The Big Phallus Theory: The Big Bang Theory, Nerd Culture, and Women

(While I tried to avoid them, you may find some SPOILERS for The Big Bang Theory in this post.)

 

One of my favorite sitcoms is The Big Bang Theory. While the show is not always strong on plot and rarely portrays life in academia accurately, its likeable characters and nearly unending stream of insider gags for nerds make it an entertaining means of spending half an hour. I love Leonard, the everyman. I enjoy Sheldon’s elevated dialogue. And I can both sympathize with and laugh at Howard and Raj’s awkwardness. I also appreciate that it features a smart, sensible heroine, Penny, who isn’t afraid to assert herself and can talk back to the guys.

What I can’t stand is that, like most of nerd culture and the wider culture, the show often reeks of sexism. Some of it, like Howard’s frequent lewd comments that reduce women to sex objects, I can ignore. Indeed, if I restricted myself only to popular culture that presents women as nothing less than fully realized human beings, I’d probably never be able to watch another movie or television show again. I’ve become so used to explicit sexism, in the form of derogatory comments about women, in my media diet that, I confess, I often recognize it and then choose to ignore it. It’s one of the patriarchal bargains I make as a feminist and a woman living in a culture that recognizes my gender’s worth only in so far as it meets certain standards of sexiness, attractiveness, and compliance. What does bother me about the show that I haven’t been able to ignore so easily is the implicit sexism in the lack of female nerd characters.

Seriously, where are the women nerds? I see them everywhere in real life. They attend conventions, they go to the movies, they cosplay, they talk about Star Wars and Star Trek  and play Skyrim and Dungeons & Dragons. They consist of the majority of people that I know and I’d say nearly all of my female friends are nerds. I know women who can code websites, quote Lord of the Rings, act out scenes from Doctor Who, recite the noble gases and their atomic weights, and kick your ass in Call of Duty. Why are these women not represented, or even acknowledged, in The Big Bang Theory? I’m not even asking why they aren’t main characters–though a show about four female nerdy friends would be awesome and so much more entertaining than Sex and the City–so much as I’m wondering why, in the show’s universe, they don’t even seem to exist.

Well, one might point out, what about Amy and Bernadette? Perhaps, in the strictest sense of the term “nerd,” someone who is brilliantly smart and obsessives over even the tiniest minutiae of something, Amy and Bernadette are nerds. They’re both smart, they’re both biologists, and they both have Ph.D.s. To give credit where credit is due, just a few decades ago it would have been unthinkable to have not one, but two women characters in the S.T.E.M. fields on a television show. However, Amy and Bernadette are still ultimately defined in the show by their relationships with their male significant others. They are judged, and often found wanting, by their ability or inability to meet cultural standards of attractiveness, and they do no participate in what has come to be the domains of nerd culture–things like comic books, science fiction shows and movies, and video games. There are no women regularly featured in the show who enjoy these pursuits, even though such women exist in real life.

In real life, however, nerd culture often has just as much, if not more, of a problem with sexism than The Big Bang Theory does. While The Big Bang Theory ignores nerd women and pretends that they don’t exist, real life nerd culture can be downright hostile toward women attempting to claim the identity of “nerd.”  Whether its people accusing women of only pretending to be nerds in order to hook up with guys or creating the “Idiot Nerd Girl” meme that I’ve attempted to reclaim in this post, a lot of guys seem to want women out of their conventions, their role playing games, and their Internet spaces. But why? The most obvious answer is sexism, but it would be too simple to leave it at that, so I’m going to dig a little deeper.

Though the cultural perception of nerds is changing, it is still largely a negative one, as evidenced by the male main characters on The Big Bang Theory. All of them, in some way, have failed to live up to to our culture’s unrealistic and burdensome ideals of masculinity. None of them are physically strong. Neither are they particularly attractive. They know little of sports. They aren’t charismatic or suave or charming. They aren’t physically or emotionally tough. They prefer the comforts of their apartments to the outdoors. Nerdy men are, as the show and the wider culture seem to suggest, not masculine. The show has frequently paired short, wimpy Leonard with Penny’s tall, dark and handsome beaus to make this point. Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj could often be better described as “feminine” than masculine. There is, however, one group that is lower than nerds on the social hierarchy: women. Whatever male nerds are, they are still more masculine (and thus higher on the hierarchy of patriarchal culture) than women. But when women start entering nerd spaces–and demanding an equal right to be there and be recognized as nerds–they challenge the modicum of masculinity that nerd culture has been able to salvage for itself. They also challenge the perception of women, within both nerd culture and the wider culture, as nothing more than accessories that convey masculinity, and thus worth, on a man. (Think about how, when Howard was first dating Bernadette, he worried that she wasn’t good-looking enough. An attractive girl conveys to society that there is something “manly” or “masculine” about the man she is dating, thus increasing his worth in the eyes of patriarchal culture.)

