Seems like everyone is talking about Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt, the Tina Fey helmed Netflix series that, well, everyone is talking
about. And rightfully so. It’s refreshing to have Fey’s weird, hilarious vision
on screen again.
So, what are people saying? Well, they seem to be evenly split.
Either it’s their new favorite show, maybe even a modern day 90’s tween Disney sitcom--or they find
it a shallow, racist shell of what 30
Rock used to be.
Personally, I loved the show and I don’t think it has a race problem. The thing people seem to be missing in all this talk
is this: there’s a difference between being
racist and addressing race.
I understand
how people could miss this distinction. I mean, Kimmy Schmidt has a Vietnamese character named “Dong”, a Native
American character who abandons her heritage for a chance to be in the normal
(read: white) fashion magazines, and an 8 year old white boy who gets a little
too excited when he discovers that his family “Owned people.” Jokes like
this grab critics’ attention and make for catchy, clicky headlines. Like this one, this one, and this one. Click away!
But, I’m not
totally sure these critics even watched the whole show. Because if they had,
they would realize there is more going on here than lazy, racist gags.
Kimmy Schmidt doesn’t perpetuate racist tropes, it
uses racist tropes to make fun of racism. When Dong meets Kimmy he laughs at
her name because “Kimmy” means penis in his language. When Buckley discovers
that his ancestors used to own people, Jacqueline answers “we still do.”
When Titus dons a wolf costume for a job, he finds wandering the streets
of NYC as a werewolf far more appealing than as a black man.
But, my favorite example of this subversion is the character of Donna Maria, the Mexican American Mole Woman who was trapped
in the bunker with Kimmy. As this article points out, Donna
Maria can seem like a pretty extreme example of racism:
“…even after 15 years in captivity
with three white girls, [Donna Maria] can't speak a word of English. She was lured into the cult/prison with the promise
of a job as a maid. Get it? Because she's Mexican. Hardy har har. We hardly see
Donna Maria for the rest of the season. She's here to be Mexican. And to be a
maid. That's it.”
But by the end of the last episode we do see Donna Maria again. And we learn that she is actually the
smartest, most cunning character on the show. Donna Maria reveals that she
learned English after a couple years in the bunker, but kept it secret because
it would damage her new brand of Mole Women Mole sauce. She’s not just a maid; she’s a freaking
business entrepreneur who has found a way to capitalize on a terrible, awful
thing that happened to her. Not just Mexican, not just a maid--a driven, successful
human being. 
It’s
almost like these critics are so busy typing up their headlines that they only
watch the setup and completely miss or ignore the punch line, the thing that
makes this show a subversion of racism. As Titus points out sometimes you have to
actually finish the show to see what they were doing with a seemingly
unimportant character.
“The news crawl comment in the opening
sequence ("Three white women rescued: hispanic woman also found")
speaks volumes for the lack of women of color in this show and their one-note
portrayals therein.”
Seriously?
Are we even watching the same show? I know that we are, because you just quoted
the joke. The joke that completely went over your head. This isn’t a joke
making fun of Hispanic women, it’s a joke making fun of news networks…you know,
the ones who are constantly spinning and editing real life events into race
issues, class issues, or straight up ignoring things that don’t fit their
agenda. This is how comedy works, you observe and report.
Kimmy Schmidt isn’t racist—the world is.
