Arrested Development and Philosophy (11 page)

Stuff Whitey Isn’t Ready to Hear; African-Americany Might Not Be Ready, Either . . .

No discussion of identity in
Arrested Development
would be complete without consideration of Franklin, the two-time black puppet that Gob eagerly offends others with. (Franklin is “twice black” because of a laundry accident, followed by a re-dye.)

Franklin is both a stuffed stereotype and a surprisingly edifying puppet. There’s no better place to start than with the classic tune from
Franklin Comes Alive:

Gob:
It ain’t easy bein’ white.

Franklin:
It ain’t easy bein’ brown.

Gob:
All this pressure to be bright.

Franklin:
I got children all over town.

This lovely song, a duet with Gob and Franklin, is full of error. The error is clear enough: Franklin’s very voice, provided by Gob, embodies this. On one hand, Franklin is ghettoized; on the other hand, Gob sings about how it’s difficult to live life as white. Surprisingly, besides the error of enforcing stereotypes, there’s also some understanding: identities exert pressure on us, particularly when they go imperial.

Franklin is regarded as essentially black (at first, at any rate), and his activities are those stereotypical ones associated with his race. Of course, Franklin is too over the top and ridiculous for us to fail to notice that stereotypes are being employed (nobody’s that oblivious!!). But the severity of the stereotypes just lets us see them all the more clearly.

Franklin:
Can I tell you somethin’ my man?

Gob:
Sure, Franklin.

Franklin:
You are one cold [Long beep]. Speaking of mothers . . . let me give that oatmeal some brown sugar [Gob begins to make Franklin molest Lucille, as George Sr. jumps off of the couch to defend his wife] [“Meat the Veals”]

Franklin’s lust for old white women isn’t even his worst trait. Franklin, it turns out, is also a pimp (“Family Ties”). But despite being a sex-crazed pimp, Franklin is very sensitive to issues of race.

Gob:
I just had an old friend who wanted to tell you [brings Franklin around to face Lucille]

Franklin:
how much I miss you.

Lucille:
oh . . . who let this little black [BEEP] . . .

[Franklin, soaked in ether, kisses Lucille, rendering her unconscious. Buster enters.]

Buster:
Hey, brother!

Franklin:
Who you callin’ brother, you honky ass . . . [“Meat the Veals”]

And how could we forget Franklin’s (third season) T-shirt bearing the phrase, “George Bush doesn’t care about black puppets”? But despite his sensitivity to issues of race, Franklin doesn’t speak for the African-American community—even if Gob sometimes acts as though he does.

Gob:
Franklin said some things that whitey just wasn’t ready to hear.

Michael:
Gob, weren’t you also mercilessly beaten outside of a club in Torrence for that act?

Gob:
He also said some things that African-Americany wasn’t ready to hear, either. [“Meat the Veals”]

And yet, for all the politically incorrect racial slurs, Franklin presents us with some important reminders about race. As perhaps the most imperial identity, someone’s race is often wrongly regarded as telling us what we need to know about them.
Arrested Development
spoofs our tendency to let race “go imperial”—and thus also critiques the idea that race is anything essential to a person—when, in “Meat the Veals,” the police confront Franklin behind the wheel of a car.

Cop 1
[pointing gun]:
Put your hands up or we’ll take that as a sign of aggression against us!

[Franklin sits silently behind the wheel of an automobile.]

Cop 2
[pointing gun, frantic]:
They’re not up! He’s aggressive!

Not only are the stereotypes we associate with race wrong; the very idea that race is essential to what a person
is
is wrong.
Arrested Development
manages to show this as well. Franklin, in a devastating laundry disaster, gets bleached out. In losing his color, he somehow also gains a British accent. “You’ve ruined the act Gob . . .,” Franklin, now bleached-white, tells a saddened Gob. The idea that the puppet’s
color
made it essentially the
kind of puppet
it is also calls into question our own assumptions about race.

The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah (1954–) tells us that racism is not our only problem. Our bigger problem is what he calls
racialism
—the belief that races are in some deep sense
real
(in the way that stars and atoms are real).
6
Races aren’t any more real than baseball teams or traffic laws: They exist only insofar as we
think
they exist. The problem with thinking races exist in the deep sense, though, is that we start thinking that people
must be
the race we identify them as. In fact, racial identity is
performed
—much as Gob performs Franklin’s racial identity. It isn’t something we are, but something we
do.
If we could think of race in this way, we’d make it easier to be white, and easier to be brown. (Gob: That’s the exact kind of joke he would have loved. . . .)