I think there is a place for women in nerd culture, and I’m sure that women will continue to attend cons, play video games, and go to special screenings of Star Wars. Just as women have fought, and are still fighting, for their right to inhabit the biology labs and physics departments where Bernadette and Amy have managed to reside, I suspect that women will continue to exist in nerd spaces and gradually gain acceptance there. I also suspect that, as nerd culture continues to grow within the mainstream, the stereotype of nerd men as less than masculine will diminish.

However, just because the stereotype of nerds as feminine may disappear does not mean that sexism within nerd culture will necessarily end. Though I would be very glad to see our culture expand its definitions of masculinity beyond its currently narrow confines, I suspect that this will do very little to challenge the standards of beauty to which women, even nerdy women, are held, both inside and outside of nerd culture. Maleness, I still sadly suspect, will still be privileged within nerd culture, in part because nerd culture is inherently exclusionary. To be a nerd, it helps to be male. It also helps to be white, cisgender, and educated. I suspect being able-bodied helps too, though I have seen a broader spectrum of ability represented in nerd culture than I have in mainstream culture. It is required that one be at least middle class, as I doubt the working class has the time and money that are necessary to indulge in nerdy pursuits. Gaming systems can be incredibly expensive, as are books, DVDs, and high-speed Internet connections. One must also have the leisure time to master the games and fantasy worlds present in nerd media. Sadly, in many ways, nerds are often primarily defined by what they consume.

I would like to think that nerd culture is smart enough to look at its own privilege and try to include a wider range of people. After all, many of us nerds define ourselves by our inability to fit in, our difference from mainstream society, and our stories of bullying and rejection. Perhaps we could use those experiences to sympathize with those whom society bullies and rejects. Until more nerds are willing to make this effort and look beyond their own privilege, however, I suspect that nerd culture will largely remain another old boys club.

A Cuban…Something: Race and Gender in I Love Lucy

(Not my best post ever, but I made a commitment to blog more regularly, so I figured I should try to come up with something.)

Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of I Love Lucy reruns on TVLand’s website.  The last time I watched I Love Lucy, I was a young child, so I think I was more amused by the slapstick than anything else. The show’s stance on gender roles and race went right over my head. Now, while I find myself amused by the show, I also feel a little…guilty for enjoying it.

I could write extensively on the show’s portrayal of women. On the one hand, it’s extremely sexist. However, there is certainly an element of subversion in Lucy and Ethel’s pranks. The show panders to patriarchal stereotypes about women while also knowingly winking at them. At the same time, Lucille Ball is an outstanding comedian, and in an age where we still have male comedians and other personalities claiming that women just aren’t funny, Ball is resounding proof that women can and do have a sense of humor. However, the sexism and subversion of sexism in I Love Lucy is a topic that, if I recall correctly, Susan Douglas deals with in her excellent book Where the Girls Are, an examination of the popular culture surrounding Second Wave Feminism. Suffice to say, the show is by and large very sexist, but this didn’t surprise me.

What did surprise me was the racism. As a child watching I Love Lucy, I don’t think I ever realized that Ricky was Cuban. Watching the show now, I can’t forget. In nearly every episode, Ricky is referred to as a Cuban at least once, and it’s usually in a remark about his faults. If he won’t buy Lucy something she wants, he’s a “stingy Cuban.” If he’s angry about something, he’s a “hot-tempered Cuban.” If he holds his ground or won’t change his mind, he’s a “stubborn Cuban.” If he’s doing something that Lucy and the rest of the cast like, he’s Ricky. If he’s displeased one of them in some way, it’s because he’s Cuban. He is heavily marked by his ethnicity throughout the show.

Much like the ambiguity of the sexism in the show, however, Ricky’s “Cuban-ness” isn’t entirely negative. Seeing the show in 2012, I’m struck by just how much Ricky is portrayed as a (more or less) complete human being and not a Latino stereotype. Granted, in the 1950s, when the show was made, the ethnic stereotypes were probably different. Today, however, Latinos are often (regrettably) portrayed as poor and/or lazy, a view that, I would argue, has more to do with unfairly scapegoating them for a lot of the U.S.’s labor and immigration problems than it has to do with Latinos themselves. Ricky, though he might complain about how much money Lucy spends, is not poor. Nor is he lazy. In fact, his character is something of a workaholic.

