Neale And Krutnik: Character Analysis

Neale and Krutnik highlight how the sitcom format creates “deterministically constrained” choices for characters (1990:234), which by definition over emphasises the deterministic features of social identity created by the structural constraints of a hierarchically organised society. Indicating that character-driven plots are not mobilised by individual agency, but the pregiven social and political aspects of identity. In analysing Steptoe and Son, Neale and Krutnik (1990: 256 – 257) outline how class constrains Harold. This is a prerequisite of the sitcom format, the situation or norm does not change. Creating character-driven plots within the format restrictions of the sitcom reflects real-life personal agency within the confines of structural,

Although these issues are not distinct and isolated to sitcom, and are easily recognisable to most people, it requires active involvement with current media to fully engage with the programme. Furthermore, these plot developments attach this sitcom within the time and place it was created in. The character development of Jacqueline Voorhees offers a subtle satire of Rachel Dolezal a white woman who controversially passed as black in 2015 (Elgot 2015). Jacqueline’s secret identity, told through backstory and visits to her family, reveals her to be a working-class Native American teenager who eventually passed as a wealthy white trophy wife. This also politicises cultural appropriation and identity transformation, which relates to wider discussions social power because it was not until Jacqueline transformed her appearance that she achieved social status through legitimacy as a white woman. Cultural appropriate and racism are referenced in season two episode three when Titus, a black man, uses ‘white face’ to play a Geisha in a theatre performance. Titus Andromedon is the camp gay best friend to heterosexual Kimmy, so in some ways Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt exploits his marginalised status to explore the tensions of cultural racism. It is difficult to argue that a gay black man is exploiting a Japanese woman by

The kidnapping backstory and subsequent trial scene of Kimmy’s captor which mimics Warren Jeff’s trial (Blumenthal 2008) highlights a contemporary media obsession with cults and escaped kidnapping victims. Viewers unite through the shared moral judgement of religious cults, patriarchy, polygamy, forced marriage, and doomsday theories, highlighting that humour unites viewers by undermining and distancing those who identify alongside those being mocked (Medhurst 2007:194-199). The hairstyles and dresses shown in Kimmy’s flashbacks are only funny if the viewer has prior knowledge of the polygamous Texan Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, being parodied. This further pins the programme to a context but also subtly communicated humour to the viewers who are able to decipher it. One of the limitations of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is perhaps is capacity to fully explore the abuse in Kimmy’s kidnapping back story. This may be a genre limitation, in that representations of day to day life is not sufficient to trivialise trauma through humour. Or, it could be an active decision on the part of the writer not to include content which might be read reaffirming victim status of females who have been subjected to