An Ethics of Identity

Given how precarious our identities are—and how much value-baggage comes with them—we might be better off without them entirely. Of course, we all know that’s not really possible. As Aristotle, Hegel, and so many others have pointed out, to be human is to be social—and part of being social involves negotiating
who
one is with who others
take one to be
. Does this mean we’re as screwed as Lucille during a conjugal visit?

Maybe not. Not all of our identities are imperial ones—and maybe there’s a lesson to learn there. We don’t always insist that people are one way or the other. I mean, look, book reader, I don’t think you are either
essentially
a Yankees fan or
essentially
a Red Sox fan. You might not be either. When you take on that identity—when you don the Yankees cap—you do so recreationally (at least I hope that’s what’s going on!). You can take off that identity, and no one will know any better. You won’t find a box to be filled in on your job application or your health insurance about which team you like. You won’t be denied a job or a proper education because of it.

The danger of identities is not that we have them, but that we tend to take them so
seriously
—and we tend to regard them as essentially who we are.
7
But, if identities are social things, we can take or leave
any
of them, no matter how
real
they are. This might well lead to a more tolerant world, where race and gender were toys to play with rather than tools of oppression.

I know, I know. I’m an idealist. A dreamer. And you’re a book reader and a TV watcher. But we’re more than that, too. The trick is to learn Franklin’s lesson. It ain’t easy bein’
anything.
The sooner we can make identity recreational, the better. Essentialized identities tend to breed hate, and hate takes a lot of time (even more than the annual Motherboy event). The sooner we give up insisting people fit our identity expectations, the sooner we’ll be able to devote our lives to getting
Arrested Development
back on the air.

NOTES

1.
Taylor, Charles,
Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, p. 230.

2.
Ibid., p. 230.

3.
Georgia Warnke,
After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex and Gender
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

4.
I borrow the term
imperial identity
from Warnke’s wonderful book
After Identity
.

5.
Ibid., p. 85.

6.
K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann,
Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

7.
This is the line of argument advocated by Judith Butler in
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
(New York: Routledge, 1999), as well as by Warnke in
After Identity
.

Chapter 9

“I JUST BLUE MYSELF”

The Use and Abuse of Language in
Arrested Development

M. E. Verrochi

The use and abuse of language is one of the most delightful features of the endlessly delightful
Arrested Development.
The show’s title itself plays with at least three different senses of the phrase “arrested development”: It picks out the premise of the story (George Bluth is a developer who is arrested in the pilot episode), it refers to the story line that arcs the entire series (the development of more Bluth homes is perpetually arrested), and it denotes the stunted emotional and moral maturity of the characters. But this is just scratching the surface: Much of the humor deployed in the series is the result of playing with language in one way or another.

For instance, breaking up is hard to do, but if you’re an adult member of the Bluth family, it’s nearly impossible (and not for the typical reasons). Picture this: In the episode “Whistler’s Mother,” Gob’s wife has fallen in love with the Teamocil spokesperson. The Teamocil spokesperson is Tobias Fünke. Tobias is also Gob’s brother-in-law. In the following scene we see Gob’s wife sit him down, in one of the brightly colored sweaters that she likes him to wear, to break the news that she is in love with someone else.

Gob’s wife:
I’m in love with your brother-in-law.

Gob:
You’re in love with your own brother? The one in the Army?

Wife:
No! I’m in love with your sister’s husband.

Gob:
Michael? Michael!

Wife:
No. That’s your sister’s brother.

Gob:
No. I’m my sister’s brother. You’re in love with me. Me.

Wife:
No. I’m in love with Tobias.

Gob:
My brother-in-law? [“Whistler’s Mother”]

Though ridiculous, Gob’s interpretation, “You’re in love with your own brother,” is not exactly
wrong
. It is true that Gob’s brother-in-law
is
his wife’s brother. Likewise, when he responds, “I’m my sister’s brother. You’re in love with me” his interpretation of what his wife has said is somehow both correct and incorrect. Of course any native English speaker less oblivious than Gob would know that his wife was not referring to her own brother when she said “your brother-in-law” to her husband, and of course anyone less self-absorbed than Gob would assume that his wife wasn’t referring to himself when she said “your sister’s brother.” The context clarifies what exactly is being pointed to with the use of the terms “brother-in-law” and “brother” for most of us; otherwise, her brother
is
her husband’s brother-in-law and her husband
is
his sister’s brother.

The idea that meaning in language cannot be divorced from the context of the utterance is nothing new. What is often overlooked, however, is the significance of the role of both the speaker
and
the hearer in speech. We know the speaker is important where meaning is concerned, and yet we often imagine that the hearer simply, passively, takes in meaning. But the role of the hearer is not simple, and certainly not passive. So much of what is funny about
Arrested Development
has to do with how the hearer interprets—or, more often, misinterprets—the context of the utterance in any given speech situation.