Some of this portrayal might have to do with the fact that he is portrayed as thoroughly assimilated into American culure. He might slip into Spanish every once in a while and speak English with a slight accent, but he espouses the same values expressed by American television patriarchs such as Andy Griffith and Ward Cleaver—work hard and earnestly, don’t be frivolous or wasteful, and people get what they deserve. In some sense, he is an example of the “good” or “deserving” immigrant—the immigrant who accepts American culture and knows (or learns) the language. He finds success through his assimilation. I find this dichotomy of “good” versus “bad” immigrants problematic in many ways, as it allows us to blame individuals and not social inequalities for the failures of many people who come to this country. However, assimilation is something that many immigrants experience and many might not see it as an inherently bad thing.

Ultimately, watching I Love Lucy has made me aware of just how little I know about Cuba’s history between Spanish colonization and Castro’s rise to power. I also know almost nothing about U.S.-Cuban relations before the Cold War. It’s also made me realize that I don’t know a lot about the history of the portrayal of Latin Americans in U.S. popular culture. Clearly, there is something of a gaping hole in my knowledge that needs to be filled. If nothing else, watching I Love Lucy has made me realize how much I don’t know, which is a great way to start learning new things.

Automail: Not as Easy as It Looks (Or, How Watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Is Helping Me Cope with Having Carpal Tunnel Syndrome)

This post is a little bit more personal than usual, but it still contains references to theory and pop culture, so I thought I’d include it. Also, though I tried my hardest to avoid them, if you haven’t already seen Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and don’t want to know what happens, this post may contain some spoilers. There are also spoilers for James Cameron’s Avatar.

So, I was recently diagnosed with the dreaded disease of writers, gamers, and programmers: carpal tunnel syndrome. In retrospect, I’d probably started coming down with it last school year, but being about to get my B.A., I’d staunchly ignored it and kept typing papers, even when my fingers felt “funny.” This school year, however, it’s gotten so bad that I can’t ignore it. I woke up one morning with my hand completely numb and unable to move my fingers. Steroids and a brace have helped, but I still get frustrated often. I used to be able to write all the time, and now I have to take frequent breaks or avoid my keyboard (and my computer) for long stretches, sometimes days, at a time. As someone who has always identified herself as a writer and taken pride in her ability to type quickly and accurately, this is hard. There have been times when I have been dying to write, anxious to put down the words that I can see so clearly in my mind…and then my fingers start getting twitchy and tingly and stiff, and I have to stop. Usually these sessions end with me sitting in front of my computer and crying tears of frustration. I know my situation could be a lot worse, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling upset sometimes.

Okay, enough self pity. On to the pop culture! I recently started watching the Japanese anime series, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. If you want a detailed run-down of the series (and I recommend it! It’s very exciting with beautifully portrayed and fully realized characters) this would be a good place to start. For the purposes of this post, all you need to know is that the protagonist, Ed, is a teenage alchemist (for the purposes of this post, that’s more or less like a wizard). There are good guys with supernatural powers who fight bad guys with supernatural powers. Oh, and Ed is missing an arm and a leg. In our own world, this would probably be a major setback for Ed, but in his fantastical universe, a type of prosthetic known as “automail” is readily available. A limb made from automail can do pretty much everything a flesh and blood limb can, as it is connected to the body’s own nerves through a series of wires. It is also jointed in the same places as a flesh and blood limb, so it can move in the same ways. In certain situations, automail can even be used to enhance a limb, as one character with automail legs has a canon in her kneecap.

When I first started watching the series, I kept thinking back to what I’ve read of disability theory, which looks at how people with disabilities are portrayed in our culture (or in this case, Japanese culture? I feel a little weird applying a Western theory from a Western perspective to a Japanese television show. If I get something wrong or miss something, feel free to let me know in the comments). And, usually, people with disabilities aren’t shown at all. Or if they are, their disability is minimizes or made invisible in some way. (Think of Avatar and how the main character is confined to a wheelchair, but for the most of the movie, he’s in his avatar body which has no such constraints. The movie glosses over his disability and then gets rid of it all together at the end.) Ed’s disability seems to fit this depiction. Sure, he really wants his original arm and leg back, but his automail overall works pretty well. He can manipulate his metal hand as easily as his unaffected one. He can run, fight, and move in the same ways people with their original limbs can. Though the automail maker, Pinako, warns him that his rehabilitation will be long and difficult, the series glosses over whatever physical therapy-like training Ed had to undergo to use his automail. After he has it installed, the shot cuts to a new scene, some time later, in which the audience sees him sparring with his brother almost as though nothing has happened.

