Adventures in Shondaland

Identity Politics and the Power of Representation

Rachel Alicia Griffin, Michaela D.E. Meyer

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780813596334
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Shonda Rhimes is one of the most powerful players in contemporary American network television. Beginning with her break-out hit series Grey's Anatomy, she has successfully debuted Private Practice, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, The Catch, For The People, and Station 19. Rhimes's work is attentive to identity politics, "post-" identity politics, power, and representation, addressing innumerable societal issues. Rhimes intentionally addresses these issues with diverse characters and story lines that center, for example, on interracial friendships and relationships, LGBTIQ relationships and parenting, the impact of disability on familial and work dynamics, and complex representations of womanhood. This volume serves as a means to theorize Rhimes's contributions and influence by inspiring provocative conversations about television as a deeply politicized institution and exploring how Rhimes fits into the implications of twenty-first century television.

PART 1 QUALITY TELEVISION’S CULTURAL DOMINANCE

The Auteur Comes to Television Studies

1 • TRAUMA, SPIN, AND MURDER

The Carnival Spectacle in Shondaland

RICHARD G. JONES JR. AND EMILY VAJJALA

Murder, cover-ups, torture, election rigging, a penis on a dead girl’s cell phone, a U.S. president killing a Supreme Court justice with his bare hands, and bodies exploding into pink mist; all of this and more is simply a day’s work in Shondaland for creators, producers, actors, and crew members. Excess is a signature of Shonda Rhimes in medicine (Grey’s Anatomy; also referred to as Grey’s), politics (Scandal), and law (How to Get Away with Murder; also referred to as HTGAWM), and ABC’s “Thank God It’s Thursday” lineup features three Shondaland shows in a row. Rhimes’s success as a showrunner has catapulted her into the spotlight as a sought-after industry powerhouse with a formidable social media presence and loyal fans. Viewers’ weekly trips to Shondaland begin with Grey’s Anatomy (2005–present), a medical melodrama in its fourteenth season. The main protagonists begin at Seattle Grace Hospital as surgical interns who eventually become attending physicians as the series progresses, with new cohorts of interns cycling through.¹ Next was Scandal (2012–2018), a political melodrama that ran seven seasons led by Olivia Pope as a Washington, D.C., “fixer” involved in a scandalous affair with the U.S. president. Third is How to Get Away with Murder (2014–present), a legal melodrama in its fourth season showcasing brilliant defense attorney and law professor Annalise Keating. Keating employs law student interns to help win unwinnable cases—which they do when they are not having sex with suspects or covering up crimes. As a signature style, the excess in Grey’s, Scandal, and HTGAWM is as nuanced and deliberate as it is entertaining and shocking. To theorize excess in Shondaland, we analyze these shows through a Bakhtinian lens, arguing that they constitute the “Shondafication” of prime-time television.

BAKHTINIAN EXCESS IN SHONDALAND

Bakhtin’s conceptualization of carnival explores literary modes that subvert or overturn dominant styles of writing.² He chose the metaphor of the carnival to encapsulate the various ways that literary norms can be challenged. Just as the carnival challenged the social order of Renaissance society, carnival tropes within a text can challenge readers (or viewers) to reimagine their own social worlds. Informing our work, previous scholars have employed a Bakhtinian lens to analyze media texts including The Big Lebowski, America’s Next Top Model, South Park, and Gimme a Break.³ We extend this research by focusing on multiple shows within one production company, Shondaland, and the showrunner Shonda Rhimes.

Excess is an overarching theme within the carnival. During a Renaissance carnival, revelers literally ate and drank to excess during celebratory feasts, dressed up in exaggerated costumes, and engaged with amusements ranging from freak shows to exotic musical performances.⁴ Since the carnival is itself an event marked by excess, the tropes that appear within the carnival are also marked by excess. Carnival tropes that inform our analysis of Shondaland include the upheaval of social position, ritual spectacle, and grotesque realism. Inherent in each of these tropes is also the carnival cycle of degeneration and regeneration.

During the carnival celebrations the norms of polite behavior are suspended and societal roles are reversed, resulting in an upheaval of social positions and hierarchies. Those typically on the margins of society, for example, the fool, madman, rogue, or clown, may don a mask and costume and take on elite roles.⁵ Conversely, the systemically privileged “people with power, history, and laws,” are stripped of power as they are mocked and degraded by caricature performances of crownings and uncrownings.⁶ In the carnival, those at the bottom of a social hierarchy may find themselves crowned with power, while those typically privileged with power may be uncrowned. The carnival brings forth, “in a concretely and sensuous, half-real and half-play-acted form, a new mode of interrelating between individuals, counter-posed to the all-powerful socio-hierarchical relationships of non-carnival life.”⁷ The world-upside-down nature of carnival is a temporary sanctioned moment during which the marginalized are regenerated and elevated as they degrade those in power. Once the carnival ends, the marginalized return to their inferior positions and the powerful rule once again, which reflects the cycle of carnival. This cycle of degeneration and regeneration is key to both the carnival and our analysis.

