by: Rachel Wicks
For about a week or so, I’ve been hearing more
and more people talk about a brand new comedy show on Netflix called Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Being a fan
of comedy, and having a pre-established faith in anything branded as a “Netflix
original”, I decided to check it out. The colors were bright, the theme song
was catchy, and sometimes the more immature jokes were a little awkward to sit
through, but this is a show created by 30
Rock’s and Saturday Night Live’s
Tina Fey, so none of this really came as a surprise.
What did
come as a surprise, however, was how often the satire completely missed the
mark.
Quickly Googling for reviews of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt will show that
most critics have warmly received the show, complimenting how the new series is
a progressive step in the right direction for feminism and diverse
representation, but despite the possible steps forward the show may have made,
it seemed to do just enough damage to continually keep its self stepping
backwards.
The first instance that stood out to me as
wrong was the theme song. In the show, the main character Kimmy is rescued from
an underground bunker she had been a prisoner in for fifteen years. This
information is revealed to the audience in the form of a news reporter
interviewing an eye-witness of the rescue, who is depicted as a poor,
living-in-a-trailer, black man who is so enthusiastic during the interview that
he is later “songified” and turned into a viral hit. Sound familiar? If it
doesn’t, Google Antoine Dodson’s “Bed Intruder Song” or Sweet Brown’s highly
quoted “Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That”. The Internet has a long history of
finding news interviews of poor, black individuals, turning their vernacular
into a full-fledged auto-tuned song, and making them a viral punchline for the
world to gawk at. This awful “tradition” stems directly from the racist and
classist mindsets behind setting up these people as a joke, but instead of
taking the opportunity to point out this disgusting behavior, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt simply carries
on the habit, adding their fictional Walter Bankston to the list of
mocked-through-song black individuals, and even going so far as to use the same
creators of the “Bed Intruder Song” to make Kimmy’s catchy theme.
Instances like this stand out because this show
is based on satire, yet it appears the writers need to freshen up on their
definitions. Satire is the act the act of pointing out flaws in society through
comedy and placing blame on those who deserve it by making them the punchline.
Is it satirical when a Vietnamese character named Dong laughs at Kimmy’s name
because in Vietnam “Kimmy” means penis? Yes, because the joke is on Kimmy, who
originally laughed at Dong’s name, and this scenario points out that it is
wrong to laugh at someone’s culturally different name. Is it satirical when
Kimmy verbally corners her boss’s stepdaughter, who exclaims, “I’m being
bullied and I’m not even fat!”? No, because the punchline is literally “fat
people are bullied”. Hilarious, right? It’s so
funny how people are continuously shamed in society for their body’s varying
shapes and sizes. In this case, the real joke should have landed on the snobby,
thin stepdaughter who was crass enough to say such a repulsive thing in the
first place.
However, no moment, event, plot-point, or
one-liner stood out as much as the bizarre and extremely racist inclusion of
Native Americans. In Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt, there is a character named Jaqueline who is blond, white, and
played by an actress who is of Polish and Caucasian descent. In her storyline,
we learn that she is secretive of her family’s past because she is apparently a
Native American woman named Jackie Lynn who dyed her hair and got blue contact
lenses in order to succeed in the world as a white woman. The narrative of a
Native American struggling to accommodate white-dominated society’s oppressive
influence is a compelling one that can intelligently be used through satire to
explain how wrong it is that people are being forced to abandon their heritage
in order to “fit in”, but this could only work if it was coming from an actual
Native American. Jane Krakowski, the actress who plays Jaqueline, hasn’t got a
drop of native blood in her, yet here she is playing a Native American
struggling with issues real Native Americans face and doing it just for laughs.
It feels almost like redface, except the show’s creators were at least smart
enough to not start painting anyone’s skin a different color, but they still
weren’t smart enough to cast an actual Native American in a Native American
role in a show that toots its own horn for how diverse it is.
When I asked my friends what they thought of
the show, they said they were amused but conflicted, and there is honestly no
better way to put it. The show so far consists of only thirteen episodes, and I
got some good laughs out of each one, but there were just enough moments
throughout the show that screamed wrong!
to me to make the experience less than enjoyable. I would still suggest
watching this show, since it’s a quick watch you can get through in less than a
day and everyone seems to be watching it already, but it’s vital to remain
vigilant of the problems this show has at its core and not let their failed
satire slide by uncriticized.
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