Horror on the Small Screen: More Thoughts on The Walking Dead’s Post-9/11 Political Critiques

When I hear the term “horror” in any contemporary 21^st century context I can’t help but think of what is arguably the most “horrific” real event that occurred on American soil in recent history:  the attacks of 9/11.  The main trajectory of my research, in fact, stems on tracing how 9/11 sparked various narrative trends across genre & media – with a specific focus often on television.  And while I don’t tend to focus on horror specifically, there is an element of the horrific in all the televisual genres and programs that I find intricately tied to the terrorist attacks (or more often, our responses to them).

In my work I argue that 9/11 was framed as a trauma to be seen (in order to be felt) and that television has long been the medium in charge of controlling feelings through the art of “seeing” specifically constructed imagery.  So, for example, to many Americans, 9/11 unfolded in front of their eyes much like a Hollywood blockbuster film – almost too spectacular to believe.  Indeed, many survivors utilized the simile it felt “like a movie” to explain the experience.  As Susan Sontag notes, “‘it felt like a movie’ seems to have displaced the way survivors of a catastrophe used to express the short-term unassimilability of what they had gone through:  ‘It felt like a dream.’”   So it’s not really surprising that the American public turned to the realm of visual culture/media to “replay” the event dominating their own memories almost continuously throughout the past 13 years.   Marc Redfield argues, the phrase itself, “‘it was like a movie’ conjures up not just an excess of event over believability, but a sense that this event is to be mediated, that it would have no sense, perhaps would not even have occurred, if it were not being recorded and transmitted.”  In this explanation it would seem that the media was needed – it was the only way that people could move from disbelief (that which they could not comprehend and some could not physically see) to belief (that which they could only comprehend through repeat seeing).  In my readings of televiusal narratives that proliferate after 9/11 I propose that a very similar process is at work; through their mediation of fictionalized scenarios they present trauma in order to do away with it, hence becoming a sort of emotional security blanket for viewers existing in an unstable post-9/11 world.

Certain stylistic changes can be seen on television during this time (a move to more filmic aesthetics is among them).  But also, a shift toward more (to borrow from a Grey’s Anatomy phrase) “darky and twisty” fear-based programs.  The 21^st century saw a rapid rise of genres (or genre blends) on television that were not as prevalent before:  dystopia, science fiction, fantasy, and horror.  Like the trends noted for Hollywood horror films, television of the past decade and a half has increasingly featured programs that break with break old televisual commandments by ending routinely killing off major characters and often failing to offer the pre-requisite happy ending at a season or series end. While fictional television used to be the medium that provided a sense of predictability and comfort, the programming of the past decade or so has disallowed viewers to settle into any safe assumptions about how their narratives will unfold. 

There are a few consistent post-9/11 themes that have remained prevalent on television throughout the past decade and a half:

·         Salvation/Rescue Motifs – from political/terrorist peril (24, Alias, The Blacklist, Person of Interest, Madam Secretary, State of Affairs), from technology gone awry (Revolution, Fringe), from alien invasion (The Event, V)

·         Revenge/Vengeance/Vigilante Justice Motifs – Revenge, Dexter

·         The Do-Over/Resurrection Motif – time travel/shifting, vampire, zombies, rebirth, cloning (Lost, Heroes, True Blood, Resurrection, Forever, Zero Hour)

·         The Dark Side of Humanity – shows that about serial killers and cults (The Following, Cult) and I

       jokingly include here, politicians (ala Scandal & House of Cards).

Arguably the most popular contemporary television programs that falls into the traditional horror genre, is AMC’s The Walking Dead.  This show features an apocalyptic vision of the United States in the near future and incorporates all of the previously mentioned post-9/11 themes and then some.  I’m far from the first to read this show (or the recent zombie craze more generally) as a product of the terrorist attacks.  In his article, “Are Zombies the Guilty Conscience of Post-9/11 America,” Will Nixon suggests “that the zombie renaissance” represents American’s reactions “to 9/11 and the mess” the government made of global relations ever since the attacks.  Others argue that recent zombie narratives (much like their sister narrative, vampire tales) highlight an “us versus them” binary – a fear of a dangerous “other” lurking in the shadows.  Zombie storylines have also been read as alluding to cultural fears concerning biological warfare, epidemics, global warming, consumerism, and over dependence on technology.  And although they likely tap into all of these fears, I’m (of course) partial to the 9/11 reading.

In a previous essay I argued Walking Dead rests upon a central question that could be read as being allegorical in nature:   “where to do we go from here?”  Zombie narratives often highlight two possible ways to deal with the post-apocalyptic world:   survive or rebuild.  Storylines that focus on surviving often showcase central characters on the run doing anything possible to survive on a daily basis – even if it means a lone existence.  Storylines that focus on rebuilding highlight the importance of community, structure, and group cohesiveness; they include central characters who (sometimes) place limits on what they are willing to do to survive, which include not being willing to exist alone.  The Walking Dead showcases both of these survival mindsets throughout various characters who make the transition from lone survival to group living (e.g. Michonne & Bob) and various central conflicts that ground the individual seasons. 

