Community: A Complex Show for a Changing Culture - Essay Example

? [Teacher 27 March Community: A Complex Show for a Changing Culture The television show Community is an example of the growing complexity in the way that we understand and relate to our culture. Community is a TV sit-com that on the surface appears to be like any other ensemble comedy, but is actually extremely complicated and witty. The show explores questions about society’s conflicting messages regarding diversity and “political correctness” It also shows the public’s growing willingness to embrace complex, self-referential humor and a structure that questions its own reality. The main character is ostensibly Jeff Winger (played by Joel McHale), a handsome, conniving lawyer who has to go to a community college when he is revealed to have a fake degree. However, the key character is actually Abed Nadir, a young Arab-American who has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. This plays on the audience’s assumption that the handsome white man is always the hero and the most important character. For the first few episodes, the audience is led to believe that the show is about Jeff and his pursuit of the beautiful blonde Britta while a group of co-stars provide comic relief; later we see that the show is actually about Abed and his attempts to understand other people. Because of his Asperger’s syndrome, Abed is fixated on television and movies, and comparing everything in his life to TV and movies is his only way to relate to the people around him. Every episode either references the plot of specific movies and shows, or parodies a particular genre of movies. As the viewer watches for several episodes, it becomes apparent that the entire show is filtered through Abed’s perspective. This is different from other shows. With nearly all other TV shows, there is an unspoken agreement between the makers of the show and the audience that the audience will suspend their disbelief and pretend for an hour or a half an hour each week that the events in the show are true. Community betrays this agreement by subtly suggesting to the audience that the events in the show might not be real. Of course the audience knows this, but everyone is supposed to pretend that that’s not the case. It then makes the audience unsure of what is real within the world of the show. Is Abed real? Is he imagining everything, or just modifying reality a little bit? If we could see the show from outside of Abed’s perspective, would the characters even really be Abed’s friends, and would any of the events we’ve seen them enact have actually happened? The humor in the show requires the audience to have a base of knowledge about pop-culture in order to get the jokes. The show doesn’t assume that the audience is stupid and needs everything to be simple or have everything explained to them, but instead assumes a certain amount of shared cultural experience. The assumption is that enough people have seen The Breakfast Club, for example, or perhaps Pulp Fiction, that when an episode references one of those movies, most of the audience will get it. According to Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, this is a recent phenomenon in television. TV used to be much simpler and did not require the same amount of memory or mental work to understand. This points to an increase in the demand by audiences for more intelligent and challenging humor (85-87). Community also does not give the same clear-cut moral messages that other TV shows did in the past. Most television shows from previous eras held to the same moral and political values. They preached against racism and in favor of diversity, paid lip-service to feminism while still mostly showing women in traditional roles, and spoke in favor of traditional “family values.” Community portrays a world where things are not that simple. For example, it shows rather than tells us that race and diversity is a confusing topic and that things do not fit perfectly into a “PC” view of the world. This is illustrated in a particularly amusing way when the school’s dean becomes determined to create a school mascot that he thinks will not be offensive to anyone. He decides to name the mascot the Greendale Human Being, and goes to great lengths to make sure that the unintentionally terrifying creature does not appear to be any particular race. This reflects society’s confused ideas about race and racism. Most people do not want to be racist, but no one really knows how to talk about race, or what they are supposed to say and do to keep from appearing to be racist. The dean attempts to remove any signs of race from the Greendale Human Being in order to keep from being racist, but to some, his preoccupation with the subject makes him appear to be racist. Talking about race has become a no-win situation, and Community skillfully points this out. The show does not give any sort of rallying cry against this situation, however, but instead simply points out the irony, accepts it, and laughs. Another example of this is reflected in the first Christmas episode, in which devout Christian Shirley is dismayed to learn that each of the characters has a different religion. Shirley has serious trouble handling this fact, and is condescending to everyone about their different beliefs. On most other shows, Shirley would likely have learned a Very Important Lesson by the end of the episode, and been enlightened about religious tolerance from then on. But this never really happens on Community. Shirley continues to make remarks about everyone else being Hell-bound, and repeatedly attempts to convert or baptize Annie, who is Jewish. The differences in religion are a source of continuing humor, from atheist Britta making fun of agnostic Jeff’s lack of commitment, to Jehovah’s Witness Troy and Muslim Abed’s first rebellious sips of alcohol, to the group’s ongoing ridicule of Pierce for belonging to an especially silly cult. This reflects society’s changing views about religion, showing that our culture isn’t as homogenous as it was once portrayed to be. The fact that no one ever really learns to respect each other’s beliefs also reflects the frustrating modern idea that accepting religious diversity in our society just might have to include tolerance for other people’s intolerance. According to a 2008 survey, religious tolerance has increased dramatically in the US (Banerjee). Yet we still experience religious conflict in the United States. The religious dynamic on the show represents the tension between these two conflicting facts. John Storey states that “popular culture is an arena of struggle between the interests of dominant groups and the interest of subordinate groups (4).” On Community, the conflict between both is represented. The characters all love one another and have no problem being friends, but still feel that one or all of their friends holds a belief that is wrong. The complex and intelligent humor and the confusing, unclear answers to moral questions in Community show that our society is beginning to recognize that things are not as simple as they once seemed. A culture’s art reflects the ideas that exist within a culture, and popular art reflects the ideas that are the most palatable to the largest number of people. The fact that a challenging show like Community can last on network TV demonstrates that mainstream American culture is ready for ideas that would have inspired most people to change the channel as little as a decade ago. Works Cited Banerjee, Neela. “Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance.” New York Times. 24 June 2008. Web. 28 March 2011. Community. Harmon, Dan. NBC. Television. Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York, NY: Penguin, 2005. Print. Storey, John. Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Print. Read More