i don't think anything in the whole of 30 rock was as harsh as conan was to the kenneth actor in that documentary. was that a bit (i hope)?
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 14 May 2012 21:55 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah most people in NYC think if you are from the south you are from the land of Kenneth.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Monday, 14 May 2012 22:56 (eleven years ago) link
tbf...
― Mordy, Monday, 14 May 2012 22:59 (eleven years ago) link
keep forgetting this is not actually the 30 Rock thread
― raw feel vegan (silby), Monday, 14 May 2012 23:42 (eleven years ago) link
Xposts, but what would Liz Lemon need to do in order not to be considered conservative? Party all night and do drugs? Wear flamboyant clothing? Are these the hallmarks of forward-thinking and progressive people?
― scarfs, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 00:20 (eleven years ago) link
i tried to draw a clear distinction btwn political conservatism and what i was calling liz/tina's "personal conservatism"
― The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to (contenderizer), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 00:30 (eleven years ago) link
also, i get the nagging feeling that this discussion really should move to the 30 rock thread at this point
― The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to (contenderizer), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 00:34 (eleven years ago) link
once i saw some show like right before 30 Rock that was some asian dude going CHANG CHANG CHANG CHANG to the tune of 'Carol of the Bells.' Is that racist?
― thommys got bendz (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 00:52 (eleven years ago) link
okay i am going to rudely interject without having completely caught up on the thread--30 rock doesn't strike me as conservative necessarily (although i guess that word could have a lot of meanings; sometimes i think comedy is inherently conservative), but it does strike me as particularly ruthlessly deflating of beliefs tina fey herself might be suspected of having--feminism, "bourgeois liberalism" as someone put it upthread. also that second season episode that carrie fisher guest-starred in still sticks in my craw because there's something so upsetting about how it disposes of her and liz's relief to be on the winning side at the end. generally, i think tina fey's humor is kind of ruthless, particularly towards herself.
for that reason, though, i think it's pretty good on race generally because it deflates a bourgeois liberal type who wants to believe she's a beacon of racial tolerance but reveals herself to be not so much a lot of the time. to be fair, i missed most of the third and fourth seasons. definitely think this discussion of race is interesting; will now catch up on thread.
i have a lot of *feelings* about the sensibility of the show, for sure. it's so funny and so clever but sometimes the politics bother me. i might be a little too earnest to really handle tina fey.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:08 (eleven years ago) link
i also defer to al; feel like he's the privileged critic of 30 rock on ilx.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:12 (eleven years ago) link
well said
xpost awwwww
― kitty shayme (some dude), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:18 (eleven years ago) link
if anything i'm too much of a stan of the show to cede ground to criticism, which is part of why i was relieved to have to dip out of this thread a few hours ago
it does strike me as particularly ruthlessly deflating of beliefs tina fey herself might be suspected of having--feminism, "bourgeois liberalism" as someone put it upthread. also that second season episode that carrie fisher guest-starred in still sticks in my craw because there's something so upsetting about how it disposes of her and liz's relief to be on the winning side at the end. generally, i think tina fey's humor is kind of ruthless, particularly towards herself.
for that reason, though, i think it's pretty good on race generally because it deflates a bourgeois liberal type who wants to believe she's a beacon of racial tolerance but reveals herself to be not so much a lot of the time.
this is really, really otm by the way and i wish i'd been able to express it remotely as well upthread. i think one of the defining traits of Fey's sensibility is an antipathy toward patting yourself on the back for having the 'right' beliefs, especially as a form of comedy (she used the term "clapter" to deride the way The Daily Show would whip up audience reaction in a "you said it! preach on!" kind of way as opposed to pure laughter).
― kitty shayme (some dude), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:22 (eleven years ago) link
no, you are v insightful about it; also stans are the best people
xp see! otm
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:24 (eleven years ago) link
hahaha i agree with horseshoe too despite having fought about this w/ al upthread
― max, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:27 (eleven years ago) link
maybe the episode where Liz gets obsessed with Designing Women is evidence of how TF might be wary of making a kind of tritely 'empowering' woman-centered sitcom. like, if she thought being a role model or setting a brassy strong liberal woman example was more important than being funny the show would probably be more like Murphy Brown.
― kitty shayme (some dude), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:28 (eleven years ago) link
i should prob just read Bossypants already.
― kitty shayme (some dude), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:30 (eleven years ago) link
i can see that perspective, but to me the show feels sometimes like it's really hard on women as an epiphenomenon of tina fey being really hard on herself. which can make it hard/frustrating to watch sometimes. and i would trace that to her work on Saturday Night Live before, too.
i also feel like i expect impossible things from her because she means a lot to me, so smart, so successful against ridic odds. i unfairly want to accuse her of having become male-identified out of necessity considering the world she has successfully infiltrated. i am a little overly invested in tina fey.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:32 (eleven years ago) link
anyway, racism
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:35 (eleven years ago) link
yeah i kinda wonder if that's the place that a lot of these over-the-top thinkpieces about TF are coming from. but at least from my perspective, she seems no less committed to feminism or her idea of womanhood than, say, Janeane Garofalo, but a lot more committed to that not making her increasingly strident and humorless. which i respect a lot just on an artistic/comedic level, although maybe it requires some male privilege to view it from that distance.
xpost haha
― kitty shayme (some dude), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:36 (eleven years ago) link
think tina fey's in that weird unsustainable position where everything she does causes people to raise their standards for her, but then i like tina fey a lot too
― good men like my father, or president truman (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:38 (eleven years ago) link
oh horseshoe just said that
naw you said it better. it's what happens when you break a ceiling all by yourself. a nation of weirdo women turns its lonely eyes to you.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:39 (eleven years ago) link
the high standard tina fey sets doesn't make me judge her harshly, it makes me judge lena dunham harshly tbh
― kitty shayme (some dude), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:41 (eleven years ago) link
there are more ways to be funny than the tina fey way! thank god! (let's not do this itt)
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:42 (eleven years ago) link
haha sorry i couldn't resist
― kitty shayme (some dude), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:45 (eleven years ago) link
horseshoe start a thread on how comedy is inherently conservative
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:48 (eleven years ago) link
what if i lazily search ilx to see if i have expounded on that topic before? (i don't have anything that interesting to say about it tbh.)