As previously discussed, the third season of Walking Dead highlights these mindsets through the parallel storylines unfolding with the core group held up at the prison and the inhabitants of the gated community of Woodbury.     While the group viewers have come to know and love (Rick’s crew) hold a bit of both mindsets – they are a community of sorts, a surrogate family system – they primarily find themselves on the run playing the role of “survivor.”  They keep attempting momentary respites which could be viewed as community building (e.g. life on the farm in season two; life at the prison in season three), but these are always abandoned when their main goal must again be to simply survive.  They do have limits as to what they will do to achieve this goal, but viewers have seen these get stretched thin over time.

The Woodbury community (led by the Governor) exists as a faux utopia showing how there is a chance for “normalcy” and life after tragedy.  At least that’s what it seems like at first glance.  The setting is a seemingly normal town (quaint even, a throwback to the yesteryears), the residents seem safe and happy – no one is on the run and prior to recent events there had not been a death among them in quite some time.  But viewers quickly learn (if they didn’t guess immediately) that things aren’t quite what they seem in this happy town.  The Governor is willing to go to great extremes to ensure their safety (including murder).   But his motivation is not purely altruistic:  his scientific projects are in place because he longs to cure his infected daughter (who he had kept locked away in his living quarters) and all of his actions, arguably, really seem to be to ensure his place as a leader and a father figure to this new generation of survivors. 

Now usually those existing on the “community” side of the community/survivor continuum are portrayed as the more morally sound, after all, they have the betterment of society on their side.  It is interesting that Walking Dead flips this notion on its head.  In analyzing this particular season, I’ve asked:  Is it too much of a stretch to read the Governor, who gives his charismatic speeches about community and the future of humanity, as an allegory for George W. Bush?  Is the hypocrisy of the Woodbury leadership a metaphor for the Bush administration politics?  Can we read the staged fight scenes (with zombies whose teeth had been removed) as alluding to the smoke and mirror media spectacles of the post-9/11 era? 

As the series continues on it is obvious that the show is purposely casting post-apocalypse communities as surviving only through extreme measures and questionable moral decisions that reveal the “horrific” side of our potential human nature.  (For example, the actions that Carol took in season four – killing fellow community members who were infected with an epidemic that threatened to wipe out the entire prison and later – in one of the darkest moments I’ve yet to see on television – assassinating a child in order to save the baby she was tasked to protect).    Outside of the group, this thematic is found in season four when the morals of the “good” survivor group are contrasted with those of the “bad” residents of Terminus.  This was a community that originally attempted to act as a sanctuary for all survivors but, after having been repaid by invaders who stole, tortured, and killed them – turned just as vicious as those who inflicted such injuries upon them.  They survive by luring unsuspecting refuges into their camp only to take their positions and then literally consume them, having resorted to cannibalism to survive. 

The current season five offers yet another variation of this motif when it pits the main cast against the survivors in Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital where the medical facility exists in a sort of police state as the powers-that-be save only enough people from the local area to help sustain their existence and turn a blind eye toward the abuse of both patients and staff alike. 

The Walking Dead continually points toward the horrors of surviving at any cost, suggesting that protecting one’s community from “invaders” through any means is immoral.  That the fictional events of the show’s five seasons unfold against the backdrop of real world debates about Homeland security practices, foreign policies, and horrific accounts of the lengths our own country went through in its efforts to be safe (e.g. “enhanced interrogation techniques”) is no coincidence.  In my reading, this show, along with so many others, offers viewers a chance to wrestle with the ethical dilemmas faced by fictional countries/communities in peril in order to provide social commentary on the ways in which our real ones deal with their own conflicts.  There is something horrific about imagining a world plagued by zombies… but there’s something even more horrific about realizing that, in some ways, the world you are living in is just as horrific.

State of Affairs: A Pastiche of Post-9/11 Television

I’m always excited when the televisual powers-that-be launch shows that fit nicely within my academic theories so this year’s debut of two new programs featuring crisis-averting political narratives about the “behind-the-scenes” actions of the White House thrilled me.  NBC’s State of Affairs debuted after CBS’s successful launch of Madame Secretary and therefore had a relatively high bar set for it.  So, I wasn’t necessarily surprised when it didn’t live up to the hype. 

I wanted to like the show.  As a longtime fan of Grey’s Anatomy, I still have a soft spot for Katherine Heigl and wanted to see her make a successful transition back to television and to drama after her last decade of unremarkable romantic comedies.  (Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen just about every one and tolerated them well enough, but still feel they did nothing to develop her acting career).  I wasn’t sure if I could buy her in this new role as Charleston Tucker, the president’s daily CIA briefer, but I was willing to try.  And, as I thought, it was hard narrative to swallow. 

