Feminist Frequency

Fall Premiere Pilot Review: New Girl (C-)

New Girl (FOX)

Okay so New Girl made me laugh a couple of times. I’m a huge Dirty Dancing fan so this episode had a couple of entertaining moments, but overall the show dwindles into “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” territory very quickly. The creators are using the Hot Goofy Chick and The Manic Pixie Dream Girl tropes (what Zooey Deschanel is best known for) to pit her against what it means to be a “proper woman”. Jess is clearly attractive by Hollywood standards so the writers have created very contrived scenarios to show how socially awkward she is, and therefore not conforming to traditional ideals of femininity. Playing against traditional gender roles could be an interesting concept, but that is not what this show is doing. At nearly every turn the creators reinforce that she needs to learn to be a “woman” and conform to conventional standards of feminine behaviour. By the end of the episode I was really rather sick of the Big Boys teaching the Little Girl how to be a “woman”.

The men… oh the men. It seems that all sitcoms need to have The Sensitive Guy and The Sexist Asshole Guy (in this case I couldn’t get past how Veronica Mars’ former awesome boyfriend was being a complete jerk). Schmidt’s exaggerated attempts to be macho and tough frames him as a sexist prick–as in, we’re supposed to actually recognize his actions as sexist behaviour. This is made clear when the other characters confront him (i.e.: the douchebag jar). However, we might need to revisit Retro Sexism here: while other characters are pointing out that he is being sexist, it doesn’t stop him from being sexist, nor is it really in anyway critiquing sexist behaviour. Schmidt’s sexism is supposed to be funny and endearing. Basically the take away from these Retro Sexist comments is that Boys will be (sexist) Boys but we love ‘em anyways, (but serious, we don’t love it!).

And let’s not ignore the amazingly racist portrayals of a sexualized woman dressed up as “The Indian Princess” paired with the racist comment from Schmidt about “motorboating a member of the Cherokee Nation” followed up with a statement about how it’s not racist “because it’s for a good cause”. Again, sitcom writers think that by acknowledging or making racism and sexism obvious it drains the oppressive power from the comment or action, but in fact, it doesn’t. They are still perpetuating racism.

Maybe might consider watching again, but I seriously doubt it.

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Source: feministfrequency.com