And now for something completely diffrent

I fully admit that one cannot get as comprehensive a view from just one episode as from watching the show over a series of episodes, so I can't argue with anything you've said. I don't even argue that the show isn't potential subversive, maybe it is. And I do agree with you that there is something to be said for facing stereotypes head on rather than tiptoeing around them, but that's a knife that cuts both ways, I remember having a discussion about Margret Cho's use of stereotypes in Jennifer Friedlander's Media Theory class last spring (a lot of people in this class were in that one too, so they know what I'm talking about) and the thing we (or atleast I) found most troubling is that, even though most, if not all, of us found Margret Cho hilarious, and recognized her use of stereotypes as satirical, there's no saying that there aren't some people laughing because they're thinking "oh my god, Asians are *so* like that!" I think the same could be said of Weeds.

I also think I'm more sensitive to stereotypical representations of minorities, and especially African Americans, because I'm from South Carolina originally. I feel that there racism is an issue that is more closely present in everyone's lives. Here, in California, I feel like people get away with feeling kind of distanced from racism, like it's someone else's problem, like it doesn't happen here. I think people get away with a lot more, in terms of ingrained racism here, because everyone is less on their gaurd for it. I'm not saying there isn't racism in South Carolina, lord knows there is plenty of it, but there are also *atleast* two people for every racist poised to jump down everyone's throat about it. People just can't help but be more aware of it as an issue. I also think I'm probably more sensitive to homophobic and heterosexist biases because I am a member of the queer community, and these things stand out more to me. I just feel that whether stereotypes are employed satirically or not, they have a lot of potential to harm, not only the group being stereotyped, but society at large.

I haven't seen an episode of Weeds yet, so I'm just going to rant based only on what I've read on these posts. Too often people conflate commenting on the problematic nature of a work, in terms of representations of race, gender, etc., with the desire to censure it, or to denounce it as not worthwhile art. You can appreciate a show because it's cleverly written, or has a unique perspective, while still allowing the space to critique it. also, just because you're critiquing it doesn't mean you're saying any less about the craftsmanship, or saying that it shouldn't exist. one example for me, is robert mapplethorpes photographs of black men. i cannot deny that they are beautiful, but i also can't deny that i see the legacies of colonization and exploitation in that work. with media studies, i don't think the goal is to say what is good or bad, but to discuss what is being said at all.

back to weeds. i can see how the show may possibly be using these stereotypes to be subversive. however, i don't know how successful they are being. it is possible for a text to parody problematic notions in critique, yet only do it superficially. in the end, you can get your cake and eat it to, you get all the attraction of using stereotypes and what not, yet not get the criticisms. an example is this beer commercial i remember watching in intro to media studies. it was a stereotypical beer commercial, with men hanging out with scantily clad, attentive women giving them beer. this was shown to be nothing more than a fantasy sequence, and the commercial ends with the guys seeming like losers. Though in the end, the commercial subverted the normal gender scripts of such commercials, they were still able to profit from those scripts. i don't know. i'm not being particularly articulate. oh well.

Funny, my initial reaction to your comment was to unleash a deluge of critical analysis on you, which would bring you to tears because you would realize how wrong you are. Then I had to admit to myself that that really wouldn’t be productive, nor are issues of representation often so simplistic as to be distilled down to a matter of right and wrong. Instead I will respond in what I hope will be a level and constructive manner to the questions you have raised.

The motivation behind racial (and other identity) representation in Weeds may very well be a complex matter, I can not say with any assurance that the representations of African Americans (and other minorities) come from a racist impulse, nor can I say that they do not. What I can say is that they can most certainly be read in a racist manner, which brings us back to questions of authorship and authorial intent, as well as the ethical responsibility of media creators to think seriously about the possible interpretations and social effects that their work might have. After all media is neither created nor consumed in a vacuum.

