The New Yorker Radio Hour - Emily Nussbaum on TV’s “Deluge” of #MeToo Plots

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

The #MeToo movement of recent years started in the entertainment industry, with revelations about moguls such as Harvey Weinstein and CBS’s Les Moonves, and, since 2017, television writers have been grappling with how to address sexual harassment for a modern audience. Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker’s television critic, examined the issue in a recent essay. Some of the shows she thinks are doing the best job are actually comedies, from the strange animated series “Tuca and Bertie” to the deeply cynical “Veep.” “Maybe there’s been a hesitation to deal with this head-on in drama,” she tells David Remnick, “because drama does, to some extent, at least, require sincerity, and sincerity can be uncomfortable in talking about trauma and assault.” One of Nussbaum’s favorites from this “deluge” of plotlines comes on the show “High Maintenance,” where, instead of some appalling revelation of misconduct, we watch a character reassessing a seemingly minor incident with fresh eyes. “He’s clearly thought about this in a post-MeToo way, as ‘Is this the shitty thing that I did that traumatized a woman that I know? . . . How do I take responsibility for it?’ ” Plus, Ruth Franklin on the late poet Mary Oliver, whose spirituality, love of nature, and unusual directness made her one of the most beloved poets of our time.   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. It's so hard to talk about this, David, because it's like I'm like flipping from show to show. Everyone should be talking about fleabag. They're talking about dragons all the time. Don't get me started. I'm not the world's biggest Game of Thrones fan. Actually, do you watch Barry? I do a little bit.

Barry is an interesting show because Barry had a very straightforward second season. You know, if you're going to talk about TV with Emily No Spam, the New Yorker's television critic, you'd better wake up early and you better do your homework. I don't know how Emily has the time for all the shows she's watched while writing for the magazine and winning a Pulitzer Prize for criticism while she's at it. It's no small feat. But one thing Emily always pays attention to is how television shows can process and reflect on what's happening in the world around us. Emily, you've got an essay in This Week's New Yorker about Me Too and television.

you call Me Too a deluge of plot lines in television. Why a deluge and how does it show itself up? The Me Too movement was a pivot for me because I feel like one of the things that was happening was that, first of all, the Me Too movement affected Hollywood and the television industry. So what you started seeing were plots that were not so much about acts of sexual violence or acts of harassment, which is a whole different subject, but about people, considering their own collusion within the larger system. So some of these are very ambitious and interesting plots and some of these are rude jokes on comedies. But for a while when I was watching

TV, there was pretty much not a single show that I could think of, especially among comedies, soap operas and things like that, that didn't have a plot like this. There was a very interesting example on The Good Fight, which is a CBS show that had an episode this year that was called the one about the recent troubles that was kind of hard to miss as a reference to CBS. So what was fascinating... This is the Les Moonvez. Yes, the less... After Les Moonvez stepped down, the good fight, which is about a law firm, had an episode

in which the much regarded leader of the law firm turns out to have committed numerous acts of violent sexual harassment within the company. And the whole cast, who are sort of our heroes, turn around. And basically, there's a few... a lot of NDAs and they're just trying to shut the whole thing down. Carl Reddick was a complicated man. People who change history and do good are not all good. This firm could lose 40% of its clients.

Yeah, but we didn't do anything wrong. We didn't cover anything up. But if we pay someone off, it becomes our scandal. Do we know we haven't paid already? What do you mean? I looked at Reddick's contract. In 2012, we made a deal to cover all of his sexual harassment law.

It was standard CEO protection. I thought that was a very interesting plot to have on CBS. And not without some courage. Yes. I mean, all over TV, you can see these reflections of what's going on within TV. But what was striking to me, again, was the fact that a lot of these plots and jokes were thoughtful, rich, provocative, sometimes rude. I start the essay with a piece about Tuka and Birdie,

which is a new animated show by Lisa Hannawalt, who does the animation for BoJack Horseman. Tuka and Birdie is sort of a... It's a friendship show. It's an animated show set in a loopy world in which everybody's a bird. And in a lot of ways, it's very bouncy and funny. But there's a central plot on it

that has to do with Birdie, who is the main character, who is a kind of shy, anxious bird. and she gets a job with this penguin who is a master chef. And she has a huge crush on him. But he also does this kind of humiliating physical thing to her. He pushes her face over a stove that's something that he's cooking and basically gets behind her and pushes her very close to it.

