Arrested Development and Philosophy (10 page)

The Important Thing Is That You Guys Don’t Lose Focus on Yourselves: Narcissism as a Crisis of Bourgeois Identity

In thinking through the Bluth’s social practices, anxiety about class status, and dysfunctional family ties it’s worth thinking about another feature of the Bluths’ psychology: namely, their relationship to themselves. They’re selfish, self-centered, self-aggrandizing, and self-righteous, all without any real insight into their own inner lives or motivations. The Bluths for the most part operate without any attention to
why
they may be doing the things they do or wanting the things they want. And it isn’t clear that they’re interested in investigating how their behavior hooks up to the world, let alone how their actions impact those around them. A culture of narcissism permeates the Bluths’s world. In addition to opting out of conventional labor and family responsibilities, they opt out of genuine human relationships whenever possible.

Consider, for example, Lindsay’s self-aggrandizing political “activism” (HOOP and anti-circumcision, protesting the war in Iraq only when she finds out her hair stylist is being sent to the front, or helping Johnny Bark protect the trees near the Bluths’ housing tract lot until she realizes that this entails a lack of modern plumbing). Unlike legitimate political activism that arises from homegrown struggles for equality, justice, and liberation, Lindsay’s activism is born of attention seeking. When she ends up dancing in front of a crowd at a war protest (in “Whistler’s Mother”), Lindsay discovers that “the activism that came out of her desire for prettier hair did in fact boost her self-esteem.” Later in the series, Lindsay stops by an anti-gun protest to check out the scene, not having “picked a side” yet. Then, despite her shouts of “murderer” she is swayed by television’s “Frank Wrench” and flips sides to the anti-gun-control movement. Her motivation for defending the separation of church and state, similarly, comes after she stubs her toe on a statue of the Ten Commandments at the courthouse. Lindsay is not authentically invested in the positions she defends (how can we forget this triad: “No More Meat!” “No More Fish!” and “More Meat and Fish!”?). As an outsider to these political struggles, she finds herself fulfilled by the attention she receives without actually having to hold any political, social, or ethical commitments.

Or consider the family’s lack of sensitivity following Buster’s seal accident. After Buster’s hand gets bitten off, his mother and siblings can barely contain their disgust and resentment. They are unsympathetic to the point where even the sight of Buster—or sitting too close in the stair car—is perceived as an unreasonable burden. The Bluths lacks the simple human capacities to take the needs and desires of others—even their own kin!—into account. This narcissism—this lack of attention or care paid to others’ lives and interests—functions as a
privilege.
There’s something specifically bourgeois about this pathology. Because their wealth, status, and suburban location insulate them from unwanted human contact, the Bluths are afforded the luxury of spending their time worrying about themselves rather than others. The psychopathology behind Buster’s panic attacks, Gob’s Spring Break binges, and Tobias’s time-sink acting career delusions are made possible by the Bluths’s financial wherewithal. The Bluths’s considerable resources enable a lifestyle of opting out of genuine human interactions. The result of this privilege—narcissism—is a siege on human communication and meaningful relationships.

What, then, can we say about the pathology structuring the Bluths’ lives? How are the dsyfunctionality, narcissism, and anxiety related to their class status? This brings us back to our original discussion of the traditional definition of the
bourgeois.
Remember that Marx originally understood the term as a way of talking about that group of people who own and control the means of production. Of course, this is only part of the story. Controlling the means of production isn’t all there is to being a good member of the economic elite: The good capitalist will reinvest, expand, and produce more wealth. By increasing production, reinvesting capital, keeping wages and overhead low, expanding into other markets, and further penetrating existing markets, the owners of the means of production can secure their position for years to come.

The Bluths, of course, don’t do any of this. Despite Michael’s best efforts, not only do they fail to grow or produce more wealth (I mean, they celebrate being
upgraded
to a “don’t buy” company with a huge party!), they’re constantly under threat of losing control of the company: either by being bought out by the likes of Lucille Ostero and Stan Sitwell or by being shut down by the courts. Mismanagement—financial and familial—is at the heart of the Bluths’ crises. Unable to control their wealth, their anxieties, or each other, the Bluths represent a family beset by the complications and anxieties of being bourgeois.