In some ways the role isn’t unlike what she’s been playing lately as most of her romantic comedy roles find her playing a serious, uptight, smart (though oftentimes simultaneously ditzy) woman opposite a chauvinistic or buffoon-like male lead.  And so part of this new persona wasn’t too removed from all that as she again plays a professional, serious, female at odds with her male counterparts.  She also got to resurrect her role as a distraught romantic mourner (ala Grey’s Anatomy and the popular Denny Duquette storyline), as the pilot revealed that Charleston is not only the president’s briefer but she was also to be her daughter-in-law prior to her son’s sudden death (which occurred while they were all ambushed in a convoy in Kabul during a pre-election campaign circuit).

I almost gave up on the show after the first few episodes but I hung with it.  I still feel the acting is a bit strained and I don’t yet like the characters as much as I do those on the other new Fall programs I am following, but the plot is intriguing enough that I’m tuning in to see if could live up to its potential.  (For example, critics note that Alfre Woodard is being underutilized in her powerful role as the first black female president of the United States of America). 

In all truth, the show is really a collage of all the recent post-9/11 narratives, which makes it a bit unoriginal.  But, perhaps because I like all those shows State of Affairs is unabashedly borrowing from I’m able to enjoy it.  It’s episodic “national problem of the week” set-up is very similar to Madame Secretary and its pacing and attempt at filmic aesthetics reminds me of The Blacklist (especially with the start of each episode setting up the plot issue at hand).  The subplots about political power struggles mirror various moments from House of Cards.   The storyline concerning a mole within the counterterrorist unit recalls any given season of 24.   And the show is most definitely trying to add some soap operatic melodrama into its mix in ways that seem almost Scandal-esque.   But, most of all, the main plot parallels Showtime’s Homeland. 

There are echoes of Homeland’s Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) in State of Affair’s Charleston.  While Carrie suffers from bipolar disorder, the first episodes show Charleston suffering from PTSD as she struggles to recall the events leading up to her fiancé’s death.  Both are even shown using a similar problematic coping mechanism:  alcohol-infused one night stands.  [Spoiler] Like Homeland, State of Affairs also focuses on the reliability of a CIA asset.  Three years prior to the narrative start of State of Affairs, Charleston’s off-the-books field work included attempting to turn a high profile terrorist, Omar Fatah (Farshad Farahat).    He was released with Charleston convinced that their “enhanced interrogation methods” had successfully worked, despite her partner (and later lover), Nick Vera (Chris McKenna), believing otherwise.  When it is revealed that Omar Fatah was present at the attack on the convoy, Charleston then feels all the more responsible for her fiancé, Aaron’s death.  This is further complicated when her memories return and she realizes that Fatah pulled her out of the convoy to safety and then shot Aaron in self-defense. 

I’m not sure I’m exactly endorsing this show, but I suppose if one didn’t have time to watch all the exemplary programs State of Affairs steals from that this could serve as a short cut substitute.  And, perhaps it will still grow into something of its own.

The most pressing question I was left with as I caught up this show that had been taking up room on my DVR, was the one I always wrestle with:  why are these post-9/11 political/governmental rescue shows so popular?  Their sheer numbers are impressive and the number of accolades some of them have acquired are equally so.  It’s a question that I’m not sure I can quite answer even on an individual level:  do I watch because I enjoy seeing how these shows fictionalize the everyday headlines (of debates concerning torture, privacy rights, drone strikes, and oil pipelines)?  Do I enjoy the catharsis of watching worst-case scenario perils thwarted by fictional political figures that often seem as corrupt and inept as our real ones?   Do I like their cooptation of the action genre or, in some cases, the postmodern genre blurring?   Despite their insistence that we’re a nation in perpetual danger, do I like the comfort they provide in promising that we’ll always overcome it?  Do I like their political critiques and attempts to provide exposure to geopolitical concerns?  Do I like that, in some small way, they don’t let us use entertainment as pure escapism as they conjure up recurring thoughts of the September 11^th attacks.

I’m not sure why I watch or why the masses watch, but I’ll keep trying to find the answer that satisfies me… even if it means watching Heigl wear pearls and red lipstick while playing one of the most prestigious intelligence-gathering figures.

Everybody’s Got Mommy & Daddy Issues on TV (Part II): ABC’s Revenge

In continuing with the theme of the last blog, I couldn’t help but think of ABC’s Revenge when trying to catalog contemporary television shows that could be classified as working through mommy/daddy issues.  This primetime soap is centered on the premise of “father worship” as it’s the story of a daughter who spends the majority of her young adult years trying to avenge the wrongful persecution and death of a father she believes could do no wrong.  As discussed in a previous essay, the Machiavellian-like narrative (with loose post-9/11 themes) concerns a rich and powerful family, the Graysons, who run in powerful political and corporate circles, and, occasionally, consort with illegal underground organizations that rule over both.  The main character, Emily Thorne, a.k.a. Amanda Clarke (Emily VanCamp), arrives in the Hamptons to position herself among the elite, and this family, in the hopes of avenging her father’s death.  Her father, David Clarke, had been the lover of the matriarch of the main family – Victoria Grayson – and ultimately the unwitting fall guy for a terrorist attack against an American flight. 