So it's one of those weird incidents that I think she finds hard to define to herself. By the way, I realize for anyone, I'm spoiling, Tukamberti. You're just going to have to live with it. A younger apprentice gets hired, and when he does the same thing to her, she has a completely different reaction. It's a classic generational split. Hey, are you okay? Can you believe he just grabbed me like that?

Has he ever done anything like that before? No. I mean, sort of. Wait, did he grab you too? You don't understand. It's just part of the job. And how he teaches. He's very passionate.

Why are you defending him? I'm not trying to. I don't know. And you didn't warn me. You know what he did was wrong, right? I looked up to you. But she's furious because she's basically like says to Bertie, you didn't protect me, you didn't warn me,

that he was like this, and it kind of sends her into a tailspin. So how does that go over with the audience? I'm finding, so there was the Me Too journalism moment, right, in which big, powerful men doing obviously horrible. things are rightly brought low. There's that moment. We could name, well, Les Moon Vez, Harvey Weinstein, etc., etc. And then comes the moment, and you start seeing it in fiction. We've published a couple of stories ourselves, Zadie Smith, another one coming from Mary Gates Guild, in which the terms of complicity and guilt and innocence and responsibility and all those issues are much more complicated.

Are muddied by... And the reaction to those kind of narratives is, at least my reading of certainly social media, is much more complicated. How have people reacted to it? I actually don't know that. Well, some people will say this is wrong. I mean, this is not the moment for that level of complication. This is a clear-cut situation and people shouldn't talk about complicated. Exactly. How is that playing on television? I mean, so far, I have to say, I don't think that people have had bad reactions to these plots.

Because they're animated or because they're fictional? But the thing is, they're not just animated. Like there was a plot about this kind of thing on VEP. There was a plot, I mean... What was the VEep story? The VEP story was... I mean, VEP is a deeply cynical show and everybody on it acts like an asshole nonstop.

And so it is unsurprising that in the age of Me Too, the female main character of the show would weaponize the possibilities of Me Too. And one of the things she did at the very end as the series was ending was that she was going to be beat in the presidential race and she was sort of taunted by her opponent, Tom, who was also her ex-lover and her ex-vice president because the show is like that.

But he was sleeping with his chief of staff, and she essentially just goes to the chief of staff. And in a really cutting, remarkable speech, she sells the chief of staff on redefining the affair as harassment. I just hate to see smart women throw away their political careers on powerful men who only see them as the gash of least resistance. I mean, you strike me as a smart woman, are you? There are a lot of shows that are comedies that have attempted to do these kind of dark backwards jokes on the whole thing. And I like a lot of those jokes. I think they're funny.

It's true that if all of TV was nothing but jokes about false accusations, that would feel a little ugly. But I don't think that's the case. Comedies? Yes. Not dramas. More comedies than dramas. Why would that be?

I am curious about this myself. I mean, the shows that I talk about, with some exceptions, there are exceptions to this, but that I've really noticed this on, are comedies, soap operas, telenovela type shows, romantic comedy kinds of things. I do think that maybe there's been a hesitation to deal with this head on in drama because drama does, to some extent, at least, require sincerity. And sincerity can be uncomfortable in talking about trauma and assault. I do think that there's a specific thing that has to do with workplace comedies, which is a lot of sitcoms, and shows that have a female audience and have to do with the main female character in romances seem to have been particularly affected by this. And I think part of that is because workplace comedies have always had things that now look like sexual harassment baked into them. You can't watch cheers now and not see that there's something a little weird about the dynamic. between Sam and Diane. It feels different now, like Sam's hostility to her seems more power-driven.

Sam, could I ask a little off-the-cuff question? Sure. Who took me home last night? You or Carla? You don't remember? No. We both did. Who put my pajamas on? Carla did.