PART THREE

SOME HUGE MISTAKES

Chapter 8

WHAT WHITEY ISN’T READY TO HEAR

Social Identity in
Arrested Development

J. Jeremy Wisnewski

You There, Reading This Book . . .

So you’re a reader—and a fan of
Arrested Development.
A TV-watcher and a reader. I know your kind. You probably think you’re some kind of intellectual, too? I mean
philosophy . . .
that’s some highfalutin stuff. I’m getting a sense of what I might expect from you. You’ll finish reading this sentence, you’ll talk about
Arrested Development,
and you probably harbor warm feelings for Ron Howard (and who could blame you?).

I bet you’ve got some siblings you annoy, and who annoy you, and I bet you lost a hand to a seal a couple years ago. I also bet you’ve got a weird romance thing going on with your mother and that you have dabbled in cartography. You’re probably even wearing cutoff jean-shorts under your pants.

Sorry. I got a little carried away there. What I’m doing is
interpreting you.
I’m taking some small fact about your actions and I’m using that small fact to figure out who you are. In this case, the only fact I’ve got is that you’re reading these sentences—but that gives me a lot to go on. I can take that one little thing and construct a world around it—a world full of boxes to check and labels to place—a world where I know exactly what it means to be someone like you.

So, book reader, I’ve got you figured out. But you’ve got me figured out as well. I’m that snarky philosophy professor who thinks he’s so cool because he likes
Arrested Development,
and who thinks he’s so hip because he writes snotty little essays that directly address his readers. And right you are!

But identity isn’t all fun and games. If there’s anything I’ve learned from
Arrested Development,
it’s that identities are things we can be forced into—that can blind others to who we are, or that might even blind
us
to who we are. Whether in the O.C. (don’t call it that) or elsewhere, we aren’t just who we want to be. We’re also what others
determine
us to be. And here’s the scary thing, book reader. That’s how
all
identity works. We aren’t simply born whole from the heads of Zeus or George Sr. We’re social animals, as Aristotle (384–322 BCE) reminds us. We are the product not just of who we
think
we are, but of who, and what,
others
think we are. Identity is thus fundamentally a social enterprise. It isn’t simply something one can choose. In lots of ways, our identities are things that are constantly negotiated with those around us. Because identities are negotiated—because they can be forced on us by others—they have an inherently ethical dimension.

Whatever I Do, I Won’t Quote Hegel

The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor argues that a “crucial feature of human life is its fundamentally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.”
1
These “languages” aren’t just the spattering of words we happen to know (if so, Annyong would be in big trouble in the Bluth household!). Taylor has in mind a much broader notion of language that captures all those things that allow us to express and define ourselves: our interests, our goals, and even our artistic and professional projects. A language, in this sense, is any systematic expression of who one is—of “where one stands.” (Hell, even a commitment to the Sudden Valley Housing Development, or the Cornballer, might count.) As Taylor goes on to point out, “people do not acquire the languages needed for self-definition on their own. Rather, we are introduced to them through others who matter to us . . . the genesis of the human mind is in this sense not monological, not something each person accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical.”
2

Identities, then, aren’t the sorts of things we can pull up by our own bootstraps, to contort an expression irresponsibly (c’mon!). To have an identity that allows a modicum of self-respect,
others
must recognize this identity as valid and fulfilling. This is a point the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) famously made in his
master/slave dialectic:
We can flourish as human beings only to the extent that we’re recognized by others; such recognition is basic to human well-being. (As promised by the section title, I won’t quote Hegel. His work is as difficult to read as Fünke’s bestselling
The Man Inside Me,
albeit for mostly different reasons.)

