Anyone
who is even casually acquainted with me in meat-life will be aware of
two facts: (1) Community returned this week, and (2) I was very, very, very, very happy
about this.
Community
is straight-up my favorite show
on TV. Its midseason disappearance from NBC's schedule was
devastating to me, and the announcement of its return had me capslock
keymashing all over the internet. I celebrated Thursday's episode
with friends and champagne: it was glorious and beautiful, and it's
not really an exaggeration to say that this show is a religious
experience for me. Here's why.
1.
The community of television
I
tend to be fairly generous with my definition of “the religious”.
Like Tillich, I think religion is an orientation toward ultimate
concern; like Barthes, I believe we are surrounded by images that
signify ideologies – and if popular culture reveals and reflects a
society's most deeply held values, then it's not a huge leap to argue
that pop culture can be a locus of religious experience. (Tom
Beaudoin's Virtual
Faith makes this argument
very nicely.)
Although
TV
ownership in the US is apparently declining, television is still
the most ubiquitous form of mass media in this country (of that 3.3%
of TV-less households, it's a fairly solid bet that many of them
still watch shows online). As such, it is the most unifying artifact
of American popular culture, and thus television as a whole could be
considered a site of religious meaning. Even for a small cult show
like Community,
several million viewers
participate in the weekly ritual of watching it – a shared
experience that nonetheless resonates on a personal level for each
individual, much like a religious service.
2.
The community of the individual
Some
people have accused the Community
ensemble
of being uniformly terrible human beings who evince no character
growth and are unlikeable and completely unrelatable. I will not link
to the people saying these things, because they are erroneous,
incorrect, inaccurate, misguided, mistaken wrong-mongers who are very
very wrong.
I see myself in Jeff: his walls of sarcasm and cynicism that try but
fail to hide the true depths of his emotional responses.
I see myself in Britta: her enthusiasm for political causes and her
morality that stems from a heart in the right place but is often
ill-thought-out or hypocritical in practice.
I see myself in Abed: his profound love of pop culture, his social
discomfort, his use of pop culture to understand those around him.
I see myself in Shirley: her deep Christian faith and her struggle to
overcome her personal failings to live a really loving Christian
life.
I see myself in Annie: her neurotic perfectionism and intense fear of
failure.
I see myself in Troy: his goofy sense of humor, his deep bromance
with his BFF, his quest for a place and purpose in the world.
I see myself in Pierce: his desperate desire for acceptance and
inclusion, insecurities often masked by acting like an almighty
asshole.
I really, really love these characters. Each one of them speaks to a
different part of my own personality, often in ways that illuminate
my flaws and weaknesses. They are complicated, imperfect human
beings, but they love each other and I love them. They embody the
complex, messy reality of being human – of being simultaneously
wonderful and terrible, capable of beautiful things and horrific
things, worthy of love and of hate.
3.
The community of friends
It's
called Community because
that's what it's ultimately about. This is a show about a group of
people who are thrown together in a situation that's for none of them
ideal, and who learn to make the best of it. The interpersonal
dynamics at play in this show are special because they are bold and
because they speak a truth that is rarely spoken in television.
Compare
the show Friends. That
was also a show about a group of friends, and it was often a sweet
show with a good heart, but all the friends came from the same social
location: straight, white, young, of a certain socioeconomic bracket.
Community dares to
portray a very diverse group of people who find common ground without
erasing their differences. The relationship between the Self and the
Other must involve both the unity of commonality and the space of
respecting difference. Friendship is the experience of navigating
this Scylla-and-Charybdis – learning to find common ground in your
shared humanity while celebrating and benefiting from each other's
difference – and Community portrays
this wonderful, difficult process better than any other show I've
ever seen.
4.
The heart of Community
Community
is a dizzyingly inventive show,
playing with pop-culture history in endlessly fun and creative ways,
but it is still a television show, and as such it follows a certain
formula. The characters love each other; they learn lessons about the
value of friendship; they make missteps and hurt each other, but they
ultimately make the right choices and warm our hearts. Like religious
truth, Community's
heart is both inexhaustibly profound and completely obvious.
So
very many religious and philosophical traditions hinge on the Golden
Rule. Jesus himself said that everything else was pretty much
window-dressing. Love your neighbor as yourself: it really couldn't
be simpler. And yet we have to be taught it, over and over again, in
different ways and by different people, and we still don't do it.
It's childishly simple, but it's also really difficult.
In
the same way, Community is
a television show. More specifically than that, it's a half-hour
network sitcom. It plays by established rules and conveys a simple,
feel-good message. At the same time, though, it takes such delight in
exploring the limits of those established rules and finding new and
awesome ways to express that simple message.
Community
is
a show about love, it's a show written from a place of love, and I
believe it's a manifestation of God's love in the world. I leave you
with the moment I first knew this show was something really special
and a nugget of pure wisdom: cabeza
es nieve, cerveza es bueno.