You had already left by that time, right? No, no, no, no, I was still there. You mean watching? No, no, I was in the other room, minding my own business on my good behavior, trying on your lingerie. The show seems designed to romanticize sexual harassment. That's an extremely limited and prudish way of looking at cheers, which is a brilliant sitcom.

But it's hard to ignore that it's, kind of baked into the design of certain shows. But you're saying that cheers would not, to some degree, is that we wouldn't see cheers now in the year 2019. That whole dynamic between the boss bartender and the waitress wouldn't come off. It's hard to say because it's true that I think if you made a modern version of that, people would be a little more aware of the fact that him being her direct report in the bar would would would would feel different i don't know i mean it's funny i was just watching um a show uh it's called kim's convenience it's a really wonderful canadian show with one of my kids and he was disturbed

that one of the bosses was flirting with one of the employees on the show because i feel like one of your sons was yeah yeah because i feel like he has absorbed the strong message that anybody who does this is being exploitative. And I was like, well, you know, it's a comedy and he likes her too. It's just interesting. I mean, people look at things in different ways. I'm trying to think if there's been, I mean, you know, frankly, a lot of shows have just thrown in a joke about it. So you have, I love the sitcom, the other two. And there are a million moments on that show where somebody realized that they're doing something a little sexually weird.

and they say, well, you know, in the current climate. The current climate being the working phrase. Yeah. They just nervously say, in the current climate, that really wouldn't go, like stuff like that. Okay. So how about the biggest show in the world? We've heard about the other two, but how about the biggest show in the world, Game of Thrones? Where's the Me Too element in Game of Thrones?

Well, look, Game of Thrones, what a complicated text literally set in a raposphere. So, like, the show is about that. In Westeros, no, Me Too. This is a problem with writing about anything with Me Too, is it ends up being the very weird reductive thing. Right. Of course, it's a show about sexual violence.

It has, it's, to me, a weirdly disappointing show in a lot of ways in terms of its engagement with a lot of the ideas about gender, but it also has all these

badass women in it. I mean, the notion of a badass woman on TV is a very boring notion. And it's like some of the most boring shows are centered around this idea that the way

that you resolve issues of sexism is to create a kick-ass woman who's badass and everyone can be like, yeah, team her. That's stupid. Like, that doesn't make for good art at all.

But luckily, we're living in a period when there are a lot of female television creators making shows ranging from, you know, Fleabag, Broad City, which had its own little Me Too thing on it. And those are not shows that have plastic, badass female characters on them. I mean, I don't like shows like that. So now we've talked about this in the office a little bit already. You've got a new book that's about to come out. I like to watch. And you took some time to get the book together right smack in the middle of the meat. movement. Yes. My book leave took place for three months in the fall of 2017, and the Weinstein

pieces came down, and honestly, I don't think I was the only one who felt this way, but I really couldn't think about anything else. It was a cataclysmic psychological experience. And so instead of writing what I was planning to write, I ended up writing a long, extensive essay that I'm proud of that is partially a personal essay, partially an essay about separate. the artist from the art and that whole question for critics for people, ethically, emotionally, and partially kind of an account of my own relationship with the work of men who do bad things, you know, and bad boy art. What kind of men, what men are we talking about who do bad things?

I mean, this is a complicated subject, but I start with the fact that I was a major Woody Allen fan from the time I was a little kid. I mean, he's really formed my sensibility very deeply. And where do you come down on somebody like Woody Allen? Do you watch the new work? Do you now have revulsion for the previous work? How do you regard it? I mean, it varies depending on the – I am not a big fan of cancel people and don't read their stuff. Especially – I mean, I actually don't have a problem with people losing their platform in an economic way. I'm talking as a critic. I mean, this is my role. My role is to engage with art. I feel like I can't erase art. I have a whole. section in there on Bill Cosby. And part of it's about the fact that I was never a big Bill Cosby fan, so it wasn't a big personal thing for me to lose Bill Cosby the way it was for some people I know. But the Cosby show is central to TV history. Without Bill Cosby, it's very hard to understand things like Blackish and Atlanta, which are responses in some ways to what Bill Cosby was doing.