Those were my first thoughts about Ed and his disability. But then I kept watching the series, and while I still think automail is, to some extent, a way to push aside the main character’s disability so that he can still run after the bad guys and land a punch, Ed still struggles with not having his original limbs. Most of his struggle is psychological. He lost his limbs in a traumatic incident that also severely damaged his brother, and he feels guilty for his role in the events that led to such a devastating situation. His metal arm and leg serve as constant reminders of the guilt he feels and the burden that it places upon him. And certainly, not all of the suffering of coping with a disability is physical. Amputations, chronic diseases, mental illnesses, and genetic disorders all carry psychological as well as physical costs.

Ed also suffers from not being “normal.” Though he hides his automail appendages with gloves and boots, whenever people see his missing limbs, they tend to be shocked. They stare. They want to know what happened. Some characters are also able to guess, just from seeing Ed’s injuries, what sort of incident led to his missing limbs, which increases his guilt. Though his automail functions practically the same way organic limbs would, it still marks him as different from other people.

But, of course, Ed’s automail is not the same as his former arm and leg. The series (at least as far as I’ve gotten) doesn’t discuss the drawbacks to automail in detail, but they are there. Unlike skin, muscles, and nerves, automail can’t heal itself, so anytime Ed’s automail is damaged, he has to find an automail maker, usually his friend Winry, to fix it. Also unlike muscle, automail can’t become stronger. Though Ed practices his fighting techniques at every chance he has, the strength of his automail is completely subject to how well it has been made and repaired. This has dangerous consequences for him, as at one point during a fight, his automail arm breaks because the last time Winry repaired it, she forgot to include a necessary screw. Being made of metal, it also rusts.

The series doesn’t dwell on these difficulties. More often than not, Ed’s automail works just fine until it is convenient for the plot that it break. But still, the series, however subtly, shows Ed living with a body that is not completely under his control. Instead of being able to do whatever he likes whenever he likes, sometimes Ed has to deal with the fact that his prosthetic arm or leg just isn’t going to work that day. So he complains and sulks for a bit, gets over it, and then gets back into the fight the next day. And that’s kind of how I feel having carpal tunnel.

Now, I’m not going to go so far as to put myself in the category of people with disabilities. Like I said before, I could have it a lot worse. I can still type—I’m just slower than I used to be. I haven’t lost my entire arm. And if my carpal tunnel gets bad enough, well, I can have surgery to have the problem taken care of once and for all. This isn’t something drastic that is going to permanently change everything about my life, unlike someone who, for instance, is diagnosed with Huntington’s disease or becomes a paraplegic. To put myself in the same category as people who are struggling with radical, life-changing ailments and valiantly learning to live with them would seem melodramatic and selfish on my part. So I’m not going to do that. However, there was a brief period, when my hand went completely numb, where I got a small taste of what it was like to not be able to use one of my hands. It was tough. I had to actually think about everything that I was doing, even basic things like buckling a belt, that I usually did unconsciously. Now I can pretty much do everything that I used to without thinking about it, unlike people who have to learn how to do everything one-handed. It was hard enough for me to go without my hand for a few days, and I have much more respect now for people who learn to live with that sort of situation permanently.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that now I have a lot more sympathy for people with disabilities than I did before. And because of that, I can relate to Ed in ways that I probably couldn’t before. Before, while watching the series, I probably would have wondered why getting his arm and leg back were such a big deal to him, when his automail limbs seem to work just fine. Now I realize that, while they might be a good substitute (certainly better than the prosthetics technology we have in the real world), they aren’t perfect. (Why do I want my former, non-tingly fingers back when the ones I’ve still got almost work the way they used to?) I’d also probably miss a lot of the more subtle ways in which Ed has to listen to his body and let it dictate what he can or can’t do, even if he wishes otherwise.

And despite all that, he still manages to fight the bad guys and save the people he cares about. Having an “imperfect” limb or hand or body doesn’t mean that he can’t do things. It just means he has to do them differently. And ultimately, not having his original arm and leg makes Ed who he is. If the incident that caused him to lose them had never happened, there would be no story. But there is a story, and within that story, Ed’s missing limbs bring certain challenges and setbacks, which Ed deals with. At the end of the day, he still manages to kick the bad guys’ asses. So, from a disability theory perspective, while the series sort of glosses over Ed’s disability, it also shows him coping with it. And from a personal perspective, it makes me feel a little bit better about having carpal tunnel.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?” Hyper-Irony and Robot Chicken, Part 2

Here’s Part 1.