The problem in the previous example (for philosophers as well as for Gob) is that the term “brother-in-law” picks out multiple objects in the world (it’s referentially ambiguous). But, of course, Gob’s wife means something (and someone) quite specific when she utters, “I’m in love with your brother-in-law.” To put a label on the confusion, we might call it the difference between
speaker meaning
and
sentence meaning
.
1
What Gob’s wife “means” by what she says is that she’s in love with Tobias (speaker meaning), but the meanings of the individual words of her utterance make it the case that the sentence can be taken to mean that she’s in love with her own brother (sentence meaning).
2

For a very, very, very long time, philosophers have struggled to make sense of the nuanced and vague concept that is
meaning
. Although it’s safe to assume that most native, or even competent, English speakers would not interpret Gob’s wife’s utterances in the same way Gob does, it remains fascinating and curious that most speakers do, in fact, grasp the correct meaning of the term. How is it that most of us would (and do!) pick the “right” meaning of her utterance?

The space for humor arises in virtue of the multitude of ways that speakers and hearers can “get it wrong”—just as Gob mistakes sentence meaning for speaker meaning. The use and abuse of language in
Arrested Development
reveal interesting things about how “normal” language works (like the fact that
who is hearing a particular utterance
matters, a lot)—things we might not notice in non-comedic uses of language.
Arrested Development
pushes the application of language beyond the context in which we expect it to function—and meaning in language is all about context.

I Christen This Ship the
Lucille

Nothing highlights the performative power of speech quite like the moment in “Fakin’ It” when the kids get married. In an attempt to secure a kiss from his cousin, George Michael convinces Maeby to take part in a fake wedding for Alzheimer’s patients. The first attempt is a fake ceremony that Maeby takes too literally, and she bolts. We’re told that for Maeby the fake wedding was “a little too real”; the speech act of uttering “I do” with George Michael, even though the context is “playing pretend,” feels wrong to her. The second attempt is “fake.” Both George Michael and Maeby believe they’re just role-playing. However, this time the officiant is real, and he’s
not
playing. If all the right pieces come together, then the words uttered at a marriage ceremony fulfill the act of marrying. The first time around, the officiant was not authorized to marry anybody (the one presiding over the fake wedding is really a doctor pretending to be a priest and then a rabbi). The second time around, Father Ben fills in for the doctor, not knowing that it’s a fake wedding. When Father Ben utters, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” he doesn’t report or describe what’s going on—he performs a marriage! And that’s how the kids—not knowing that it isn’t a fake priest—get married.

To say that speech is “performative” is to say that in certain instances, with the right people and the right context, to utter something is the same as to do something. J. L. Austin (1911–1960) was the first philosopher to extensively explore the performative dimension of speech.
3
Austin’s most well-known and oft-cited example is a marriage ceremony: When you say “I do” in a marriage ceremony you do not report on the marriage but in fact get married, even if you do it based on a dare.

It’s not just marriages that happen with the simple uttering of a few words in the right context with a speaker of the right authority. Suppose that I approach a yacht docked in Orange County, California, smash a bottle of champagne on its helm, and pronounce, “I christen this ship the
C-Word
.” In uttering the phrase, “I christen this ship the
C-Word
,” I do not report or describe the world; rather, I perform the act of christening in the very uttering of the words (as long as I have the authority to christen ships). The same goes for apologizing (“I apologize for hurting you”), promising (“I promise to meet you at the Queen Mary”), betting (“I bet ten thousand dollars on Lucille 2”), swearing (“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”), and on and on.

These speech acts are
explicit performatives
in that the verb identifies the action that is accomplished (or, at least, attempted) in the uttering of the phrase. In saying “I apologize,” I apologize. In saying “I promise,” I promise. But the explicitness of explicit performatives isn’t necessary for any given illocutionary act
4
(a performative speech act) to come off without a hitch. I can apologize by saying, “I’m sorry,” or, “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” or, “I’ve made a huge mistake,” and so on. I can promise by saying, “I’ll be at the Queen Mary at three o’clock come hell or high water.” I can bid by screaming, “10,000!” at a charity bachelorette auction. These utterances aren’t explicit performatives, but they are performatives, nonetheless.
5
Actions such as promising, apologizing, marrying (whether “for real” or on a dare), daring, betting, bidding, naming, and the like can be done in speech. So can actions such as stating, asserting, claiming, arguing, protesting, affirming, and so on.

