or two ago and I have to admit, I didn’t find it that appealing. I mean, I’ve never been to New York (and they portray a New York I don’t really recognize – it’s not particularly frenetic or cosmopolitan as in all of the shows you mentioned, which is maybe the reality of NY), I’m a woman of colour and of a very different class than the characters so, it’s fair to say I don’t have much in common with them. But I did find it fascinating to watch in a sense, it was startling to think that a show like Girls is reflective of real life for some people.
I understand what you mean about social circles potentially being largely white and that didn’t bother me initially. As I watched the show, however, the level of privilege displayed made me wonder about the lack of diversity – not only racial diversity, but class and sexual diversity. Every single one of the characters is a heterosexual, white, female of privilege. When you start looking at the underpinnings, it makes sense but it leads right back to the problematic themes of systemic discrimination. As has been pointed out on Jezebel, Racialicious, Salon, AlterNet, and a bunch of other sites… Well, there are people of colour who attended the same schools, live in the same city, and aspire to the same career path as Hannah. So why is Hannah only friends with white people of similar background? Was it really that impossible to find a person of colour that she would be friends with?
I don’t agree with erasure over tokenism, either. I see the value, occasionally, in being left out because it’s preferable to outright stereotyping and racism (as in 2 Broke Girls) but really, I think it just perpetuates people’s perceptions that all-white or all-black or all-brown, etc. casts are normal. That such segregation is necessary and right because different racial/ethnic/cultural groups will never understand each other, can’t be the same kind of friends, can’t trust each other, or what have you. I think erasure is actually more problematic than tokenism because tokenism can be successful and if it’s blatantly racist, it’s recognizable. Erasure does exactly what it says – it erases the problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t actually solve anything, rather, it reinforces and legitimates it.
I don’t begrudge this show speaking to a small subset of people (and like I said, I really do get how/why a social circle might be predominantly monochromatic, as you mentioned) but I think Lena Dunham has done a bad job explaining it. Not on purpose, but because to acknowledge the lack of diversity on the show would mean acknowledging that she has a lack of diversity in her social circle, a lack of comfort writing or creating diverse characters. One of my major problems is how this show has been pinned as reflective of Millennials, of young women. I qualify (technically) as both of those and it doesn’t speak for me or to me in any particular way.
it’s not particularly frenetic or cosmopolitan as in all of the shows you mentioned, which is maybe the reality of NY
Certain areas of New York are definitely frenetic and cosmopolitan but it’s certainly not the way in all of New York. Also, Girls largely takes place in Brooklyn, not Manhattan, and having lived in the same neighborhood that Hannah and Marnie live in, I can say that the portrayal is pretty accurate – not the lily-whiteness, but other aspects of the lifestyle.
As has been pointed out on Jezebel, Racialicious, Salon, AlterNet, and a bunch of other sites… Well, there are people of colour who attended the same schools, live in the same city, and aspire to the same career path as Hannah. So why is Hannah only friends with white people of similar background? Was it really that impossible to find a person of colour that she would be friends with?
A friend of mine, a black male, went to high school with Lena Dunham and he’s asking the same question: http://www.informedinstigation.com/viewpost.php?p=276.
I think erasure is actually more problematic than tokenism because tokenism can be successful and if it’s blatantly racist, it’s recognizable. Erasure does exactly what it says – it erases the problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t actually solve anything, rather, it reinforces and legitimates it.
That’s a good point. I’ll have to reconsider my stance on the issue.
One of my major problems is how this show has been pinned as reflective of Millennials, of young women. I qualify (technically) as both of those and it doesn’t speak for me or to me in any particular way.
I agree, and I wonder if the problem is in the marketing of the show rather than the show itself. If the show wasn’t overhyped and praised as being meaningful for ALL WOMEN, then would so many people have this same criticism?
Wow. You are completely right! Sex and the City all of a sudden became less realistic. I think there’s like 2 black people per season…
I was interested in 2 Broke Girls and it looked good. I watched it and it was ok but most of that was because I liked the cynical brunette than due to over all show quality.
The thing that struck me as really odd was the accent of their boss. I’ve seen that actor in Scrubs and he sounded nothing like that. His voice in 2 broke girls therefore comes across as the vocal equivalent of giant fake teeth.
Kat Dennings is pretty funny and I do think the chemistry between the two lead actresses is strong. I don’t recognize the boss from Scrubs, though – which character did he play?
He played the med student Trang in season 9.
You said that if you had to write a show about your experiences it would be almost as white as Girls. So, I’m thinking that the problem may be that the people that are given the opportunity to write about their experiences are those with a mostly white experience.
I am not from the US and I have never been there. Everything I know I learned from T.V., movies and blogs, so maybe I know nothing but it was just a thought.