For my blog
post this week, I wanted to use this opportunity to continue with a project I
began last semester in my Los Angeles cinema class and that I will be
presenting at PCA this coming April as many of the topics from this week’s
reading relate to my research. In particular I would like to focus on the
practice of consumerism in suburban families and the ways in which television
functions in establishing the “other” in relation to mainstream society. I will
be focusing on George Lipsitz’s article, “The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class,
and Ethnicity in Early Network Television Programs” in order to examine the
social construction of suburbia through the coming-of age narrative in the Fox
television series The O.C.. I know my
ideas are not fully flushed out just yet, but I thought this would be a good
excuse to rethink some of my earlier thoughts from a TV Theory
perspective.
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As Lipsitz
says in his article, the popularity of the ethnic, working class sit-coms of
the late 1940s and 1950s was quite unusual based on the commercial funded
network programming in place (71). Because a mass audience was required in
order for networks to attract the necessary advertisers to pay for the
programming and make a profit themselves, the programs produced at this time
worked to encourage a “depiction of homogenized mass society, not the
particularities and peculiarities of working-class communities” (Lipsitz
71-72). This tradition carries on through to today, in which the majority of
television features middle- or upper middle-class individuals and families,
because these are the types of families to which the television producers
believe the largest number of viewers will relate. Because the TV family is in
many ways similar to the real-life American family, this resemblance between
television family life and family relations resemble life and relations in real
families allows for “television families often comprise the lexicon used to
discuss real families” as well as being
“frequently seen to narrate, or even cause, changes in real family
life” (Douglas, 164). While it is
recognized that Cohens and Coopers of The
O.C. are not factual representations of family life, these characters can
be used as a method of examining the ways in which television families are now
portrayed as well as granting us new insights into our understanding of what
growing-up and living in suburbia holds. As Lipsitz claims, it was this connection
to the television characters through real life, identifiable issues- albeit in
“truncated and idealize” forms- that allowed the audience to sympathize with
these characters and the networks to maintain their large viewing numbers
(86-87). I would argue that in the same ways the working-class, ethnic sit-coms
of the 50s were able to negotiate the unattractive aspects of the working class
characters, the upper-class character in The
O.C. were handled in a similar way. In fact, more than anything these
characters presented the ultimate aspirational lifestyle for viewers.
While many
associate the rise of consumerism with mass production during the industrial
revolution, this trend can be traced back to more recent developments following
the years of sacrifice following the Great Depression and the two World Wars.
One major source of this new consumer attitude arose based on the increasingly
widespread acceptance of television with it’s heavily pro-consumption content.
For the first time in American history, instead of comparing “one’s life to
neighbors, coworkers and friends, television characters and lifestyles became
the new benchmark for consumerist goals” (Bindig and Bergstrom,
87). As Lipsitz explains in his article, television of the 50s functioned as a
tool used for the legitimation of emerging consumer lifestyles (75). By seeing
relatable characters on television acquire and benefit from a vast number of
consumer products, viewers in turn would come to accept the new consumerist
lifestyle of the post-war era and turn away from the frugal traditions of the
past (75). In the upper class Newport Beach of The O.C., consumerism is ever present and completely engrained
within the lives of all the characters. This trait is brought to light when
Seth comments in the pilot, “Why do they even need a fashion show?
Everyday is a fashion show for these people.” And keeping up with the latest
trends and designers can be a lot of pressure for these young characters.
According to a 2007 study by Molnar and Boninger, teens represent one of the
largest consumer demographics, making up approximately $200 billion in spending
power, which also means these young adults feel the effects of consumerism more
directly (Bindig and Bergstrom, 87). In addition to the financial burden of
consumer culture, it has been shown that these kinds of consumerist mentalities
can often negatively impact the “physical, mental, social, and emotional health
of youth” (Bindig and Bergstrom, 88).
During the
Christmukkah episode (S1, E13) Marissa tells Ryan how the mall makes her feel
like everything is going to be all right. She calls it perfect and says, “You
walk out feeling like all your troubles can be solved by the right nail polish
or a new pair of shoes.” However, her troubles are just beginning because after
the fallout of her father’s embezzling scandal, Marissa can no longer afford
the trappings of her former life. This since of loss pushes Marissa to shoplift
several items from the mall. The effect of all this consumerism on the
characters is especially apparent among the female characters of the show. For
Julie Cooper life has always been about keeping up appearances. In her Juicy
Couture track-suits and manicured nails, Julie is the self-proclaimed “Queen of
the Nupesies.” Julie’s and her family’s consumerism and constant spending are
the primary reasons that pushed Jimmy to embezzle money from his clients’ hedge
funds. It was important to the Cooper family to keep up the appearance of
wealth, even when they were left with almost nothing. Julie would often name
drop designers and tell Marissa what to wear or how to do her hair, thus
pushing her own consumerist ideas onto her daughter. Julie’s behaviors are very
similar to many of the original critiques of suburban living. It was perceived
that “suburbanites drank too much and were too hungry for status. They ruined
their own lives, then forced their children into the same competitive mold”
(Marsh and Kaplan, 43). Keeping up appearances is important in this
environment. As long as the teens were able to maintain the façade of
togetherness, then the parents leave them for the most part to do as they
please.
