by Spitz, Marc
But once Dunham’s worldview was an HBO show, suddenly she had a great responsibility. They couldn’t question her about sex; she had made herself clear on that topic. So the haters turned to race and privilege, the class issues raised by Simon Reynolds.
Dunham, the smartest of her peers, handled the controversy in a way that politicians might learn from: facing it head-on and using it, via guest star Donald Glover, as a major plot point in the very first episode of season two of the now hit show—and quoting Missy Elliott.
“So why don’t you lay this thing down, flip it, and reverse it,” she tells Glover as he tries to typify her as a curious white girl sexually slumming with a black man. It was both a bold move by Dunham and also an obvious choice. Glover, a former writer for 30 Rock and star of Community who raps under the moniker Childish Gambino (pulled from an online Wu Tang Clan name generator) has all the Twee Tribe qualities himself: he does not fear sensitivity or vulnerability, having recently posted a series of confessional sketch messages on his Instagram page. “Donald is just so awkward, so uncomfortable in his own skin,” writer Kyla Marshell observed some months later on Gawker. “In addition to his posture problems and unwillingness to blink is the fact that he’s so caught up on his childhood. Childish Gambino could be fudged into simpler terms to mean Babyish Baby, and that’s apt. Donald’s childhood, I glean, was very similar to mine: an ethnically black child who grew up culturally white because of the surrounding school system and neighborhood. The difference between him and me, however, is that I found something else to say besides Ow.”
“I can’t think of another black male character that’s very much like him,” says Winfrey Harris. “He’s unique—being a black male and being able to occupy that kind of quirky geek space.” The inner-child imagery of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings, or the idealism and petulance of early-’80s Prince once he conked his late-’70s afro and began playing funky New Wave with his mixed-race, mixed-gender band, both come to mind, but that was thirty years ago now, as was the bohemianism of Cosby-era Lisa Bonet’s crush object Denise Huxtable, who appealed, with her thrift-store overcoats and funky shoes, to both black and white kids (Cosby was all about this cultural mind melding).
The door seemed to be open for white kids to mingle in Hip-Hop culture and even profit from it—Macklemore being the most recent in a line that began thirty years ago with the Beastie Boys. Pitchfork readers worship African-American music and culture like the Canadian, Emo-aware Drake or the savvy Glover/Gambino (or of course, Kanye West, whose 2011 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy received one of the site’s rare perfect 10 reviews . . . no decimal points). It does not seem to be an even exchange when it comes to interest. Few from the Hip-Hop world seem interested or able to kick with the Twee, beyond Outkast’s now decade-old stated love for the work of Kate Bush.
Romano is a bit blunt about what still seems like a schism. “Hip-Hop is automatically cooler. No black guy is going to look at Indie rock and want to aspire to be a part of that. It’s sort of dorky. It’s not smooth. It’s not macho, it’s Twee. They’re boys. What black urban guy is going to look at that and want to be a part of it?” I suggest Kanye West’s collaborations with bearded singer-songwriter Bon Iver and Pitchfork’s TMZ-like coverage of West’s every move. “The Pitchfork guys worship Kanye because Kanye will always be cooler than them. Kanye can fart and he will be cooler than them.”
The debate had begun, but the question remains unanswered: What do you do with bullies? When the appealing actress Jenny Slate became one of the few people to utter the word fuck on Saturday Night Live during a skit in her debut season, she was piled on by haters. Slate did not give in to the negativity but rather synthesized it into a shell—“a partial shell, as you can see I have shoes,” says her creation “Marcel . . . the Shell with Shoes On.” The short stop-motion film she cocreated and posted on YouTube became perhaps the most talked about since SNL’s own Digital Short “Lazy Sunday.” Slate became, in essence, as big as her former employer, if not bigger, via a sort of arch sweetness almost fueled by attack. “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” was a phenomenon with almost twenty-five million hits and spawned sequels and an accompanying book. It’s essentially the story of a google-eyed Cyclops seashell with one foot and the things it uses because it’s small. “Guess what I wear as a hat? A lentil. Guess what I use to tie my skis to a car? A hair. Guess what my skis are? Toenails from a man.”
Marcel is the equivalent of Pee-wee Herman doing the big shoe dance to disarm the mob that would hang him, kill him, then tattoo him in Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The shell helped wound snark, but it would take a series from another SNL veteran to eradicate it forever.
Chapter 16
Culture Teasing
2011–Present
In which the Twee aesthetic’s popularity is confirmed and the inevitable backlash is tempered by an affectionate and knowing sketch comedy show that even the hardest of hard-core haters cannot deny. A bird is placed on the entire youth movement by a trio who cannot forget the Indie dream of the ’90s.
