12 ms·

Everything I know about elite America I learned from Fresh Prince and West Wing

84 points by bkohlmann 6y ago

dcarmo 6y ago
> What I can’t quite disentangle is whether it taught me how to get what I had always wanted or taught me what to want. This is a question that keeps coming back to me and I still don't know the answer. And maybe I'll never will.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  > "... Each one of us, of course," the Controller meditatively continued, "goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous." I think of bottles as being like filter bubbles: once one is aware filter bubbles exist, it's possible to play with moving them around. Once one is aware of the bottle and how the bottling process works, it's possible to attempt to play with it as well. Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141469 Or juxtapose http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abook%3D2 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... > "it is clear that none of the moral virtues formed is engendered in us by nature, for no natural property can be altered by habit." with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867639 > "When people are born, they all start good, but even though they all start out about the same, you ought to see them after they have had time to become different from one another by picking up habits here and there!"
bartleby_ 6y ago
These NYT pieces are some real cringe porn. Although I give the writer props for admitting that The West Wing sucks.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  What would you recommend instead? (I was fond of Yes, Minister) Also, for an earlier transatlantic take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English#History
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Not OP, but: Veep.
crazygringo 6y ago
> What I’ve come to appreciate in the years since is that the stories portrayed were not exactly value neutral. Television, like all forms of fiction, contains implicit messages about how to be a good person and what sort of aims are worth pursuing. This is very, very, very true. A screenwriting teacher of mine once explained to me that the vast majority of us no longer get our "sermons" from church. We get them from sitcoms. Sitcoms aren't just joke-delivery vehicles or advertising conduits (though they're those, too). They're actually the primary place the majority of Americans learn about how to be a good person. It may sound like a bizarre claim at first, but pretty much every sitcom follows a plot something along the lines of: character has bad idea, character debates whether to do it, character does bad idea, idea seems to succeed at first, idea ultimately fails miserably, character is in trouble, character gets bailed out by someone who loves them, character learns their lesson. Virtually every sitcom episode demonstrates a moral lesson in their A-plot. (B plots and C plots are more often just gags though.) Given the amount of TV most Americans watch, we learn far more "lessons" in any given week or month than we have the opportunity to do so in real life or through friends. Sitcom writers actually hold a tremendous place of responsibility in American society that they can use (and have used) for good. As the article notes, Will & Grace was a big factor in changing Americans' attitudes towards gay people. Just like the Cosby show was for attitudes towards Black families. So you might think sitcoms are dumb... but they're a huge part of people's moral education, most of all when watching them as kids and teenagers.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  People use the phrase "TV programming" without a hint of irony.
  - discordance 6y ago
    ... and here we are playing out Idiocracy
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    compare the 1952 take: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24739131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24739131
eatonphil 6y ago
Went looking for the mentioned book "Class: A Guide Through the American Status System", which is a few decades old, and found this Atlantic retrospective [0] that had a few more interesting recent thoughts on the matter and a few more books to read. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/03/class-dismissed/307274/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/03/class-d...
- csa 6y ago
  Interesting article, but the way it reads makes me think that she never had a deep understanding of what an X is/was. That said, although dated, I still recommend Fussel’s book — it’s hilarious if not informative.
googthrowaway42 6y ago
It's actually much deeper and more insidious than this. These kinds of shows and movies that you grew up watching provide the character and narrative archetypes that you act out in your own life. This affects every aspect of your life. You are basing your emotional responses and behaviors and making life choices based off whatever ideas and values had currency among a small group of animators/story writers/producers/etc that were active during your childhood. I remember coming to this realization many years ago (I'm 28 now). I would sometimes catch myself actively conceptualizing a particular movie/tv character in trying to understand how to behave or conceptualize a certain situation I was in. Since then I have done a deep dive into the Western canon including history, philosophy, psychology, and religion. From engaging with all of that I have basically purged these contemporary archetypes and narratives and replaced them with traditional, more grounded ones (e.g. from Fresh Prince of Bel Air to Julius Caesar, from the History Channel to Herodotus). It's akin to replacing a life long diet of gas station junk food with fresh organic fruits, vegetables, and meats. Since then I have gained an immeasurable sense of equanimity and inner calm. Now when I call upon these archetypes to understand the world and how I should feel and respond to it, I am engaging with things which have roots that go very deep.
- weakfish 6y ago
  Is this copypasta?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- vsareto 6y ago
  That's definitely a human connection desert.
- hnracer 6y ago
  Do you have a suggested reading list I can look at?
  - googthrowaway42 6y ago
tzm 6y ago
My friends in China (mid-2000's) learned about America through "Friends" and "Sex in the City".
- philwelch 6y ago
  I wonder if shows like that—which portray middle-class Americans living in unrealistic material luxury as aimless 20-somethings in NY—give people in other countries unrealistic perceptions of the American standard of living.