Bill Cosby's relationship with the Roseanne show at the time is crucial to TV history. Bill Cosby basically paved the way for all of the black sitcoms that followed him and many of which went away. But he and frankly his role as this prominent male feminist, which is honestly what he was during that period, had this enormous influence on people's ideas about race, about class, all these kinds of things. So it's definitely more comfortable to act as though the Cosby Show didn't exist and never think about it. But I think that's short-sighted. I did want to talk about one show that I pinpoint as doing something I found really exceptional and very interesting, which was high maintenance, which is a show on HBO that I loved for a long time. The stoner show that became about a guy who goes around on.

The stoner show. Oh, well, a guy who goes around on a bicycle selling pot all over the city. And it started out on, I guess, on Vimeo, right? Yes, it started on Vimeo. And I feel like the show, well, first of all, I love the show. And I feel like it's been very transformative for television, television, which is. It's largely based on half-hour or hour-long shows. High maintenance is a kind of drifty, indie filmish show that's very visual.

It was one of the early anthology shows. So generally, each episode is separate. But since it's been on HBO, it's added in a little bit of seriality. And I found this season fascinating because I don't think a lot of people talked about this, but there was kind of a Me Too plot woven through the episodes. It wasn't made central. It wasn't dealt with in any way as, like, a big polemical thing.

But the main character, the guy, starts dating this woman. She's going through a divorce, and it slowly comes out over the course of the season, just in dribs and drabs, small scenes, scraps of dialogue, that she was married to a TV, I think a movie actor or a TV actor, it's a little unclear, who's committed some kind of Me Too crime. The whole show ends up being about the conversations that circle this, but it's not a huge part of the show. And then at the very end of the show, he talks to an old friend of his in a beautiful episode.

That's the first one I think that's been set in Manhattan because it's generally set in Brooklyn. And basically what he wants to talk to her about is something that's clearly been haunting him the whole season, which is an incident in which he pulled down her pants when they were in high school. What? You were watching the talent show and you were standing up front enjoying yourself and I came up behind you. And you were wearing pajama pants. And I pantsed you, but I didn't know you weren't wearing underwear and everyone saw. And I really felt bad about it my entire life.

What? Were you laughing? Are you kidding? I have no memory of that. Really? You were so... Was I? I have no recollection.

I've been sweating this for like 20 years. And you're telling me, dude, you know, I've been done a lot of drugs, but you have a really shitty memory. And he's clearly thought about this in a post-me-2 way as, is this the shitty thing that I did that traumatized a woman that I know and that I'm responsible for? And how do I take responsibility for it? So they have this conversation about it. But that's a rare thing. My impression, I don't watch quite as many shows as a professional TV critic, but it seems to me that there don't seem to be a lot of plot lines about men. grappling with their own transgression.

Well, this is one thing I found really lovely about this, is that it was not only a man grappling with a transgression, but it was also a small story, not a big story. It wasn't about some larger-than-life anti-hero grappling with world-bestriding crimes. It was about just an ordinary guy kind of thinking about his history. Really, the ideal thing about the movement,

aside from deposing terrible people who've done horrible things, is also having fresh eyes to be able to look at the world. And the best shows that are doing this seem to me to be doing something I find really admirable in artists, which is the ability to shift and adjust and have fresh eyes on the world and try to say something that's neither simply like go-girl affirmative or kind of a hack-need gag and actually say something original. Emily Nussbaum. Thank you. Thanks.

Emily Nussbaum is the television critic for The New Yorker, and she's got a book coming out called, and I love this title, I like to watch. Down the line, I'm going to talk with her again about the rise of anti-heroes on television, beloved characters who do bad or truly awful things and how we might be better off without them. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and we're going to say goodbye for now, but please make sure to tune in next time. Masha Gessen is going to join me for a look at 50 years of gay activism since the uprising at Stonewall. She's talking with historian Martin Duberman of about how Stonewall gave birth to a new kind of identity politics,

and Masha traveled to Ireland to meet with an asylum seeker, a gay activist who fled a repressive and homophobic government in Russia. And finally, we'll look at the complicated state of LGBTQ rights around the world. That's all next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.

Our team includes Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Calalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Emily Mann and Monk Faye Chen. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.