            

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the show in the first two seasons, suspension of disbelief became slightly harder to muster up as the incredulous plotlines proliferated throughout the duration of Emily’s revenge plans in later seasons.  However, there have always been enticing plots.  Emily’s epic battles against Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) have always been high quality drama and her co-conspiring banter with her bff, Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann), has been excellent comic relief.   The “will they, won’t they” romantic subplot between her and her childhood best friend, Jack Porter (Nick Weschler) has always provided tender, sorrowful moments.  And Emily’s relationship with Daniel Grayson (Joshua Bowman), the spoiled rich son of the power family, at various points was fascinating as it was often hard to tell (at least in the beginning) where her real feelings for Daniel ended and the where her manipulative plans to enter his family began.  When the show actually found her marrying the son after a faked pregnancy, in the efforts to carry out an elaborate scheme in which she would frame his mother for her murder, I was sitting at the edge of my seat.  And when that plot ended with Daniel learning (most of) the truth about her and shooting her in a drunken rage, sending her almost to the real iteration of the death she was trying to stage, I was impressed with the melodramatic arch of this show.  And when that plot twist ended in the Emily’s inability to have children, I almost teared up along with the main character who had already lost all her other family because of the cruel Graysons.  And, not many episodes later, when the show found her finally ready to move on and to abandon revenge to embrace the happiness she had found with her once fiancé, Aiden, only to find him strangled to death in her beach house (compliments of Victoria), I again found myself wanting to weep along with the main character.   I think Revenge has given viewers the most tortured character on television since, perhaps, 24’s Jack Bauer.

            

But beneath all the far-fetched plots and high-paced action, has always been the story of a distraught daughter.  The show has well utilized flashback episodes of Amanda Clarke as a child living an almost idyllic life with her single father:  scenes of father-daughter play on the beach, heartfelt conversations on their porch swing, talks of the forever-nature of their love (one symbolically recorded in various spots in the form of a double infinity mark:  on their porch rail, on the wooden box that houses all the secret proof that would launch Emily’s revenge plans, and eventually on her own wrist as a tattoo that would serve to remind her of her oath to avenge her father’s wrongs).   VanCamp has played the wounded daughter well.  And this year she got to play this role in a new way year when the show gave viewers a new twist to this damaged daughter storyline, bringing David Clarke back from the dead.

At this point, I must admit, I almost stopped watching the show.  Sure, I was anxious for the reunion of this father-daughter duo, but since his unfathomable return also accompanied his illogical reunion with Victoria Grayson, I found my patience with the program growing thin.  And although I let episodes sit for a weeks on my DVR, I eventually returned to the show and was glad that I did.  It was heartbreaking to see that David’s return from the dead wouldn’t bring about the end of Emily’s troubles or quests for revenge or her seeming-battle-to-the-death with Victoria.  (By the way, if read with some creativity, Victoria – who arguably exists as an evil stepmother type figure for Emily – and Emily’s relationship could be seen as a variation on the Electra complex).

            

The mid-season finale of the show again highlighted its dedication to playing out father issues but – in this case – not just Emily’s.  A good amount of the episode was devoted to Daniel Grayson who had recently learned that he was to be a father to the child Margaux, his former girlfriend, was carrying.  When Margaux first informs him that she wants him to have nothing to do with the baby because of his recent infidelity and past unethical behavior which paralleled that of his father’s, Daniel was sent down memory lane remembering the times that he had tried unsuccessfully to break free of his father’s corrupting influence.  The episode is framed with a voiceover of Daniel reading a letter he wrote to his father around just this very theme and for a few minutes it appears that Daniel is so distraught that he may commit suicide.  However, then Margaux calls and asks him to come home, declaring that she and the baby need him.  For a brief moment, it appears Daniel could get his happily ever after away from his father’s legacy.  But, sadly, he was not the product of just one horrible parent, but two. [Spoiler Alert]

            

The remainder of the episode had been devoted to drama unfolding from yet another of Victoria’s plots to destroy Emily.  Victoria had put an assassin, Kate, posing as an FBI agent, on the scent of Emily which culminated in a violent fight at Emily’s mansion – one that sent Emily falling through a balcony rail onto the marble foyer floor one story below.  Daniel, who had been contemplating his life history on the beach just feet away, heard the commotion and headed into Emily’s house to investigate.  When he sees Emily on the floor he moves toward her.  Emily immediately tells Daniel to run, but he doesn’t, and he is met with two bullets to the chest from Kate’s gun before Jack enters the scene to her down.  (Not unimportantly, the shots from these exchanges can be heard one house over where Victoria, who put these events in action, is sipping wine with David). 