In Austin’s theory of the performative nature of utterances, we find an analysis of language that acknowledges the simple fact that we
do
things with words. Such a theory implicitly recognizes that no utterance conveys meaning outside of a context; the role of the speaker, the audience, the culture, and the historical moment function as key players in understanding what a particular utterance
means
.

Austin noted that there are more subtle ways of doing something with words than constructing explicit performatives. I give you Lucille Bluth.

“I’ve Been a Horrible Mother.”

Lucille Bluth is the matriarch of the Bluth family and (as it turns out) the master and commander of the Bluth Company. She is also one of the most quick-witted, venom-tongued characters to grace TV motherdom (perhaps ever). She quickly justifies an insult directed at a young Lindsay Bluth (“Dinner’s ready! We’re having
Lindsay-chops!
”) as a way of preparing her for school bullying. Once when Michael suggests that Gob should be fired from the Bluth company, she assumes Michael to mean that Gob should be “gotten rid of” in the sense of “should no longer exist” (Michael: “I need you to get rid of Gob.” Lucille: “That ship sailed 32 years ago.”). The infinitely wise narrator confirms that no bully will ever outdo Lucille Bluth.

Words may stab
like
a knife or feel
like
a punch in the gut (just ask Buster—after being shot down by Marta, he suggests, “So that’s what it’s like to be punched in the face.”), but they do not literally do these things. Unlike a good “Boyfights” video or a Saturday morning making cornballs, we’re often wounded by words with no physical cuts or bruises to signify that harm. So how
exactly
do words wound? This is an important question for philosophers. Figuring out how words harm, as well as the way and to the extent that they do, may very well show us how to interrupt that harm. Sadly, another adage meant to help us chin-up in the face of harmful speech is also less than always true: Fighting words with words is often helpful, and can be somewhat satisfying, but not entirely so.

In “My Mother, the Car,” Michael plans a surprise birthday dinner for Lucille on two separate occasions without success. Finally, as consolation for the second surprise being a dud, Michael allows Lucille to drive them home (in spite of the fact that she’s been voted the “World’s Worst Driver”). As they approach a guy on the road driving a Segway in the middle of the night, Lucille, thinking the scooter driver is Gob, decides to give him “a scare.” Lucille loses control of the car. The next scene opens to a chaotic mess with the car crashed, ambulance and police in attendance, and Michael in the driver’s seat barely conscious. The rest of the episode is about Lucille keeping Michael hostage at her apartment, “caring” for him while he recovers from “his” bad driving accident. At the end of the episode, her children confront Lucille about her lying and manipulating. Lucille, literally and figuratively backed into a corner, cowers as she utters, “I’m a horrible mother.”

Most philosophers of language and linguists alike would dub Lucille’s utterance a
statement.
It’s the sort of utterance that reports or describes the world (accurately, in this case). It can be true or false, and in this case, it’s obviously true. J. L. Austin called such an utterance a
constative utterance
and distinguished such utterances from performatives (the kind that do what they say). Austin acknowledged, however, that the constative–performative distinction breaks down. He came to think that “stating” or “asserting” were performative verbs.
6
Stating, asserting, claiming, denying and so on are things done in language, and often accomplished simply in uttering the words, even if they don’t quite fit as paradigmatic examples of explicit performatives. In this instance, however, it is clear that Lucille does more than just state something or describe herself; she performs the act of turning the table on her children simply by uttering some words. She regains control; she shifts the power back to herself and away from her children (who have gained some power as a united front against her). She fishes for a compliment. The simple statement, “I’m a horrible mother,” uttered by this person to her children in this particular context, has the force of guilting her children into submission. In fact, the comedy in this scene arises when we see the result of her handiwork (the simple speech act, “I’m a horrible mother”). Success is written all over Lucille’s face as her children respond in the “appropriate” way to such a speech act; they tell her she’s a wonderful mother.

“Blueing” Oneself

Now consider another kind of misstep—one that revolves around the hearer, but isn’t the result of mistaking sentence meaning for speaker meaning, or vice versa. When Tobias utters, “I just blue myself!” he
means
that he just covered himself in blue paint to prepare for an 8 p.m. curtain call as a (hopeful) understudy for the Blue Man Group. What he seems to imply, however, is a certain impossible sexual act. The joke is that he’s oblivious to the risqué meaning of the double entendre. But the joke is possible only because meaning is often conveyed implicitly rather than explicitly. In fact, almost every comedic scene in the show involving Tobias turns on what H. P. Grice (1913–1988) called
conversational implicature.
7
Let’s consider some more examples.