To examine how we got from The Simpsons to RC, however, I want to first look at another show—Seth McFarland’s FOX comedy, Family Guy. Family Guy is often criticized for being a rip-off of The Simpsons, and superficially this claim does seem to stand up. Both shows focus on a nuclear family lead by a drunk and ineffectual father and a long-suffering but loving mother. These parents also have a son and daughter who argue constantly as well as a baby who shows uncanny intelligence. The humor is often crude and juvenile and seems to be written for the purpose of making its audience uncomfortable as well as amused.

However, these are only superficial similarities. Family Guy took the hyper-irony game begun by The Simpsons and expanded it to even more ludicrous proportions. The quotationalism of The Simpsons was still linked to the plot in some way, and in many ways enhanced the plot. It acted as a cultural short-hand that cued the audience, if it was properly in the know, how to feel about the situation. For instance, in one of the episodes that Matheson references, “A Streetcar Named Marge,” Maggie and her cohorts attempt to break out of an oppressive daycare. The theme from The Great Escape plays in the background as they seek to free their confiscated pacifiers. This quotationalism is funny, certainly, but it also serves a purpose within the action of the scene. It cues the audience to feel that Maggie is doing something heroic and even adds an element of melodrama to the plot. Many of the other instances of quotationalism within The Simpsons behave in the same way—they are woven throughout the plot of the episode so that the action is enhanced, rather than broken, by the bevy of pop culture references.

Family Guy takes the quotationalism begun in The Simpsons one step further. Instead of enhancing the plot, the quotationalism often takes the audience out of the plot entirely. It also forces the Griffin family to break character, as they act out a brief sketch to illustrate whatever reference or joke has just been made. For instance, in one episode, Peter mentions playing a joke on Ashton Kutcher. The scene then switches to a shot of Peter throwing a tomahawk at Ashton Kutcher, causing him to pass out. Peter then explains that he only hit Kutcher because that is the purpose of his television show—to go around filming himself hitting people with tomahawks. Then the scene ends, and the audience is returned to the regular plot of the show. This parody of Punk’d has nothing directly to do with the plot of the episode and seems to serve no purpose other than to make viewers who get the reference feel “in the know.”

This parody and other pop culture references like it within Family Guy, breaks up the show. Instead of enhancing the plot, it actually detracts from it. The quotationalism of Family Guy is often criticized because it is irrelevant to anything else going on in the episodes. However, the quotationalism can’t be that unfunny, or Family Guy would not be one of the most popular comedies in America. Rather, Family Guy takes the cult of pop culture knowingness begun in The Simpsons and raises it to a new level. In The Simpsons, the quotationalism still had a purpose within the show. In Family Guy, the quotationalism is its own purpose. It references purely for the sake of referencing, and only audience members who are in the know are assumed to be worthy of the joke.

This quotationalism for its own sake is, I believe, the natural progression of hyper-irony in comedy. If everything is a source of  ridicule and the best we can hope for is a constant game of one-up-manship in the rules of a particular ideological discourse, then Family Guy does not try to disguise that game behind a plot. Instead, it blatantly exposes the game and acknowledges that it is being hyper-ironic. The show even mocks itself for its constant breaks in the flow of the plot, as occasionally characters will make a bizarre pop culture reference or mash up and then pause. “I thought we had a clip for that,” Stewie says on one such occasion. “Oh? No we don’t? Never mind, then.” The show makes fun of its own quotationalism, proving that even it is not free from ridicule.

Though Family Guy is fresher than The Simpsons, after nine seasons, it too seems to be stalling. Just as The Simpsons has settled into a particular ideological comfort zone of family values and liberal-leaning politics, so too has Family Guy. For instance, in the episode “Trading Places,” in which Meg and Chris swap places with their parents for a week, Chris eventually becomes so stressed that he has a heart attack. When he revives in the hospital and admits that being an adult is harder than he thought it would be, Lois comforts him with a reminder that he still has his family to help him through difficult times. Many recent episodes have ended with a reinteration of family values, and the Griffins seem to take comfort in the fact that while the world may be cruel and unpredictable, at least they have each other to depend upon. In older seasons, this idea of the importance of the family would be under-cut, and to some extent, it still is. After all, what kind of family does Chris have to depend upon? Peter is a selfish drunk. Meg is superficial. Stewie is too concerned about planning world domination and understanding his sexual orientation to care about anything else. Brian is too busy finding a girlfriend and working on his novel (or drinking and thinking about working on his novel), and while Lois might mean well, she rarely offers real solutions to her family’s problems. However, the episode and many like it, seem to end with the message that even though the Griffins are all flawed, they love each other, and that love is enough overcome their faults. This uplifting end note is becoming a common theme on the series, suggesting that Family Guy may be slowly dropping its hyper-ironic stance for a more touchy-feely message.