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    Forget people in other countries, those shows gave _their target audiences_ (young GenX and old Millennials, who mostly didn't live in NYC, when they were 15-27) unrealistic perceptions of the American standard of living. The scale of the unreality of living like that in NYC didn't register for me until I moved there (with a much more lucrative job that still didn't make that lifestyle a reasonable decision).
  - watwut 6y ago
    Yes, they do.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      My wife was shocked when I told her The Wrestler was closer to the country in which I'd lived than Friends.
jancsika 6y ago
> There is a well-known idea that liberal Hollywood indoctrinates audiences, leading them to change their values or beliefs. The author spends half the article on what is essentially a left-wing fairy tale that posits the question, "If the Democrats had political rhetoric even half as effective as the Republicans , what might it sound like?" Putting that show in the context of "liberal indoctrination" is like writing an entire article on Bolero and then stating, "A lot of people find Ravel's music blustery and repetitive." I also love how the author uses ambiguity to hedge in that sentence. E.g., change how? Say I give the example of Zero Dark Thirty repeating the right-wing propaganda of its former-CIA consultants to rationalize the CIA torture regime so a lot of powerful people can continue evading jail time. I go on to explain that this is par for the course for the modern Hollywood U.S. war movie with very few exceptions. Well, the author never said the indoctrination was toward liberal values-- they only implied it was effective in changing ideas and values. So now they can freely pivot to one of a number of potentially contradictory positions at will (military movies are an exception, Hollywood liberal are only liberal in name, author doesn't actually believe the trope and was only using it as an example, Hollywood liberalism is uncritical and therefore subject to exploitation from other powerful propagandists like the Pentagon/China, etc.). In light of that it is worth noting-- especially on HN-- that there is writing in the humanities that doesn't merely "ask questions," but also does research, provides evidence, and takes a stance based on that evidence. This isn't an example of that.
Ancapistani 6y ago
> [West Wing] tested “extremely well” with certain audience segments. Among them: households that earned more than $75,000 a year, households with at least one college graduate and households that subscribed to The New York Times. Ah: white, liberal households. I’m the first to say that not everything should be about politics, but I’ve always strongly associated that show with the left. I’ve never heard a conservative reference it at all. Honestly, this seems like a pretty transparent attempt to let readers of the NYT feel good about themselves.
- philwelch 6y ago
  The West Wing is definitely an idealized version of 00’s-era Democrat politics. I think largely because Democrats envision their ideal government and presidency as a bunch of clever, earnest staffers running around outsmarting everyone else. Conservatives during the 00’s more strongly identified with 24, a universe where politicians and bureaucrats were sometimes virtuous, sometimes corrupt, and sometimes evil, but the hero was Jack Bauer, one of the rough men who stands ready to do violence on our behalf as we sleep soundly in our beds, usually in a very literal sense.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    On the other hand, Don Camillo was a post-war italian priest who was always at odds with the post-war communist mayor, but by the end of every story they've managed to work together to do what's right for their village.
  - bgorman 6y ago
    President Obama, was a fan of the show "Homeland", created by the makers of 24. The plot of homeland concerns a stereotypical arab terrorist organization infiltrating the US government and the cia's attempts to stop it. I hardly think it is fair to say that this is a "conservative" phenomenon. Members of both political parties seem have a fetish for watching federal law enforcement rough up stereotypical hollywood terrorists.
    - 6y ago
akhilcacharya 6y ago
Interesting how West Wing comes up in this because Sorkins emphasis on educational prestige in Newsroom, Social Network and to a lesser extent Molly’s Game is what made me incredibly sad to graduate from a state school!
- strikelaserclaw 6y ago
  It is true that when you graduate from a prestigious university, society at large has a superficial notion of your competence/abilities at the outset, but in the long term, i think what you actually do as an individual defines you. There are tons of people who graduated from a great school xyz whose only real accomplishment is graduating from xyz. Do not let labels define what you can do with your life, once you buy into that game, you are mentally boomed for the rest of your life. Einstein certainly never said "oh i work at a patent office, which must mean i can't become a world class physicist", no one (or institution) owns creativity, knowledge, passion or drive, and those are the most important qualities that drive the world.
  - akhilcacharya 6y ago
    Perhaps, but I’m no closer to having accomplished even a fraction of what a Harvard undergrad already has. Society perceiving me to be lesser and doomed to mediocrity wears on the soul!
    - strikelaserclaw 6y ago
      Nobody is perceiving you to be lesser, nobody is perceiving you at all for the most part, that would be true even if you went to Harvard. From your comments you said you went to NC state, i remember that one of the founders of cockroachdb also went there, it certainly didn't stop him from doing great things. What i do know for a fact, is that your negative, self pitying approach to life will do you much much more harm than where you work or where u went to school, and i suggest you reflect hard on that or get professional help.
      - 6y ago
RickJWagner 6y ago
A nice read, and I'm very happy to see the author progress from foster homes to the military to academia and finally to the brink of a PhD. But if the author thinks reading the NYT, Vanity Fair and The Atlantic is the way of "Elite" America, I disagree. It's a microcosm of a bubble, and that's no way to be elite about anything real.

