Let's be honest here. It is silly to like the things we like- and to like them so much we kind of want to run around our houses screaming about them all the time. It's also wonderful. Can we acknowledge it's silly and wonderful? And can't we laugh at ourselves for our social shortcomings? Dude, I need to be able to laugh about this. It has to be funny. Otherwise it's just sad.
So. This show is laughing at us. Inasmuch as whatever mysterious quality is the baseline of my personality is also to a large extent the mysterious quality that is the baseline of Sheldon's character it is laughing at me. I get called Sheldon all the time- usually by people who know me well and mean it affectionately. Occasionally someone does seriously make fun of me or implies I'm inferior because I do/say things differently but it's hard to take it personally because I know that person is wrong. In dealing with people who misunderstand me like this I really feel Sheldon helps me. I don't need Sheldon for myself- I have Abed to relate to. I will never be able to explain myself to the Pennys of the world but characters like Sheldon provide a good shorthand for me when I am talking to Pennys and I'm having trouble dialling down my Aspergers so I need to make fun of myself to ease the tension. Sheldon is a likeable character. He's poked fun at but not demonised. I guess I feel like TBBT is to me what Will and Grace* was to the gay community. (I felt) Will and Grace was a terrible show, but it normalised homosexuality for outsiders and gave a demographic formally on the fringe some mainstream credibility. When I was growing up, no one around me knew where I was coming from. An overarching theme of my childhood was "What is Addie and how do we fix it?" Now that Aspergers Syndrome is among the commonly understood syndromes and shows like The Big Bang Theory which showcase Sheldony types are garnering massive viewership, the common reaction to me by Penny People has shifted to "Addie is kind of Sheldon and maybe we should just let Addie be Addie". And yeah, maybe they're trying to sell this show to me and people like me and it's kind of a farce. I don't really buy it. I know this show isn't really for me, it's for Penny. That's fine.
Okay actually it's not entirely fine. There is a frustration here. There is something about The Big Bang Theory that rings really false. These characters are someone else's interpretation of us. The people who are writing these characters don't think we're inferior but they don't quite get us either. For me this is a familiar frustration because for most of my life I have been a media-obsessed girl/woman and I've been watching as girls and women have been portrayed by my beloved media with truth and dimension APPROXIMATELY NONE OF THE TIME. Sorry, I don't mean to go capitals on that point but oh my god. Of course Community does it better- in terms of portraying nerdery and geekdom because the writers are obviously nerds and geeks and they're coming from a place of love. Abed is a better-written character-with-Aspergers-tendencies than Sheldon, I think in part because the character is based on a real person and not just a premise. Community also does pretty well in the woman department. I think this is not entirely unattributable to the fact that a lot of the writers are women. Characters written by someone coming from inside an experience have more depth and honesty to them than characters written from someone on the outside. Who'da thunk?
Mostly I don't think The Big Bang Theory is a good show because it isn't very funny. It's not never funny but it's sparse and the spaces between the funny give me a lot of time to think about how they could have done nerd better. So I guess my problem with the show isn't that it makes fun of me. I think it should try harder to make fun of me and make fun of me more accurately.
*Hmm I'm not entirely sure this is an apt comparison and also I have no idea how the gay community received Will and Grace in its time.
I'm probably more neurotypical than I'd like to pretend, but I like your analysis of Sheldon/Abed. It more or less speaks to my feelings on the matter.
ReplyDeleteMy only real problem with the show is the portrayal of the other nerds. They're written as characters by someone that doesn't properly understand geekdom, and only perhaps edited by someone who does. This is similar to what happens on B&TG, according to a couple of AMAs I've read by ex-B&TG cast members. My problem with the characters is that Leonard and Howard both suck. They seriously seriously suck. Both are the stereotypical "nice guy complainer" that we discussed earlier in the week. Both are constantly jerks to everyone. Leonard in particular gets more than enough women that he has no right at all to be a "nice guy complainer". Neither of these guys are the smiling face of nerdery I want representing me. But I guess it's probably a stretch to expect that a sitcom would not play to stereotypes. Still, Will might have been a whiner, and Jack far too camp, but at least neither of them were dicks.
As to whether the show is funny - I actually find it extremely funny a lot of the time. But I watch it a lot of the time with Paul and Heather, and I've noticed that I don't always laugh at the same times they do. The show is almost two shows in one. One show is a standard sitcom that I guess sort of celebrates nerds by mocking them a bit. I'm okay with that. People don't generally laugh at things unless they kind of relate to them. The other show is for us. There are actually a number of hilarious math, science jokes and pop culture references in each episode. I know the original article described references as cheap laughs, and they're right - especially when the reference is obviously contrived (like the script first said INSERT REFERENCE HERE and their nerd consultant added it in) But they're also wrong. A lot of them work seamlessly.
Ultimately I guess I don't have to defend that I like the show. I like it, and I find it funny. Just because I like it doesn't mean anyone else has to, and people can and should criticise the shitty aspects of any show. I can't control that some people might be offended by it, blaxploitation-style. But we should remember that there is a reason that BBT is huge and Community almost got cancelled. I'd probably rather have lame nerds in people's faces every night than accurately portrayed ones.