The other night, I watched the series premiere of Girls. It was amusing and it has potential to be a strong show. I’ll write more about it next week after the premiere of Veep, because I want to write about those two shows and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 together in one post. For now, I’ll only say that the show seems like a funny portrayal of a group of white women in New York City.
The world really needs another comedy about a group of white friends in New York City. We didn’t already have Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Sex and the City, and numerous other shows where every main character is inexplicably white.
This sarcastic comment is not an argument in favor of tokenism, or putting in a few people of color for the sole purpose of letting the show creators pat themselves on the back for being so liberal and open-minded. I said it because I’m befuddled that so many portrayals of New York City are portrayals of a really white New York City. In the pilot episode of Girls, there are only two people of color, and they each only have one line. One is a driven Asian woman who’s better at her internship than the lead character is, and the other is a crazy homeless black man on the street.
No, really. The stereotyping doesn’t approach the blatant cartoonish racist stereotyping on 2 Broke Girls, but it was jarring to see nonetheless.
Of course, the show could go the route of 2 Broke Girls, a show where the two white women encounter plenty of non-white people. Non-white people who are all lifted directly from the Ethnic Stereotype Playbook. On a show that also takes place in New York.
The extreme whiteness of New York in these New York City television shows is weird enough, but it’s especially weird when compared to other shows set in places other than New York that still manage to include people of color.
Take Glee, for instance – a (terrible) show that takes place in Lima, Ohio. The population of real-life Lima, Ohio is predominantly white, but the McKinley High School choir room contains more people of color than Friends had in its entire run. Lima is 70% white and 2% Hispanic, so having Santana be the only Hispanic person in the glee club is fairly realistic. (That is probably the first and last time you’ll see the words “Glee” and “realistic” in the same paragraph.)
Or look at two NBC shows, Community and Parks and Recreation. One show takes place on a college campus in…Colorado, I think? One takes place in Pawnee, Indiana. Both are set in fictional cities, but both cities seem to be predominantly white. Yet both shows include more than one person of color in its main cast. Community has Troy, Abed, Shirley, and Chang. Parks and Recreation has Ann, Tom, April, and Donna.
Or look at ABC’s Modern Family. This is a show that could easily have a cast that was 100% white. Television shows centered on one immediate family have a logical reason for being monochromatic. Yet Gloria and Manny are part of the family, and Cam and Mitch have an adopted Vietnamese daughter.
I’m noticing a pattern where shows that are not centered in New York City include a few characters of color, while shows centered in one of the most diverse cities in the world tend to focus exclusively on white people.
To be clear, this observation is not an accusation of racism against the people in charge of Friends, Sex and the City, How I Met Your Mother, or Girls. I don’t believe that anyone involved in those shows are/were actively excluding people of color – and frankly, I think erasure is preferable to the blatant stereotyping in 2 Broke Girls. The extreme whiteness of the first three shows, and the extreme whiteness of the pilot episode of Girls, does make me wonder what version of New York City these writers are living in, where people of color are barely a blip on the radar.
Then I put myself in their shoes, and my perspective changed a little – because if I had to write a show loosely based on my own experiences in New York City, the main cast would be almost as white as Girls.
I’m a straight white woman. Most of my closest friends in New York City are straight white women. Not all, but most. We didn’t all grow up in the city and we didn’t grow up with the same problems and struggles, but we’re a pretty white group. We all watched Sex and the City and played the “which one are you?” game, except each one of us claimed to be the Miranda of the group. (Like the humbugs in Abed Nadir’s Eastern Candy Time, we’re attracted to sarcasm.) If I wrote a television show based on me and my group of friends, the show would be almost as white as Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Sex and the City, or the first episode of Girls.
I’m not sure I can criticize show creators too harshly for simply writing what they know.
I’ve also heard the argument that, like Seinfeld, these New York shows should be more self-aware and comment on their lack of diversity. But I’m not sure how that commentary would come across onscreen. To use my real life as an example – I don’t spend a lot of time saying to my friends, “Hey, ever notice how we don’t have any Hispanic friends in the group? We should get on that!”
For the purpose of fairness, I should also point out that Glee, Community, and Parks and Recreation take place in schools and the workplace, while the white New York shows center on groups of friends. I imagine that groups of friends are likely to be more segregated than offices and schools.
In short, I have mixed feelings about shows that depict very white versions of New York City. I feel odd criticizing writers for writing about their own experiences, but I also feel contemptuous of New York-based shows that don’t even try to include people of color as extras, much less as important characters.
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