The Chris Moeller Archives

Regarding Tina

Salon's Rebecca Traister declares the Tina Fey backlash underway, and that may be an accurate assessment. We build our celebrities up and then we tear them down.

Traister defends...

Tina Fey is a professional comedian. She is not a professional feminist... In the eagerness to embrace a star who seemed to think briskly and amusingly about gender, who was not afraid of showing off her smarts or her ambition, who reminded some young professional women of ourselves, some of us may have briefly forgotten that she is not, nor was she ever, us. It is a testament to the paucity of role models available on the pop culture landscape that many young feminists – including me! – cleaved so quickly and so closely to a woman who made some pretty smart jokes about women. But Fey was not elected Celebrity thanks to the support of EMILY's List; I am not confident that she has ever read, much less written or commented on, a feminist blog. She has been far less voluble about her personal feminism than her compatriot Amy Poehler, who has done a lot more talking than Fey about her feminist beliefs. While it might be fair to argue that Fey has profited from a feminist embrace, she did not ever pretend to be a standard bearer for contemporary feminism. We're the ones who made her that, who overidentified with her, or with Liz Lemon, or with the Weekend Update host who declared that bitch was the new black, and attached to her a passel of our highest expectations and ideals.

Fey is such a tremendous cultural force, she deserves a critical look, and in this case, an impassioned defense. If she's frequently "pious" in her comedic outlook towards sex, and judgmental towards women that participate in America's "raunch-culture," as the recent criticism suggests, it's worth noting that no individual is more frequently the target of that humor than herself. On "30 Rock," the funniest show on television, Fey's character, Liz Lemon, is the same insecure, untidy, and imperfect person that her male counterparts are on the show. (Sample dialogue: Liz: We [my date and I] made a deal. I gave him top front. Jack Donaghy: Top front? Good lord, Lemon, that's your worst quadrant.)

The recurring mean spiritedness in Fey's character was addressed directly in the third season episode "Reunion" (clip), in which Lemon begrudgingly attends her high school reunion, discovering there that her lack of popularity in school had more to do with her cutting and defensive remarks than with either her physical appearance or sociability. She had been the bully.

Comedy's value is in its honesty, and no subject or ideology can be out of bounds.

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Congratulations to Conan O'Brien on his new late night talk show on TBS. The Fox or ABC networks would have delivered more viewers, but the largest audience of all would have been in the post-Jay Leno slot staying at NBC. That wasn't Conan's priority.

It's going to be a killer show. We can know this today because Conan's a funny guy and, for the first time in his career, he's going to own his show. As a rule in late-night, going back even to Johnny and his independent Carson Productions, network-owned shows blow.

posted by CM @ 9:39 AM