Ritual spectacles attract viewers by disturbing and intriguing them.⁸ The carnival itself is a ritual in that it occurs annually around the same time. It is also a spectacle given the excess present in costumes, behaviors, and performances. “Exaggeration and overemphasis are indices of value; the greater the scale of the body’s ingestion and copulation, the greater its value.”⁹ The cycle of degeneration and regeneration is inherent in this carnival trope. Generally, every carnival degenerates to an end point only to be ritually regenerated the following year. Additionally, ritual spectacles such as feasts and performances come to an end and are regenerated throughout one carnival. The body also becomes a site of ritual spectacle, a spectacle that is made more enthralling for the revelers through grotesque realism as bodies degenerate due to their overindulgence in food, drink, and festivities and are left to regenerate in the interval before the next carnival.

Grotesque realism is another trope of carnival, and it is the primary manifestation of carnival spirit.¹⁰ The body and its functions are the foci of grotesque realism; eating, bleeding, dispensing waste, and having sex characterize humanness. Correspondingly, grotesque imagery includes “copulation, pregnancy, birth, growth, old age, disintegration, [and] dismemberment.”¹¹ In addition to base corporeality that marks carnival bodies, Bakhtin specifically notes that laughter “is an explicitly expressive bodily function” tied to the carnival’s rejection of ideological rules and authority. Whether it is through the size of the body or the focus on bodily functions ranging from digestion to laughter, in carnival, the more excessive these manifestations of humanness are, the more they are valued.¹² The human body and its functions are further dramatized when juxtaposed against the privileged rationality of modernity. The upper body, which holds the brain (i.e., the source of reason privileged in modernity), is highlighted through the comparison to the lower body, which houses our digestive, reproductive, and sexual parts. Bakhtin identifies degradation as essential to grotesque realism. Although we typically think of degradation, or degeneration, as negative, Bakhtin stresses that since embodied degeneration reminds us of our humanity, it is also affirmative and linked to regeneration and renewal.¹³ In short, as carnival revelers behave contrary to the established social order, they achieve “renewal and revival.”¹⁴ Key to revitalization is understanding the carnival body as unfinished, as always becoming.¹⁵ Bakhtin notes, “Degeneration digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one.” The cycle of degeneration and regeneration is the cornerstone of our analysis of Shondaland’s excess, but first we discuss how Rhimes, as a television auteur, has created the carnivalesque signature we term Shondafication.

THE SHONDAFICATION OF PRIME-TIME NETWORK TELEVISION

When ABC picked up Grey’s in 2005, Rhimes coined “Shondaland” as an homage to Disneyland. As Everett states, “That audacious early branding move speaks volumes about Rhimes’s self-confidence and business acumen.”¹⁶ Since then, especially after Grey’s premiered to an audience of sixteen million viewers, Rhimes has emerged as a renowned showrunner who enjoys creative and executive freedom.¹⁷ While it may seem “audacious,” in Everett’s words, for a relatively unknown producer and writer to name her company Shondaland, Rhimes’s success validates her bold vision. Drawing on Giroux and Pollock’s concept of Disneyfication, which highlights how Disney influences society, we use Shondafication to highlight Rhimes’s influence on the landscape of prime-time television and the larger industry.¹⁸ Shondaland shows’ fast-paced dramatic verve, Rhimes’s auteur status, the foregrounding of identity politics and diverse casting, the relatable characters in the form of broken fixers, and the integration of social media are all signatures of Shondafication.

The first element of Shondafication is the fast-paced dramatic verve of Shondaland. Even Rhimes’s logo and company name elicit carnivalesque connotations, and these early choices foretold Shondafication. If Shondaland is the carnival, then Shonda Rhimes is the carnival master, a fitting metaphor given her production company’s roller coaster logo, which originally appeared in bright purples, pinks, and reds but is now even more dramatic in flaming reds, oranges, and golds. The logo is appropriately symbolic of the whips and turns, highs and lows, steep climbs, and heart-racing plunges viewers experience as they ride through episodes, storylines, and seasons. One critic even suggested that the Thursday night lineup should come with warnings like those one might see on a carnival ride: “May cause narrative whiplash. Beware of injury from jaw hitting the floor. Management not responsible if you wear out the O, M, and G keys on your mobile device.”¹⁹ As cultural critics and fans of Rhimes’s shows, we have perso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraphs
• Contents
• Introduction: Riding Shondaland’s Rollercoasters: Critical Cultural Television Studies in the 21st Century
• Part 1: Quality Television’s Cultural Dominance: The Auteur Comes to Television Studies
• Part 2: Shondaland’s Paradoxical Identity Politics and the Fantastical “Post”
• Part 3: Consumption, Ethics, and Morality: Shondaland Fandom as Cultural Meaning Making
• Notes on Contributors
• Index