84 points by bkohlmann 6y ago

> What I can’t quite disentangle is whether it taught me how to get what I had always wanted or taught me what to want. This is a question that keeps coming back to me and I still don't know the answer. And maybe I'll never will.

082349872349872 6y ago
> "... Each one of us, of course," the Controller meditatively continued, "goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous." I think of bottles as being like filter bubbles: once one is aware filter bubbles exist, it's possible to play with moving them around. Once one is aware of the bottle and how the bottling process works, it's possible to attempt to play with it as well. Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141469 Or juxtapose http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abook%3D2 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... > "it is clear that none of the moral virtues formed is engendered in us by nature, for no natural property can be altered by habit." with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867639 > "When people are born, they all start good, but even though they all start out about the same, you ought to see them after they have had time to become different from one another by picking up habits here and there!"

bartleby_ 6y ago

These NYT pieces are some real cringe porn. Although I give the writer props for admitting that The West Wing sucks.

082349872349872 6y ago
What would you recommend instead? (I was fond of Yes, Minister) Also, for an earlier transatlantic take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English#History
- throwanem 6y ago
  Not OP, but: Veep.

crazygringo 6y ago

> What I’ve come to appreciate in the years since is that the stories portrayed were not exactly value neutral. Television, like all forms of fiction, contains implicit messages about how to be a good person and what sort of aims are worth pursuing. This is very, very, very true. A screenwriting teacher of mine once explained to me that the vast majority of us no longer get our "sermons" from church. We get them from sitcoms. Sitcoms aren't just joke-delivery vehicles or advertising conduits (though they're those, too). They're actually the primary place the majority of Americans learn about how to be a good person. It may sound like a bizarre claim at first, but pretty much every sitcom follows a plot something along the lines of: character has bad idea, character debates whether to do it, character does bad idea, idea seems to succeed at first, idea ultimately fails miserably, character is in trouble, character gets bailed out by someone who loves them, character learns their lesson. Virtually every sitcom episode demonstrates a moral lesson in their A-plot. (B plots and C plots are more often just gags though.) Given the amount of TV most Americans watch, we learn far more "lessons" in any given week or month than we have the opportunity to do so in real life or through friends. Sitcom writers actually hold a tremendous place of responsibility in American society that they can use (and have used) for good. As the article notes, Will & Grace was a big factor in changing Americans' attitudes towards gay people. Just like the Cosby show was for attitudes towards Black families. So you might think sitcoms are dumb... but they're a huge part of people's moral education, most of all when watching them as kids and teenagers.