As Emily tries to comfort the dying Daniel, telling him that he’ll be alright, he smiles feebly and quips that she is lying to him until the very end.  In a reprise of a conversation from just a few episodes prior – when Daniel had asked Emily if any part of their relationship and her feelings for him were real – Emily leans over Daniel with tears in her eyes and tells him that “it wasn’t all pretend,” referring to their relationship, to which he responds, “I know,” just before he dies. 

While children do not usually bear the scars of their parents’ actions in quite so dramatic a fashion as they do on Revenge, this primetime soap provides viewers with a deliciously sad and hyperbolic example of the ways that sons and daughters do get caught up living lives that are plagued by the issues they inherit from their mothers and fathers.  And while a lot of the subplots cause me to roll my eyes, I look forward to the return of this show in a few weeks… and I especially can’t wait to see the scene in which Victoria realizes that her own actions led to her son’s death.

            

Everybody’s Got Mommy & Daddy Issues on TV (Part I): Blacklist’s Narrative Tease(s)

It’s a shame that Freud isn’t around to watch contemporary television because the narratives we spin for the small screen are swimming in tropes from psychoanalytic theory, such as father worship/murder/rescue.  If it’s true that we’re all awash in our own individual mommy-and-daddy issues, then television shows today are providing us with mirrors (hyperbolically) reflecting the various ways in which our childhood baggage and parental role models are affecting us.  What’s sometimes more interesting than the somewhat clichéd depiction of the wounded daughter or son, are the more nuanced depictions we now receive of the parents who are supposedly responsible for inflicting the (seemingly pre-requisite, plot-and-characterization-dependent) damage upon their children.  Case in point:  Blacklist’s Raymond Reddington (James Spader).

Spader’s portrayal of “Red” on NBC’s (rare) hit show is perhaps one of richest characters on television right now.  He joins the recent ranks of other complicated anti-heroes (e.g. Dexter) as a mix of both villain and hero – a man of strong conviction and an idiosyncratic sense of wrong and right who trespasses across all illegal territory and easily enacts violent crimes.  He is the shining star of this well done drama.  

His stellar acting aside, the show has other strengths worth noting.  The premise itself is nothing spectacular but it is executed well.  Blacklist is a crime-drama focused on a black ops division of the FBI that takes down high profile international criminals through the information provided by Red, a former government agent who spent the past decades as a high-profile criminal.  In some ways the program is quite episodic in that each episode, like most crime-dramas, is devoted to the backstory and capture of one particular criminal.  However the filmic aspects of the show and the fast-paced narrative help build suspense.  Not, however, as much suspense as the underlying personal storylines that linger beneath the program’s weekly focus on crime.

Blacklist succeeds because it provides quite a few narrative teases, almost all which center around Red’s character.  The most central concerns the relationship between Red and the other main character, Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone).  The pilot episode finds Red surrendering himself to the FBI, insisting that he will only talk to a newly hired rookie FBI profiler:  Keen.  From the get-go audiences (as well as the other characters on screen) ask why, and this becomes the driving question of the show:  what is the real connection between the two characters? 

The show purposely leads viewers to believe that Red is Keen’s father, providing evidence that points toward that conclusion and then undermining it by a firm denial from Red (a well-versed liar) himself or other seemingly contradictory plot twists.  We see numerous connections between Red and Keen’s past, dialogue and visual clues on the screen that point toward their potential familial relations, and – most of all – the unmistakable father/daughter bond that these two characters cultivate.  Despite betraying each other on multiple occasions – and despite their statuses and experiences on different sides of the law – viewers see both of them sacrificing their own goals time and time again for each other.  Viewers also see Keen so desperately wanting Red to be her father (even if she doesn’t say so directly, or even admit it to herself). 

 

During this current season, the show cleverly provided a bit of misdirection concerning this plotline.  While some episodes further developed this narrative tease (e.g. introducing Red’s ex-wife and implying she could be Keen’s biological mother), the mid-season episodes purposefully caused viewers to temporarily abandon such hypothetical musings.  Various episodes focused on Red’s hunt for a girl viewers eventually presume is his actual daughter.  Then additional episodes focused on their growing relationship as Red met with this young woman under false pretenses to win her trust as she talked about her criminal father who she hadn’t seen in years.  But, of course, the girl turns out to be the long-lost daughter of another criminal and immediately the possibility of Red’s potential status as Keen’s father is resurrected.  It’s certainly a fun little tease… although I’m not sure how long it can last.

Thankfully the show provides us with others as well.  We still know little about the backstory of the man who posed as Keen’s husband for years (although we recently learnt that he has some connection to Red).  And we know very little about the covert, high power, international leadership group that Red supposedly holds power over.  And, perhaps most intriguing of all, we still know very little about Red’s own backstory – what caused him to turn from a legitimate government agent into a criminal, what caused him to lose his family.  (With its focus on the behind-the-scenes government tactics and power struggles, the show also joins the ranks of others in providing some subtle post-9/11 political commentary.)