You seem to have mistaken the cause of my concern in most of my critiques of the show, so I will attempt to express myself with greater clarity. There is nothing wrong with liking cornbread, or pie, or a good trash-talking session, or even, when you get right down to it, certain types of drug dealing. I would not be concerned if the African American family were presented in exactly the same way, except that they were White, not because I don’t think African Americans should receive greater representation on television, but because the problem is in how they are represented. To suggest that a White person might like cornbread does not carry the smallest portion of the cultural baggage attached to suggesting that an African American does. This is not to say that there aren’t African Americans who do like cornbread, I know quite a few myself, but to have the only African American characters represented in such a stereotypical way is deeply problematic, as I would hope you would be able to see. It’s like Robin Lakoff says in her (otherwise very troubling) book on linguistics, “There’s nothing wrong, obviously, with having a natural sense of rhythm; but to impute this quality, sight unseen, to all blacks [sic] and thus to each black [sic] in turn that one encounters is insulting”. Nor do I mean to suggest that it is unlikely that a rich woman in a rich neighborhood might employ a Hispanic maid. The trouble lies in the fact that these are the ONLY ways in which African Americans and Hispanics are represented in the show, they are given a very narrow set of identities to occupy, while the White characters are allowed a broad range of identities and their motivation arises from what we must assume are the characters’ individual personalities, rather than their racial identity. Furthermore, I take exception to your suggestions that all (or at least most) stereotypes are based on some grain of truth. Some may well be, and some may have been at some time, but generalization and time distance these stereotypes so much from reality that it is very dangerous to grant them the validity of truth. On the whole, I would have hoped that three years of education in Media Studies would have left you somewhat better prepared to engage with the complex nature of representations of race in media.

As for your response to the matter of the 15-year olds having sex, you will have to forgive me if I seem a bit short, as I found your comments personally offensive; although I must thank you for so brilliantly demonstrating compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity for us. But before I launch in to that, I would like to point out that I never said that I found their sexual activity “implausible” only that I found the representation thereof to be an interesting social signal. But I must ask why you think that the odds are all that much more likely that if 15 year olds were having sex, they would be having heterosexual sex? If straight 15 year olds have already figured out that they are attracted to the opposite sex (provided that we accept a binary definition of sex and gender, which for the purpose of this discussion, we will), why does it seem so improbable that gay and lesbian youth are already well aware of their own preferences and that they might already be acting on them? My current girlfriend, for one, was out at 13 and had already accrued quite a bit of sexual experience with other girls, who were all also out lesbians of her age, by the time she was 15. I wonder if your conclusion was based on the assumption that gays and lesbians-to-be begin as straight and have straight sex in high school and then, later, realize that they are attracted to members of their own sex, or that gays and lesbians sexually mature at a later age, or perhaps some other logical fallacy that I have not yet guessed at. I certainly would be interested to know. Whatever your assumption, it is clearly motivated by a sense of heteronormativity, a cycle of which compulsory heterosexuality forms a key part. 15 year olds don’t have to decide that they’re straight, they don’t even have to know it, they just are, right? Except that, as I hope you would have already become aware by now, this is not at all the case. I think perhaps you might consider actually speaking to a number of gays and lesbians about their life experience before you make any more decisive statements about when they come out or become sexually active. After all, what exactly are you basing those assumptions on?

As for the matter of drug use/dealing, you again seem to have misunderstood my complaint. I’m sure that use of female and homosexual pejoratives like cunt or fag probably occur at roughly the same frequency and with the same distribution as they do in non-drug related social circles, my complaint about the use of those words was in fact unrelated to my complaint regarding representations of drug-related communities. I simply meant that the representation of drug dealers and drug users were wooden, stereotypical, and wholly unbelievable, at least to me. The writers seem to be operating on certain assumptions about “how drug dealers talk” and “how drug users use” that seem to have little relation to reality and a lot more relation to representations proliferated by anti-drug propaganda. I was merely suggesting that the writers might have considered doing some field research to lend their characters greater verisimilitude.