Throughout
the series, The O.C. continually
perpetuates the idea that working class individuals are in some way more likely
to fall into criminal patterns of behaviour. By continually reinforcing this
connection, the show is in many ways suggesting that crime is inescapable for
children growing up in this environment (Binding and Bergstrom, 50). For the
character of Ryan Attwood, his broken home life is often taken as one of the
reasons surrounding his sometimes-violent outbursts. In addition to having an
absent and incarcerated father, Ryan’s older brother, Trey, also serves as a
bad influence on his younger brother. Surrounded as Ryan is by these criminal
male role models and with an “addiction-addled mother who fails to intervene in
any substantive way, the criminality of Ryan’s working-class family appears to
be pathological and dysfunctional” and the characters in the series see these
as valid reasons for Ryan’s anger and violent reactions (Binding and Bergstrom, 50). However, in The O.C. crime does not disappear once
you enter the affluent, suburban safe-haven of Newport Beach, the crime just
changes. Where Ryan and his biological brother, Trey, were arrested for sealing
a car, Jimmy Cooper was caught embezzling money from his client’s hedge funds.
Newport Beach is therefore not devoid of crime, it’s criminals are just more
“white-collar” criminals like Jimmy Cooper or the crime is masked, like in the
case of real estate mogul and Kirsten Cohen’s father, Caleb Nichol, who uses
backroom deals and extortion to build his real estate empire. Therefore, it is
no surprise that both of these characters are wealthy and white because
according to bell hooks, “class and race are intertwined, and analyzing how the
institutional structures benefit the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy”
leads us to an understanding of how crime is perceived and represented among
these differing communities and perpetrators (Binding and Bergstrom, 47). In
the case of Ryan and Trey, the series portrays crime as being all around them
and therefore their involvement is not unusual. In the cases of Jimmy and
Caleb, their criminal acts are often interpreted as singularities within the
community and are always justified by each man repeatedly saying they committed
their various crimes in order to better provide for their families.
It should
also be noted that ethnic minorities are for the most part not shown in The O.C., which is more than can be said
regarding working class individuals who are largely portrayed in a negative
light. Where you do see more diversity is only when you venture inland from the
coast from Newport Beach. According to urban studies scholars, Mary Brooks and
Paul Davidoff, from the earliest development of suburbs this separation along
racial and economic lines has always existed within suburban environments. For
Brooks and Davidoff, the creation of protected or defended suburbs has been one
of the methods employed to separate rich communities from poor, “to protect
rich Americans and their children from contact with poor and even middle-class
Americans and their children, and to separate black Americans from white
Americans. From an urban nation we have become predominantly a suburban one,
and this shift of population and of lifestyle has helped to sharpen the race
and class cleavages among us” (Davidoff and Brooks, 137). This separation
applies to the teenage characters represented on The O.C. as well.
In general,
lower class teens are not portrayed
as multi-dimensional characters and are instead confined to the neoliberal
representations of race, crime, and poverty demonstrated on the show. For
example, the Hispanic character of Eddie who appears in the first season was
originally depicted as someone who was “making it” in Chino. He had a steady
job, an apartment, and was not caught up in criminal activity unlike many of
his peers. However, it was later reveled that Eddie was abusive to his
girlfriend, Theresa. While Eddie initially seems to subvert the cultural norms
placed on him based on his race and social standing, eventually he conformed. “By
depicting the working class [and ethnic minorities] as more dysfunctional than
the upper class, the media are subtly suggesting that there are individual
reasons for their economic situation rather than structural ones” which further
sets the white, wealthy, characters apart from the rest of society-sequestered
away from the riff-raff in their gated communities (Bindig and
Bergstrom, 51). All of these
things continually reinforce the neoliberal slant of the show meaning that by
repeatedly representing crime to be linked to the working class, The O.C. consistently reinforces the notion that the inherent dysfunction
of the working class is in some way a cause of their own unhappiness (Binding and Bergstrom, 51). Upon
reading Lipsitz’s account of working-class, ethnic minorities in shows such as Amos ‘n’ Andy, it appears as if The O.C. does not fall in the same
category. According to Lipsitz, “the working class depicted in urban, ethnic
working class situation comedies of the 1950s bore only a superficial
resemblance to the historical American working class” (92). In this way, ethnic
minorities and the working class were presented as a ‘made for TV” version of
their true representations. This makes me wonder what exactly caused this shift
in television’s representation of these groups and what we can learn from this
ever-changing perception?
Well, that’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading all my ramblings
and if you have any thoughts or suggestions I would love to hear them because as
I mentioned this is a work in progress for PCA coming up in a few months.
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