While Red’s charisma, eccentricities, and wry, sophisticated humor draw me in to most episodes, it’s the moments when his façade drops away that stay with me the most.  In fact, it is the scenes in which both he and Keen are the most emotionally raw and vulnerable that haunt me long after the credits roll.

There are a lot of weepy main characters on television today and as armchair psychiatrists watching at home most of us could psychoanalyze them and easily blame their parents for some of their emotional hang-ups.  These characters, by themselves, are not often all that interesting.  Keen’s character doesn’t necessarily fall into this grouping although she falls into the “damaged daughter” category well enough.  But despite avoiding the stereotypical characterizations that can come with this label, like many female government-agent/police type characters, Keen is also not a fully developed character as of yet.  What makes her interesting, quite frankly, is Red’s interest in her, in the potential backstory he provides for her.  I hope that as the show continues to do this “will they, won’t they (be related)” dance, that it doesn’t get old because the onscreen (platonic/familial) chemistry between two characters is terrific and I hope to see it play out for years to come.

Laughing Our Way through Parenthood: The New Wave of Humorous Blogs, Books, and Other Comical Parenting Products

      

With the Internet almost always at our fingertips, never before has it been easier to get lost in the wave of (often contradictory) parenting advice that circulates amongst us.  Although parents of prior generations surely were subjected to their share of (often unsolicited) advice on the do’s and don’ts of raising children, today’s generation is exposed to an unprecedented quantity of such “wisdom” from experts, pseudo-experts, and laypersons alike.  Moreover, we were a generation reared during the self-help wave that subtly instructed us over the years to seek out such texts and, perhaps, to rely on the information contained within them more so than our own intuition. 

The latter issue is hard to combat.  With so many sources telling young parents all of the things they don’t know, but need to know, the voyage into parenthood is often a terrifying one.  The media landscape has not made it less so as it has amplified parental fears to promote consumerist and political agendas.  It has also fostered divides between parental populations by fabricating conflicts like “the mommy wars” (which supposedly pits working mothers against stay-at-home mothers). 

All of the detrimental effects of this new era of parenting has been well-documented elsewhere and we’ve heard most the consequences in sound bite phrases:  helicopter parents, tiger mothers, mommy guilt, competitive parenting, etc.  But, in the midst of all of this some fun coping strategies have arisen. 

Many parents have rejected the didactic messages of so-called expert parenting texts and have turned to the more informal advice contained within parenting websites, blogs, and books – many of which aim to amuse and entertain more than inform.  Along with these humor-infused columns and memoirs various parent directed parodies have become popular. 

One of the most famous was Adam’s Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep, a children’s book meant for parents featuring the story of a frustrated father strategically (and unsuccessfully) trying to coax his child to sleep.  The book became an Amazon.com bestseller before its 2011 release date after electronic copies of the book went viral.                          

The audio version of the text, in which Samuel L. Jackson narrates the story, also circulated online and contributed to its mass popularity.  

Manbach’s much anticipated sequel, You Have to Fucking Eat, was just released in 2014.

              

                 

Children’s book parodies such as these are popping up on actual book shelves and in other spaces online.  For example, a 2006 article on Brain, Child:  The Magazine for Thinking Mothers contained a parody of Laura Numeroff’s popular If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (and the various spin-off variations it spawned).  This piece by Katherine Almy, titled “If You Give a Mom a Nap,” follows the narrative pacing and rhythmic prose of Numeroff’s original text. 

If you give a mom a nap, she’ll wake up refreshed and in a good mood. She’ll probably let you bounce on the bed as she’s getting up. After you’ve bounced her out of bed, she’ll be ready to play hide-and-go-seek with you.

Playing hide-and-go-seek will make her hot, and she’ll want to go outside. She’ll be happy to trudge up and down the street with you while you zoom around on your toy fire truck. When you fall off your truck and skin your knee, she’ll pick you up very gently and kiss you tenderly on the boo-boo.

After she’s kissed your boo-boo, it’ll feel better and you’ll see the swing in the neighbor’s tree. Mom will joyfully push you on the swing for fifteen minutes…

Similar parodies exist, including “If You Give a Mom a Cup of Coffee and the Day Off.”

Another recent comical parenting book is Sopha King Tyerd’s 2014 Toddlers are Assholes:  It’s NotYour Fault.  This text follows in the fashion of texts like Sippy Cups are Not for Chardonnay, The Three Martini Playdate, and Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box, using a pseudo-self-help layout and address.  (For more on this genre of comedic self-help books, see this previous blog post).  The text opens with a chapter that defines toddlerhood behavior: 

A toddler is a cross between a sociopath, rabid animal, cocker spaniel, demon and an angel...  Toddler assholery is a normal part of human development.  It’s like puberty but focuses mainly on throwing food on the floor and taking swings at people who pay your way in life… There’s a reason toddlers are at their peak cuteness:  it’s because nature knows that toddlerhood is when you are most likely to take your child to a public park and leave them there with a note                                            that says, ‘I’m a little shit and they couldn’t take it anymore.’