rmrfstar 6y ago
People use the phrase "TV programming" without a hint of irony.
- discordance 6y ago
  ... and here we are playing out Idiocracy
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  compare the 1952 take: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24739131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24739131

eatonphil 6y ago

Went looking for the mentioned book "Class: A Guide Through the American Status System", which is a few decades old, and found this Atlantic retrospective [0] that had a few more interesting recent thoughts on the matter and a few more books to read. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/03/class-dismissed/307274/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/03/class-d...

csa 6y ago
Interesting article, but the way it reads makes me think that she never had a deep understanding of what an X is/was. That said, although dated, I still recommend Fussel’s book — it’s hilarious if not informative.

googthrowaway42 6y ago

It's actually much deeper and more insidious than this. These kinds of shows and movies that you grew up watching provide the character and narrative archetypes that you act out in your own life. This affects every aspect of your life. You are basing your emotional responses and behaviors and making life choices based off whatever ideas and values had currency among a small group of animators/story writers/producers/etc that were active during your childhood. I remember coming to this realization many years ago (I'm 28 now). I would sometimes catch myself actively conceptualizing a particular movie/tv character in trying to understand how to behave or conceptualize a certain situation I was in. Since then I have done a deep dive into the Western canon including history, philosophy, psychology, and religion. From engaging with all of that I have basically purged these contemporary archetypes and narratives and replaced them with traditional, more grounded ones (e.g. from Fresh Prince of Bel Air to Julius Caesar, from the History Channel to Herodotus). It's akin to replacing a life long diet of gas station junk food with fresh organic fruits, vegetables, and meats. Since then I have gained an immeasurable sense of equanimity and inner calm. Now when I call upon these archetypes to understand the world and how I should feel and respond to it, I am engaging with things which have roots that go very deep.

weakfish 6y ago
Is this copypasta?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
vsareto 6y ago
That's definitely a human connection desert.
hnracer 6y ago
Do you have a suggested reading list I can look at?
- googthrowaway42 6y ago

tzm 6y ago

My friends in China (mid-2000's) learned about America through "Friends" and "Sex in the City".

philwelch 6y ago
I wonder if shows like that—which portray middle-class Americans living in unrealistic material luxury as aimless 20-somethings in NY—give people in other countries unrealistic perceptions of the American standard of living.
- InitialLastName 6y ago
  Forget people in other countries, those shows gave _their target audiences_ (young GenX and old Millennials, who mostly didn't live in NYC, when they were 15-27) unrealistic perceptions of the American standard of living. The scale of the unreality of living like that in NYC didn't register for me until I moved there (with a much more lucrative job that still didn't make that lifestyle a reasonable decision).
- watwut 6y ago
  Yes, they do.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    My wife was shocked when I told her The Wrestler was closer to the country in which I'd lived than Friends.

