Unthinkable Thoughts On THE UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT

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.

Here’s a perfect example of this willful ignorance in this excerpt from TheBoldItaliac.com:

“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.