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:49 (eleven years ago) link
idc
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:50 (eleven years ago) link
some dude and horseshoe otm, esp the part of shoe's post SD quoted
― The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to (contenderizer), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:51 (eleven years ago) link
i can see that perspective, but to me the show feels sometimes like it's really hard on women as an epiphenomenon of tina fey being really hard on herself.
i think there's maybe a sense that she has to be tough enough, ruthless enough for comedy, especially as a woman, and that makes her extra harsh towards her own feminist/liberal pieties
― The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to (contenderizer), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:53 (eleven years ago) link
threads started at 10 pm on a monday night est are the most-responded-to-threads iirc:
is comedy inherently conservative?
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:57 (eleven years ago) link
Tracy: Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets. That's a metaphor.― judas, a homo (elmo argonaut), Monday, May 14, 2012 8:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― judas, a homo (elmo argonaut), Monday, May 14, 2012 8:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i remember the moment i saw this line delivered thinking "this is gonna be an awesome fucking show"
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 05:24 (eleven years ago) link
ps if u accuse me of otming a tracy jordan line i will play basketball with your ribcage
I actually agree that 30 Rock is unfair in its treatment of Kenneth and possibly even Twofer. However, what attitude does anyone think the show should take towards a character like Jenna? I never thought that she is ridiculed for sleeping around per se. She is ridiculed for her extreme narcissism and gold-digging. I never even thought her relationship with Paul was portrayed completely unsympathetically.
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 05:38 (eleven years ago) link
sympathetic grotesquerie, a hard line to walk but they pull it off okay. mostly due to the shows very careful sympathy for paul. i don't know that the show ridicules jenna for sleeping around, exactly, but it does seem to view her sexual behavior (as well as her entire character) as gross and pathetic. makes sense, because she's narcissistic neediness incarnate. same could be said of tracy, though, and the show isn't anywhere near as outright repulsed by him.
― The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to (contenderizer), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 05:56 (eleven years ago) link
^ contains errors, fuggit
― The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to (contenderizer), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 05:57 (eleven years ago) link
Her sexual behaviour (as well as her entire character) are often gross and pathetic! But not because they're 'deviant'!
Tracy is more just childish and self-indulgent, not a sociopathic narcissist.
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 06:12 (eleven years ago) link
That seems kinda harsh to me: I don't watch 30 Rock enough to be able to speak authoritatively about it, but I feel the show is less about making Jenna the butt of a bunch of 'old w****' jokes and more about using her as a vehicle of satire against the unrepentant shallowness of showbiz
But, I mean, I barely watch the show, so...
― cinco de extra mayo (loves laboured breathing), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 06:20 (eleven years ago) link
using her as a vehicle of satire against the unrepentant shallowness of showbiz
Well, yeah, maybe I didn't emphasize that aspect enough.
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 06:21 (eleven years ago) link
Its probably goes-without-saying obvious for those who tune in regularly...
― cinco de extra mayo (loves laboured breathing), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 06:24 (eleven years ago) link
Jenna and paul have the only healthy relationship on the show, except for maybe liz's new thing depending on how that goes
― Bandersnatch Cumberbund (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 13:34 (eleven years ago) link
Okay, you don't have to spell it out if it's really that offensive, but what the hell does 'old w****' mean?
― pplains, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 14:40 (eleven years ago) link
Guessing that's 'old whore'
So...30 rock isn't racist, unless maybe there's some deep analysis that gets to the heart of some subtle but ingrained thread of racism, idk, but nobody's really made any kind of coherant thesis along these lines.
― He's sick of the Swiss. He don't like em. (Austerity Ponies), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 14:43 (eleven years ago) link
I guess at bottom, I'm willing to give 30 Rock of all shows a pass on any minor racism because all of the characters are original and complex enough to transcend it. The AA humor is what bothered me the most, because the implicit message seemed like "wink wink, you know there wouldn't be black people here otherwise."
OTOH I can think of some relatively progressive stuff the show has done with gender and sexual orientation, e.g. having a powerful, dominant gay male character (Will Arnett) and having a straight female impersonator. Even though they're played for comic effect, it's almost unheard of for network television to acknowledge the existence of such people.
― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 15 May 2012 14:46 (eleven years ago) link
Pretty much any time I see five asterisks together these days, I assume it either means "igger" or "ucker".
― pplains, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 14:47 (eleven years ago) link
how do you figger?
― goole, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 14:57 (eleven years ago) link
i'm just a sucker.
― pplains, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 15:01 (eleven years ago) link
Even though they're played for comic effect, it's almost unheard of for network television to acknowledge the existence of such people.
This kind of thing is surprising until you realize that we do live in a country where Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is considered racially progressive.
― frogbs, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 15:03 (eleven years ago) link
that's a really good movie
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 May 2012 15:06 (eleven years ago) link