A variation of the comical parenting advice book, stemming from a popular blog, was also released this year:  Bunmi Laditan’s The Honest Toddler:  A Child’s Guide to Parenting.  

While some of the comedic parenting texts include moments of real parenting advice, this text written from the perspective of a three year old, is purely for amusement.  The text opens with this address to the readers: 

Toddlers are misunderstood and the one in your life is probably disappointed in you.  Read this book if you want to get better at what should be your number one priority:  making your small child happy.  Don’t skip pages, this isn’t a bedtime story (yeah, we know), but a manual that will revolutionize your life.  You’re welcome in advance.

The text tackles similar topics as a normal a normal parenting book, but does so for laughs.  Take, for example, this section devoted to tantrums:

There’s a very dirty word that is commonly used to describe the mild outbursts of emotion that toddlers display from time to time.  That word is TANTRUM.  Not only is this descriptor condescending, it releases the party responsible (you) for said “tantrum.” …

Do you see how language created toddler bias?  From now on, we’ll be throwing the word “tantrum” in the metaphorical outside trash and replacing it with “loud response.”

Last week I shared a loud response in our local Linens ‘n Things.  Don’t be confused by the name of this retail outlet.  There are no Things.  Just Linens.  After forty-six hours of wandering this textile purgatory, I felt a volcano erupt in my middle back.  The last thing I remember is trying to rip an Egyptian-cotton duvet with my teeth and releasing my bowels on a couple of crushed-velvet throw pillows before running for my life.  My behavior was a response, not a random occurrence. 

Parents, if you wish to gain the respect of your toddler, the first thing you need to do is own your mistakes.  For instance, if my parents and I had been at the toy store eating delicious and nutritious ice-cream sundaes, like I’d asked, we could have spent the money that went toward those pee-pee pillows on the new toys I desperately need.  Do you see?

There are countless other examples of these humorous texts directed toward parents.  Their popularity and proliferation indicate that laughing our way through parenting is a coping strategy enjoyed by many.  I’d argue that these texts, whether intended or not, are counteracting the didactic nature of the never-ending advice pouring out of parenting manual, websites, blogs, and news columns.  By making light of the challenges of parenting they say:  we understand, we’ve been there.  While other texts seem to highlight parental missteps making readers fearful of parental failure, these instead rejoice in them.  Or, at least, they try to see the humor in such moments.  The days that make us feel like the worst parents on earth may, with some time and distance, also make for the most amusing retellings and reflections when our children are older. 

Further, these texts build a virtual community of sorts.  While advice-based texts can create divides between author and reader (one that creates a hierarchy in which the former is more knowledgeable and important than the latter), these comedic texts put author and reader on the same level as members of the same community of struggling parents.  Therefore, these texts are an important addition to parenting literature.  And, more importantly, they’re just ridiculously funny.

ABC’s Selfie as the Victim of The Recent Failed Televisual Rom-Sitcom Experiment

Every television season it’s fun to watch the new hot televisual trend and see if it’s going to be a success or a flop.  This year the experiment was the rom-sitcom:  the hybrid genre that results when you try to blend the characteristics of the romantic comedy with that of the sitcom. 

In theory this merger appealed to me.  As a fan of the serial format, I find myself much more invested in characters and relationships that evolve over the time allotted from a long-lasting series in comparison to a two-hour filmic installation.  And, as a forever-flawed feminist, I am also oddly drawn to romantic comedies despite their predictable plots, stock characters, stereotypical gender portrayals, and unflinching endorsement of heteronormativity.  I was curious to see how this systematic combination would work on the small screen.  It didn’t take me long to realize it wouldn’t.  It didn’t take the networks long either.  Take for example the early cancelations of NBC’s Manhattan Love Story and CBS’s A to Z.

Manhattan Love Story followed the typical romantic comedy formula:  a meet cute that leads to seeming opposites falling into an unlikely courtship.  Following in the tradition of romantic comedies (like almost any film staring Katherine Heigl), the show featured a crass, womanizing male protagonist and an uptight, naïve female protagonist.  Bad acting and writing aside, I decided early on that while I can often stomach such problematic recurring characters for the duration of a 90-minute Hollywood film,  the idea of tuning in to watch such characterizations play out endlessly week after week in 30 minute intervals was not appealing.   

A to Z had a slightly more enjoyable premise. The opening voice over announces:  “Andrew and Zelda date for eight months, three weeks, five days, and one hour. This television program is the comprehensive account of their relationship.”  On the surface the show seemed to have a set-up that could replace that of the recently vacated How I Met Your Mother:  viewers are presented with a known end point that they are watching to arrive at but do not know what that end point actually is:  dating that ends in a break up or a marriage.  Despite being mildly interested in the premise, like many other viewers apparently, I didn’t tune in past the pilot episode.