So why have The Simpsons and Family Guy gone soft? I believe that their nature as  situation comedies prevents them from upholding their hyper-ironic cynicism for too long. Because both shows involve a regular cast of re-occuring characters, these characters and their relationships must develop in some way after a period of time. After all of their wacky adventures and mishaps, how could the Simpsons or Griffins not have a strong bond with each other? In twenty-two minutes they undergo some sort of crisis, resolve it, and return their world to normal. In some sense, the love that they have for each other is enough to get them through any kind of trouble, simply because at the end of each episode, they must have re-established their normal lives so that they will be ready for the next episode. The nature of the situation comedy forces them to find some sort of ideological ground, even if it is a tenuous one.  Chris, voiced by Seth Green, can depend on his family, because the medium in which he exists insists that he can.

But another show involving Seth Green does not have such limitations, which brings us to the next progression of hyper-irony: Robot Chicken. Unlike situation comedies, sketch comedy is under no compunction to always include regular characters and plots, thus it does not become entangled in requiring those characters to grow or change in some way. It is neither required to force its quotationalism to conform to their plots nor does it need to break a plotline to include it. Its quotationalism is purely for the sake of comedy, but it avoids the criticism that plagues Family Guy. Because nothing about sketch comedy is required to be constant, it avoids the risk of settling on some ideological platform, and instead may freely mock anything and everything. Sketch comedy appears to be hyper-irony’s most suitable medium.

What makes Robot Chicken different from other sketch comedies, such as SNL, however, is that it relies entirely on hyper-irony for its humor. SNL contains multipe parodies of popular culture and current events, but these sketches usually exist to convey some sort of message. SNL also relies on physical comedy, absurdism, and its audience’s ability to relate to uncomfortable social situations for humor. Quotationalism is a large source of its comedy, but it is not the only source. And there are lines that SNL will not cross. RC, however, leaves no sacred cow unskewered. It exists purely to under-cut and then to under-cut its own under-cutting.

In some sense, hardly any of its material is wholey original, because nearly all of its sketches references at least one form of popular culture. The Simpsons and Family Guy may borrow from popular culture, but they also feature their own original characters and plotlines. RC is almost entirely intertexual. It plays the pop culture referencing game better than any other contemporary show, but that is because sketch comedy is the natural progression of hyper-irony as comedy. There are multiple playlists on YouTube consisting of just the cutaway gags from Family Guy. Why bother with regular characters and a plot when the best bits are quotational? Unencumbered by regular characters and their relationships, which must be held together in some manner for the show to continue and thus demand a commitment to some sort of ideology, RC may be as irreverent as it likes. (The fact that it is shown on Adult Swim of Cartoon Network, a cable channel that runs adult-themed cartoons at early hours of the morning also helps, as unlike The Simpsons and Family Guy, it is held to much looser standards of censorship.) It holds to no higher authority, even its own, and its medium allows it to move fluidly from one subject of mockery to the next.

Robot Chicken, then, is the culmination of comedy in our postmodern society where there is no ultimate source of authority or truth. It is a show where every source of understanding is constantly put into question. It engages in a rapid-fire battle of pop culture analogies with its viewers, challenging them to get the references quickly before it moves on to the next sketch. We may not be able to ultimately know anything, but we can at least prove that we know how the pop culture game works and we can play it better than anyone else. After all, in a society where all authority is questioned, the old rules no longer apply. The old jokes, like “Why did the chicken cross the road?”, are no longer funny. Instead of attempting to remake the old, we must make something completely new from what’s left of the past. We’re not entirely sure what we are now or where we are, and like the robot chicken, all we can do is sit back, watch the whole experience, and laugh.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?: Hyper-Irony in Robot Chicken, Part 1

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“I don’t know. Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“To get to the other side!”

Everyone knows this joke, so much so that it is no longer funny. And yet, is has become a sort of symbol for comedy. Though no one laughs at it, it has almost become synonymous with the word “joke.”

It is also the beginning of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim show Robot Chicken (RC) created by Seth Green and Mathew Senreich. In the opening, a mad scientist (we know he’s mad because his hair is messy and he has a maniacal grin on his face) finds a chicken, presumably dead, in the middle of the road. The opening obviously references the classic joke that no one finds humorous anymore. However, in this version of the joke, the chicken has failed to complete its passage across the road. In fact, it is lying dead in the middle of the road. The old joke has been left incomplete, perhaps even died itself. The mad scientist takes the chicken back to his laboratory and rebuilds it as a cyborg that is half machine and half organic. A melodramatic voice announces, “It’s alive!” Then the scientist forces his resurrected creation, a la A Clockwork Orange, to watch the comedy sketches that comprise the show.

