Portlandia's Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen; image courtesy of ifc.com
I wrote favorably about Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s feminist bookstore sketches for their Web series ThunderAnt some time ago. And I was certainly excited to hear that IFC picked up their show Portlandia. Having reserved commentary on the first season until its completion, as I like reviewing at least an entire season rather than have the pilot represent a television show, I’m glad the show has been renewed. This is especially smart on IFC’s part, as the sketch series’ proclivity for eating its own (in this case, hipster bon vivants) is a savvy way for the network to tap into its target demographic (hipsters love to eat their own). But I recommend it with two reservations. For one, I’m not sure it has much else to do but lampoon liberal dogoodery. For another, I’m defensive against Portland.
Let’s address my second point first, as it’s petty. I’m from Houston and have lived in Austin for nearly ten years. It’s no big secret that Austin and Portland have a faux rivalry. If the two cities could, we’d probably erect a civil war involving bicycles and beard-growing contests. Athens would probably swoop in and crush both of us.
Now, I should say that some of my favorite people represent Portland. Bitch, a publication to which I subscribe and occasionally pays me for freelance work, resides there. The folks on staff are really nice. I will be covering the music portion of SXSW for them and I couldn’t be more thrilled about it. I hope that half-week is filled with breakfast tacos and Lone Star. What’s more, the city was well represented in the media studies graduate program I attended. There were three folks hailing from there in my cohort (I called them the Portland Contingent), and two others who started their respective MA and PhD programs during my second year. They’re lovely people. Two of those girls I consider friends for life who I know I would’ve sat with at lunch if we knew each other in high school. But upon several occasions I’ve been audience to overtures of Portland’s superiority, to which I often felt compelled to say “You think you’re better than me? You ain’t better than me.” Also, “Say hi to your mother for me.”
Apart from intense civic pride, my acrimony is somewhat unsubstantiated. For one, despite being the best place for porch drinking, I know my city isn’t perfect. Among other things, we need more vegan eateries and we need to be nicer to queer people. We’re also a blue oasis in a big red war zone. Furthermore, I’ve never actually been to Portland. I made a connection from PDX to Eugene for Console-ing Passions last spring, but I didn’t poke around during my three-hour layover. For one, it’s a hassle to get back into an airport. For another, I don’t have a sense for the city’s geography–basically all I know is that Food Fight, Powell’s, and Voodoo Donuts are “somewhere”. Finally, I ran into Kristen of Dear Black Woman, who was also presenting at the conference. As she’s a fellow southerner and one of my favorite people, we chatted while waiting for our flight. Actually, we almost missed it because we were laughing so much. Seriously, they had to call us over the intercom to get us on the plane.
Portland defenses aside, my criticisms with the show extend deeper than civic rivalry. I will say that Portlandia does a good job putting the show in a specific place. Portland’s geography takes on a character in the show, giving scenes a sense of place and community. In the second season, I wonder if this show will be able of accomplish what SCTV (and its sitcom successors The Simpsons and Parks and Recreation) set out by building a show and its characters around a specific town and its inhabitants. I recognize that recurring characters–as well as links–can be the bane of sketch comedy’s existence, though Portlandia already has the feminist bookstore owners. As a fan of The State, I know that MTV’s mandate for recurring characters and catchphrases became a snarky in-joke which led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m not suggesting that Portlandia follow these tropes in sketch comedy. But a strength of the series is its specificity of place and it’ll be interesting to see how it will expand and elaborate on this in the ten-episode second season.
However, my main problem with Portlandia is that I don’t think it has much to say. This ultimately detracts from the show’s established sense of place. While the show foregrounds its location, many of these scenes could play out in Austin, Madison, Athens, or other cities “where young people go to retire.” Portlandia has yet to discover what makes itself special and hasn’t been able to diversify its subject of interest. This is what’s keeping it from translating well from YouTube to television network.
Though there are funny scenes, the comedy tends to play out in obvious ways that don’t do enough to deepen or expand upon its basic premise. As of now, the show really only has one joke: hipsters sure are quirky. It plays this out in several ways: putting birds on craft items, having hotel staff trash a swanky lobby to impress a visiting band (played by chums James Mercer, Corin Tucker, and Colin Meloy), bike fights, dumpster diving, technology rabbit holes, Harajuku girls marveling at tiny coffee cups, locavorism, photoshoots for alterna weeklys, feminist bookstore owners astounding would-be clientele with their inefficiency, and a woman fretting over how to make the box that her partner’s strap-on was mailed in environmentally safe. But the joke is ostensibly the same each time and lacks any spirit of invention or criticism. Apart from having an at-times wobbly sense of sensitivity toward ethnic groups and trans men, I think it makes cheap potshots that don’t reveal any bigger truths about the communities they’re sending up. Compare a scene in Portlandia to this gem from Mr. Show. It may seem unfair to compare the first season of a show adapted from a Web series to one of sketch comedy’s standard bearers, but I think this scene neatly encapsulates much of hipster culture’s sense of entitlement and obscurity fetish. It plays for laughs, but lends some critical vigor to its subject. It also mocks the comic’s persona, which is something Armisen and Brownstein only attempt at.
The closest we come to something resembling the absurdity and critical bite in the first season of Portlandia is this send-up of locavorism. It’s my favorite. If the show could build upon this, we’ll really have something.
I’ve read a couple reviews of Portlandia that question the left’s ability to laugh at itself. Is it, though? I’m not convinced Portlandia is poking fun at its own image of a privileged sort of “alternative society,” given that it airs on a network that caters to that. I’m not really sure what the intent is.
I completely agree, Kathy. I don’t think cutesy observational notes equal “the left’s ability to laugh at itself.” Thus I maintain that Portlandia has yet to offer up anything resembling biting social satire against its targets (nibbles at most). This may not be the show’s intent, but I think, as you say, it’s being interpretted by some as doing this. Maybe the show could take some notes from 30 Rock, most recently the “TGS Hates Women” episode. There may be some potential, but I think the show has to dig a lot deeper than “aren’t Portland hipsters quirky” for me to champion it regardless of Carrie Brownstein’s involvement.
Oh, but on a different tack. You know what would be nice? If they didn’t only take potshots at hipsters. I haven’t spent any time in Portland. But as an Austin resident, hipsters aren’t the only people who live here. You know, there’s politicians and business types and techies and families split up by the highway (originally designed with the specific intent of racial segregation). I know both cities are perceived as hipster-dominated areas, but it would be nice to see who else lived in Portland.