The absence of recognition is the source of a lot of misery. The Bluth clan knows this all too well. Tobias, for example, wants to be recognized as a victim of a debilitating condition (never-nudity—there are literally dozens of us!). No one takes his condition seriously, however, and he’s left with an identity that isn’t acknowledged by the world around him. Likewise, Gob is a magician, but not one that anyone takes seriously—and not being taken seriously is a situation that is recurrent in Gob’s life as much as it is in Buster’s. Neither brother is regarded as
recognition-worthy
in anything they pursue. Who would call Gob a successful magician, let alone an illusionist? And let’s not forget Gob’s failed businesses (Bees? Beads?! We’ll see who makes more honey! Bzzzz.). Who would dare to call Buster an academic with expertise in cartography (“the mapping of uncharted territories”) and seventeenth-century agrarian economics (“are we at all concerned about an uprising?”)? Certainly touching yourself is not a scholarly pursuit. I mean, c’mon!

But even when we’re recognized by others as having an identity—as being a businessman, or an illusionist, or an academic, or an analrapist—this doesn’t mean that everything’s going to be hunky dory. Identity can go bad in another way: Some of the identities that we take on involve
devaluation
(It’s hard to read “analrapist” in any way but a negative one, even when we change the pronunciation). In other words, being recognized as having an identity isn’t enough to have a fulfilling and self-respecting existence. We’ve also got to be recognized as having identities that are
worth
having. And here’s the big issue:
most
identities are
normative
—that is, we implicitly evaluate most of the identities that we find ourselves taking on. Lupe, Franklin, Gob, and Buster can help us see this.

It Ain’t Easy Bein’ White

Some of the things that make us who we are can be picked up and put down at will: You can be an
Arrested Development
fan or not; you can be an advocate of “Caged Wisdom” or you can completely ignore it. In this sense, an identity is just a way of understanding oneself. As the contemporary philosophy Georgia Warnke has claimed, identity is really a way of
interpreting
oneself.
3
As such, identities can be fun and fantastic things—they can embody our understanding of ourselves as everything from illusionists to cartographers.

But, as we’ve seen, identities can have a dark side, too. Identities can also “go imperial” (to borrow a turn of phrase from Warnke). Ways of being interpreted can come to dominate everything about us.
Some
ways of understanding ourselves seem to be outright forced on us. The most imperial identities—ones that force themselves on us, and are virtually impossible to escape—are race, sex, and gender.
4
No matter how hard we try, and no matter how much we want to get beyond them, race, sex, and gender are forced on us again and again, even when they don’t need to be. Take the case of race. As Warnke notes, “We cannot become ex-white in the same way that we can become an ex-patriot.”
5
This isn’t because race is physical and nationality is not. As it turns out, race
isn’t
physical (there’s no way of determining race by looking at genetic make-up). Race forces itself on us because we think of it as
more essential
than nationality. So, while we accept that we can run off to live in the O.C. and become an ex-patriot of New York, we think of race as something we just can’t leave behind. We
are
our race. This is the very definition of an imperial identity: no matter where we go, our race follows us.

Just to illustrate this, we might as well talk for a second about Michael Jackson. Does it matter if Michael Jackson was
really
black? Most biologists today deny that race is biologically real (there are no genetic markers for membership in a race, and there is more intraracial genetic variation than there is interracial genetic variation). This makes it seem like insisting that Michael Jackson was
really
black is just dumb, if it means anything at all. If there’s no such thing as black, ole MJ couldn’t
really
have been black any more than Franklin could have become “all puckered and white” (c’mon!).

And yet, we often view people as essentially being members of a particular race or ethnic group (the jury is still out on science, after all). The Bluths manage to do this more than your average family in the O.C. (I know . . . but I like calling it that). Let’s think back on how the Bluths understand Mexican identity (enter eerie flashback music
or
Ron Howard narration) . . .