In just the opening, we see exactly what RC’s take on comedy is, as well as what it sets out to do to with comedy.

Just like the robot chicken, the show itself is a combination of the new and the old. Despite their crude humor and ever-current pop culture references, in many ways, the RC sketches are no different than previous forms of comedy. They are incredibly brief, some lasting merely a second or two, but comedy, unlike drama, is a fast-paced medium. A joke can’t have a long lead-up, otherwise the audience will become bored. Stand-up comics often offer jokes that are one-liners before moving on to new material. Sketch comedy is also not new in television. The Ed Sullivan show and others like it offered their viewers a wide variety of entertainment, and if audience members found one act boring, well, another, more interesting one would soon follow it. Monty Python’s Flying Circus also bombarded its viewers with comedy sketch after comedy sketch, some sketchs being very brief and others weaving themselves throughout the show. Saturday Night Liveoften focuses on short sketches that parody some form of popular cutlture. RC uses this same technique. Its humor is quick, with little build-up or introduction. As soon as we’ve seen the joke, we’re on to the next one, and if one sketch fails to satisfy, well, a new one will be on shortly. The humor itself would probably have shocked and disgusted Ed Sullivanviewers and may be too risque for even Monty Python or the not-yet-read-for-Prime-Time players, but the style in which it is presented is not unlike old-time variety or sketch comedy shows.

The humor itself often relies on parody, either by stretching the object of ridicule to its ludicrous extreme, such as the militarism of George W. Bush or the violence present in U.S. television, or by inverting a well-known pop culture phenomenon. (The kind and loving Care Bears become racists promoting ethnic cleansing.) The show, like most comedy, also often relies on stereotypes, such as the recurring nerd character, who may be brilliant but cannot overcome his social awkwardness to find a girlfriend. Parody, in any of these forms, is nothing new. Even the ancient Greeks used parody to critique their social institutions, so parody is nothing new to comedy.

Though RC is not completely new, it is also different from any show that has come before it. And in the opening, the mad scientists does not remake the chicken only to have it complete its road-crossing journey. Instead, the old seems to be thrown out in favor of a new one. The chicken may be resurrected, but the joke itself is not. As John Cleese might say, “And now, it’s time for something completely different.”

In many ways, RC is a response to our postmodern, technology-driven lives. The chicken itself is half biological, half machine, just as we have built our lives around our machines. We carry phones with us everywhere that can connect us to the internet in a matter of seconds. We check our emails daily, if not hourly. Cars, buses, and airplanes carry us to our destinations. Our homes can be heated or cooled, regardless of the temperatures outside. We are a sort of cybog, a robot human that is so reliant on technology that it might as well be physically attached to us. RC is responding to that change. Our lives are fast-paced, and require a fast-paced television show. After all, one RC episode only lasts fifteen minutes, while other shows are at least half an hour long. We expect web pages to download in seconds, we express ourselves through 140 characters on Twitter, and we want our entertainment to be as immediate and brief. RC delivers with bite (or byte?) sized humor.

However, to say that RC is merely pandering to an audience whose attention spans are stretched thin is to miss the show’s full significance in the evolution of comedy. Specifically, the show relies almost entirely on what Carl Matheson called “hyper-irony.” In his article “The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life,” Matheson tracks the changes in American comedy up until The Simpsons, which he cites as the first show to make use of hyper-irony, often through quotationalism, a “rapid-fire sequence of [pop culture] allusions” used in “a constant process of under-cutting.” One cannot understand the humor of The Simpsons, he asserts, unless one has a thorough background in popular culture.

For those of you who don’t have the time to read Matheson’s argument, I will summarize it thus (Although, seriously, go read it. It’s entertaining, well-written, and academic. A rare combination, indeed!): What makes The Simpsons different from the shows that came before it that referenced popular culture is that The Simpsons lacks any sort of moral agenda. It does not parody or allude to popular culture in order to promote any sort of values, be they liberal or conservative, but instead merely references for the sake of referencing. Matheson’s explanaition for the continuous use of allusions is that in our postmodern society, all authority is in question and we lack a solid place in which to put our faith. In such a social climate, Matheson asserts, contemporary artists often go back to the past for inspiration. However, because even history if one of the forms of authority in question, this inspiration from the past is often under-cut. What results is a constant flow of references, and those who can catch the most references are lucky enough to be “in the know.” They are members of what Matheson calls “the cult of knowingness.” This cult is built, Matheson claims, by the idea that even though there may be no ultimate truth, one can demonstrate one’s superior understanding of a set of intellectual rules. The point is not to have a depth of knowledge, but to have a broad understanding of a variety of ideological positions…and popular culture. One then proceeds to tear down any sort of ideological ediface that claims to have an understanding of ultimate knowledge. In other words, anything and everything is up for grabs as an object of parody. However, in the process of tearing down every source of ultimate truth, the show itself lacks any sort of ideological ground to stand on.