In the midst of all these shows, I found myself drawn to only one new sitcom that debuted this season:  ABC’s Selfie.  While others grouped the show with these others in the category of rom-sitcom because it included a potential romantic pairing between the two leads (but what sitcom doesn’t do this usually?), I felt it was simply a new workplace sitcom carrying out some interesting social commentary.    The show starred Karen Gillan as Eliza Dooley, a social media obsessed, narcissistic fame junkie who ultimately seeks guidance for self-improvement from her colleague, Henry Higgs (played by John Cho), a marketing image guru.  Although necessarily hyperbolic, the show provided some over-the-top social commentary on our cultural addiction with technology and social networking.  Although played for laughs, the show transformed the real findings of researchers into little vignettes to allow viewers to ponder the impact of these trends on our lives.  For example, the show included storylines about how identity performance plays out in online spaces and how those carefully constructed projections lead to feelings of inadequacy and jealousy when people compare their real lives to those constructions.  It explored how social networking has resulted in the devaluing of real face-to-face friendships, replacing such practices with that of collecting of online friends as accessories and evidence of social capital.  It addressed how social media is changing the ways in which we start, maintain, and end relationships.  And it hinted at the concerns of living in an era wherein all of our movements are forever recorded in the ever expansive cloud.  

While it’s silliest (and perhaps funniest) moments came in the form of replaying the very real social media missteps that many viewers have experienced in real life (for example when Henry becomes addicted to cyber stalking his ex-girlfriends through Facebook and accidentally ends up tagging himself in a picture of one who was breastfeeding her newborn), the most heartfelt moments came when the show addressed the ways in which our ever-connected lifestyles actually lead to more loneliness than ever before.  (An issue well covered in scholarly endeavors, such as Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together:  Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other).  However, what I really enjoyed about the show is that it didn’t rest on the reductive premise that loneliness stems from this cultural phenomenon alone.  The show systematically juxtaposes scenes that highlight Eliza’s lack of interpersonal skills with those that showcase Henry’s (usually) unfaltering success in social situations.  But then it reveals that both are equally lonely.  The social networking addict and the social networking abstainer both are lacking in meaningful friendships and romantic relationships, although they start to gain both through their encounters with one another.  My favorite moment from the series was the scene in which Henry – who is tasked with improving Eliza’s public image and poor social habits – abandons his goal of getting her to stop eating her lunch standing over the garbage can once she reveals that it was an old habit developed to make it seem like she was too busy to sit down and eat when really it was because as a young girl she had no friends to sit down and eat beside.  Learning this, Henry instead joins her to eat his own lunch standing beside her over a garbage can in his office.  I liked the inclusion of this theme of loneliness in the show as it showed that this emotion is a time honored experience common to human experience… and not just to humans participating in the social networking era.  This little motif added a little nuance to a show that could be read as beating us over the head with jokes about our technology addiction and social communication practices.

But maybe the jokes seemed too overdone and they over-powered what I thought to be great acting and pretty good chemistry between Gillan and Cho.  Or maybe Selfie’s downfall was being grouped with the aforementioned sitcoms as being just another of the over-done romantic comedy shows that debuted this Fall.  Perhaps if it has debuted without the others the series would not have found itself arriving at the same destination:  cancelation.

But, maybe it would have.  Maybe viewers aren’t interested in a show that gets them to think critically about their most common social practices.  Maybe some of the jokes hit too close to home.   

Things that Scare Me: A Halloween Letter to My Daughters

Dear Daughters,

There are many things that scare me and many of these will be metaphorically represented in the Halloween costumes that will cross our paths tonight as we trick-or-treat.  So as we prepare to slip into holiday garb and embark on a candy-collecting adventure, here are a few thoughts that are on my mind.

It scares me that we will in a society in which one in four women will be victims of domestic violence in their lifetimes (and that one in five women will be sexually assaulted). It scares me more that we live in a society in which people can find such abuse funny (and even costume worthy):

                                                         

It scares me we live in a world where 30 percent of clothing and toy options for girls contribute to the their sexualization.  It scares me even more the ways in which even the more innocuous children’s products can be turned sexual: 

It scares me that we live in a culture in which strong female role models are short lived.  It scares me even more that the celebrities that receive the most attention are the ones that we should be ignoring:

                      

                                   

It scares me that even in the 21^st century, we invite children to prescribe to incredibly gendered roles.  It scares me more that these early life lessons will linger years later and have long-lasting impacts.

                  

 

             It scares me that in our country women still only make 70 percent of what their male colleagues in similar fields do.  It scares me more that when women break through these barriers their success finds them branded as aggressive witches/bitches:

                    

It scares me that tonight I will hold your hands as you cross streets, encounter strangers, and approach foreign thresholds, but that I will not always be there as your companion, your guide, and your protector.  It scares me that with each passing Halloween I will be watching you both move further into a world of uncertainty, challenges, and danger. 

But, for tonight at least, I can watch the two of you skip down cold streets blissfully unaware of the many things that scare me.  And I can enthusiastically point out any passing girl dressed as a doctor, athlete, or pirate, choosing to reveal in the things that give make me hope… rather than fear.

Love,

Your Mother