jancsika 6y ago

> There is a well-known idea that liberal Hollywood indoctrinates audiences, leading them to change their values or beliefs. The author spends half the article on what is essentially a left-wing fairy tale that posits the question, "If the Democrats had political rhetoric even half as effective as the Republicans , what might it sound like?" Putting that show in the context of "liberal indoctrination" is like writing an entire article on Bolero and then stating, "A lot of people find Ravel's music blustery and repetitive." I also love how the author uses ambiguity to hedge in that sentence. E.g., change how? Say I give the example of Zero Dark Thirty repeating the right-wing propaganda of its former-CIA consultants to rationalize the CIA torture regime so a lot of powerful people can continue evading jail time. I go on to explain that this is par for the course for the modern Hollywood U.S. war movie with very few exceptions. Well, the author never said the indoctrination was toward liberal values-- they only implied it was effective in changing ideas and values. So now they can freely pivot to one of a number of potentially contradictory positions at will (military movies are an exception, Hollywood liberal are only liberal in name, author doesn't actually believe the trope and was only using it as an example, Hollywood liberalism is uncritical and therefore subject to exploitation from other powerful propagandists like the Pentagon/China, etc.). In light of that it is worth noting-- especially on HN-- that there is writing in the humanities that doesn't merely "ask questions," but also does research, provides evidence, and takes a stance based on that evidence. This isn't an example of that.

Ancapistani 6y ago

> [West Wing] tested “extremely well” with certain audience segments. Among them: households that earned more than $75,000 a year, households with at least one college graduate and households that subscribed to The New York Times. Ah: white, liberal households. I’m the first to say that not everything should be about politics, but I’ve always strongly associated that show with the left. I’ve never heard a conservative reference it at all. Honestly, this seems like a pretty transparent attempt to let readers of the NYT feel good about themselves.

philwelch 6y ago
The West Wing is definitely an idealized version of 00’s-era Democrat politics. I think largely because Democrats envision their ideal government and presidency as a bunch of clever, earnest staffers running around outsmarting everyone else. Conservatives during the 00’s more strongly identified with 24, a universe where politicians and bureaucrats were sometimes virtuous, sometimes corrupt, and sometimes evil, but the hero was Jack Bauer, one of the rough men who stands ready to do violence on our behalf as we sleep soundly in our beds, usually in a very literal sense.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  On the other hand, Don Camillo was a post-war italian priest who was always at odds with the post-war communist mayor, but by the end of every story they've managed to work together to do what's right for their village.
- bgorman 6y ago
  President Obama, was a fan of the show "Homeland", created by the makers of 24. The plot of homeland concerns a stereotypical arab terrorist organization infiltrating the US government and the cia's attempts to stop it. I hardly think it is fair to say that this is a "conservative" phenomenon. Members of both political parties seem have a fetish for watching federal law enforcement rough up stereotypical hollywood terrorists.
  - 6y ago

akhilcacharya 6y ago

Interesting how West Wing comes up in this because Sorkins emphasis on educational prestige in Newsroom, Social Network and to a lesser extent Molly’s Game is what made me incredibly sad to graduate from a state school!

strikelaserclaw 6y ago
It is true that when you graduate from a prestigious university, society at large has a superficial notion of your competence/abilities at the outset, but in the long term, i think what you actually do as an individual defines you. There are tons of people who graduated from a great school xyz whose only real accomplishment is graduating from xyz. Do not let labels define what you can do with your life, once you buy into that game, you are mentally boomed for the rest of your life. Einstein certainly never said "oh i work at a patent office, which must mean i can't become a world class physicist", no one (or institution) owns creativity, knowledge, passion or drive, and those are the most important qualities that drive the world.
- akhilcacharya 6y ago
  Perhaps, but I’m no closer to having accomplished even a fraction of what a Harvard undergrad already has. Society perceiving me to be lesser and doomed to mediocrity wears on the soul!
  - strikelaserclaw 6y ago
    Nobody is perceiving you to be lesser, nobody is perceiving you at all for the most part, that would be true even if you went to Harvard. From your comments you said you went to NC state, i remember that one of the founders of cockroachdb also went there, it certainly didn't stop him from doing great things. What i do know for a fact, is that your negative, self pitying approach to life will do you much much more harm than where you work or where u went to school, and i suggest you reflect hard on that or get professional help.
    - 6y ago

RickJWagner 6y ago

A nice read, and I'm very happy to see the author progress from foster homes to the military to academia and finally to the brink of a PhD. But if the author thinks reading the NYT, Vanity Fair and The Atlantic is the way of "Elite" America, I disagree. It's a microcosm of a bubble, and that's no way to be elite about anything real.