Despite his studies in cartography, when Buster tries to flee to Mexico, he winds up in Santa Anna, California (about six minutes inland from his house). He’s totally oblivious to the fact, having no sense of what Mexico might actually be like. He crawls under a picnic table, worried about the unbearable heat of the “Mexican” sun. Buster is unaffected by reality, and entirely affected by his preconceived notions of what Mexico must be like—as well as preconceived notions about what it means to be Hispanic. He is so bound up in his preconceived notions that he doesn’t even recognize Lupe as the woman who cleans his former residence! In talking to Lupe’s family, Buster speaks slowly and deliberately, enunciating his sounds, and laying on the fake Mexican accent. “I’m one of you now, si?” (“Amigos”). The next day, on the way to work with his newfound family, Buster remarks, “This is great. We’re like slave buddies.”

Apparently, Buster thinks that being Mexican is like being a slave. But he’s not entirely to blame. He grew up believing that Rosa, the old Bluth housekeeper, lived in the kitchen. When Lupe eventually leaves the Bluth’s employ for having had sex with Buster, she is replaced with a robot—and no one much notices—Buster even has sex with
it
too (what do you expect, at that point he’s half-machine!).

Lindsay isn’t any better, and she might even be worse. She’s got the hots for Ice, the African-American bounty hunter and caterer (how’s that for playing with stereotypes?), but this doesn’t really prove anything. Sexual attraction and racism aren’t mutually exclusive. Still, we’d be better off focusing on how Lindsay treats others generally, and since we’ve been talking about Mexican identity, we’d do well to remember some things about sister Bluth. I know a busload of Mexicans just trying to have a reunion who would say Lindsay’s got the wrong idea about what it means to be Mexican. It
doesn’t
mean that one’s a day laborer willing to scab on a construction site! And let’s not forget that Lindsay more or less kidnaps Lupe when she wants the model home cleaned (“Immaculate Election”).

Lucille is the worst of the group in this, as in other matters. She searches Lupe’s purse before Lupe can leave the house, asking, “Is this your onion?” Lucille also finds a ball of foil, and suspiciously questions Lupe as to its contents. When Lupe responds, “Nothing, it’s a ball of foil for my son,” Lucille allows her to go on her way. When Lucille goes to the Daytime Desi awards, she continuously asks the Hispanic guests/actors to get her a drink. Apparently, Lucille believes that Hispanics are naturally part of the service industry—that to be Hispanic is just to be someone who waits on whitey. She even says as much: “A room full of waiters, and nobody will take an order” (“Key Decisions”). We see this also as Lucille drives around the O.C. trying to find someone to unload her groceries for her, after finding out that Rosa is not “still alive” (“The One Where they Build a House”).

I wish things were better for Michael, but he doesn’t even recognize that the woman he inadvertently kidnaps is
not
Lupe. He sees a Mexican woman in what looks to be a service uniform, and simply assumes it’s Lupe. Is he so oblivious to Lupe that he’s never bothered to notice what she looks like? Does he think all Hispanics look the same? Even the best-intentioned of the Bluths, our hero Michael, falls into the trap of insisting on certain identities for those he meets.

Gob is the very definition of culturally insensitive. His notorious chicken impression (which gets him attacked in Mexico, first by the natives and later by Gene Parmesan), his repeated failure to understand the meaning of the word
hermano,
despite having taken four years of Spanish, and his insensitivity to Marta all display colossal misunderstandings of race and ethnicity.

What’s philosophically and ethically interesting, however, is not simply that the Bluths operate with stereotypes. It’s that the stereotypes are taken to be models for how people
must
behave. The Bluths want others to
be
their stereotypes, and they continuously attempt to make this happen. The Bluths seem hell-bent on making people live out their social identities, no matter how pure their intentions. The danger in this, of course, is that it can be stifling. We can be made to meet social expectations that we have no interest in meeting, or that make us deeply unhappy. The way others expect us to be, in other words, can actually prevent us from living a life that we regard as fulfilling. This is at the heart of the ethics of identity: because identity is a social phenomenon, it is something that can be forced on us by the world we live in. Identity, rather than expressing our values and commitments, can become another means of limiting freedom.