The Simpsons may have begun to maximize quotationalism and hyper-irony in comedy, but the show has since stalled. Both society and The Simpsons have changed since Matheson’s essay, and the show is now something of family-values comedy with liberal-leaning politics. While it paved the way for many of the popular comedy shows today and has had a huge influence on American entertainment, it has not been able to uphold its hyper-ironic stance for twenty-two seasons. I believe that the nature of The Simpsons as a situation comedy prevents it from being able to uphold a hyper-ironic worldview indefinitely, and that shows in sketch comedy form, like RC, are the natural progression of hyper-ironic comedy.

Stay Tuned for Part 2!

Are We Cyborgs Yet?: Evolution of the DROID Commercials

I distinctly remember the first DROID commercial I ever saw. It was for the DROID 2, and it ran in 2010. Somehow, it seems so long ago, perhaps because the idea of a smartphone still seemed novel and now it’s become a part of everyday life. In any case, upon seeing the commercial, I was taken with the way in which the smartphone turns the man in the commercial into a machine—literally. As he types on the slide-out keyboard (which only a year later seems so quaint), his fingers, hands, and arms gradually become metallic, his muscles replaced with metal and his tendons transforming into wires. The phone has made him a cyborg—an amalgamation of human and machine.

I found myself mesmerized and a little disturbed by the commercial. If the comments on the commercial’s YouTube video are anything to go by, I wasn’t the only one. Most of them approved of the commercial, but others seemed displeased with the lack of humanity, references to The Terminator and Cybermen of Doctor Who, and disgust with corporations turning their clients into robots. Personally, I think the red DROID eye is reminiscent of the glowing Hal of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Whatever the reference, the glaring red light that seems to be looking at the viewer is reminiscent of various movie and television examples of technology gone awry and controlling people’s lives. Hal takes over the ship in 2001. The Terminator, a robot meant to infiltrate human society and kill a particular human target, is the result of Skynet, a self-aware program that rebelled against the humans that created it in the Terminator movies. The Cybermen are the frequent adversaries of the Doctor in Doctor Who, as they overpower biological subjects and turn them into metal automatons. All of these robots are pop culture warnings of what can happen when technology becomes too all-consuming in our lives.

Other DROID commercials also portray the smartphones as part of a person or in one case, a snowman, and not merely a tool to be used. However, the commercials seem to be moving away from presenting the DROID as a physical part of a person. The DROID Bionic commercial places the smartphone outside the protagonist of the commercial. In fact, the ending tagline states that the DROID was “made from machines to rule all machines.” This most recent commercial seems to be making up for the earlier ones, in which the phone was so seemlessly melded to its user that it was hard to tell who was controlling whom. The statement that the DROID Bionic “rules all machines” suggests that the smartphone is giving the user control over machines instead of being controlled by them.

So, who really does control our smartphones? Do we control them, or do they control us? Or have we entered into a sort of symbiotic relationship with them? In many ways, we are beginning to think of our technology as extensions of ourselves, though whether this is due to marketing that gives us an identity associated with a product or to the increasing prevelance of technology in our society, I can’t say. Most likely, it’s some combination of the two. In any case, as these commercials show, our close relationship with our technology is turning us into a sort of cyborg, something part human and part machine. Technically, anytime our culture presents the human body as being something like a machine, like a piece of technology, it is presenting us as cyborgs.

Rather than worry about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing (because there are good arguments on both sides), I’d like to focus on how these commercials present our interactions with technology as embodied. Usually, when we think about going on the Internet or using smartphones, we aren’t thinking much about our bodies. We tend to think more about our minds, since Western culture has generally placed more emphasis on the mind over the body. But using technology is an embodied experience. We type on our keyboards, our smartphones, our iPads or tablets with our fingers. We manipulate webpages with our hands, whether through a touchscreen or a mouse. Our interactions with technology are not something that takes us out of our bodies. Instead, they do the very opposite. They rely on our bodies, so much so that they have become an extension of our bodies.

As changes in the DROID commercials suggests, this doesn’t seem to be a concept that we, as a culture, are completely comfortable with yet.