I’m not wearing a nerd costume for Halloween, this is how I actually dress,” says Brian P., an “actual nerd,” in a hilarious and heartbreaking sketch from season three of the hit IFC satire Portlandia. Like many who appear on the show, Brian is not a professional actor but a local, scouted by the casting director. “We thought that someone who acts like a nerd wouldn’t read right,” says cocreator and star Fred Armisen. “It just looks fake. We needed a real guy. Our casting director knew a guy who worked at a hardware store. He didn’t want to do it at first. Which was perfect! He came to the set and we had a long speech written out for him. He couldn’t memorize it. He’s not an actor. So I had to write it all out on cue cards. I thought, ‘That’ll fix it.’ I thought it was a brilliant idea, but when the editors noticed the tapes without the cue cards, where he was nervous and stumbling, were the ones that worked, that spelled out that this is a person who is a true nerd.” The “Actual Nerd PSA” opens with a gorgeous model type in black horn-rims, straining to convince a dude in a hip bar, “I’m such a total nerd . . . I’ve been into video games and comic books and stuff.” It’s a typically affectionate Portlandia jab at those who were never pushed around but wear the uniform of the bullied.
When Drew Barrymore indulged her inner wannabe Twee in the late 1990s, insisting to magazine feature writers that despite being a movie star literally for her entire life, she was, deep down, a “total nerd,” it was refreshing. She mined her pain (drug addiction, divorce, an initial career skid, seeing Tom Green naked) and applied it to the pain of a genuine high school Twee, and, culturally savvy as she is, did so before the onslaught. Her portrayal of the virginal Josie “Josie Grossie” Geller, who crochets pillows and talks to turtles in the otherwise by-rote romantic comedy Never Been Kissed, might seem brave in retrospect, whereas a few years later it would be some kind of nerd-o minstrel showcase. Drew stood, more or less alone, among movie stars of her day in nerd aspiration. I met her once or twice and she clearly has the record collection to back it up.
“A real nerd is ashamed to be called a nerd. So please, get real. If you’re not a nerd, don’t call yourself one,” the obese, fidgety, shy Brian P. pleads on Portlandia.
Ultimately it would be love and unity, not hate and division, that would make the best watchdog on Twee culture. Portlandia debuted in January 2011 to send up the affectations, idealism, and pretension of Indie righteousness and the new green-market consumerism better than anything else, in part because its creators—Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, and Jonathan Krisel—hail from the very same world. “The three of us kind of grew up around all of that,” Armisen says of his Indie background. “Every city I’ve ever lived in, that was going on.” The show sometimes blurs the line between broad, almost slapstick humor and seriousness, but it never, ever crosses over into the mean. There are no cheap shots at easy targets. “We like things to be positive,” Armisen says. “That’s al
so a very Punk aesthetic. It’s a positivity that comes directly from Punk rock.” As a linchpin cast member on SNL for nearly a decade, Armisen witnessed time and again how a low-blow joke would land dead with the audience. “No one likes to be bummed out,” he says. “When that happens, you can hear it in the crowd. The more we keep it positive, the more it just makes for a fun workday.”
Portlandia was born, like the best things, from a spirit of “this will never go anywhere.” Armisen would spend his summers off from the late-night show in Portland to be close to his best friend, Carrie Brownstein, who was adjusting to the hiatus of her Punk trio Sleater-Kinney. The two would film clips designed strictly to crack each other up. Sometimes they’d send up some of the locals they encountered every day, such as the proprietors of a local feminist-centric bookshop. The clips were the perfect size to post on YouTube and then forget about until the next idea came along . . . or didn’t.
“One thing leads to the next,” Armisen says of the organic progression that eventually led to the series, now approaching its fourth season. “It’s like you’re in a band and you have a couple of songs and all of a sudden it turns into eight songs and you’ve got enough for an album. Carrie and I wanted to do it for fun. And then someone said, ‘What do you guys think of doing a TV show?’ ‘Oh, yeah, maybe we should do it as a TV show.’” That someone was executive producer Lorne Michaels, who saw the potential in the unconnected series of sketches collected under the umbrella name Thunder Ant. Jonathan Krisel, a film student whose credits include the rapid-fire, low-budget, absurdist Adult Swim hit Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, was also a fan of the video series.
“I was already a huge Sleater-Kinney fan,” Krisel says, “so I was curious to know that Fred and Carrie were friends. That seemed really cool to me, since I only knew her as a musician.” It was the “Feminist Bookstore” sketch, in which Armisen, in drag, plays Candace and Brownstein plays Toni, operators of Women and Women First, that convinced the director the show could work. Candace and Toni’s politics are sound, but only at the expense of their business sense. They never manage to sell a book; they’re too offended by their would-be customers. “Andy Samberg comes in and asks for a book at the feminist bookstore and even though Fred is touching it, he says he can’t reach it. It made me laugh so hard.” The sketches are improvised, but in the hands of Armisen and the surprisingly skilled comedian Brownstein they feel smooth and scripted.
Portlandia is a little like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a little SNL, a little Kids in the Hall, a little The State, but unlike those classic sketch shows, its target has remained focused and it functions in a sort of fixed world: the city of Portland, which is treated as a flawed but noble utopia.
“It’s about people yearning,” says Armisen. “They’re all yearning to do better. To be a better person. A better citizen. There’s a constant sense of ‘We can do this the right way. We can be better. We can make the world a better place.’ I’ve been that way. Carrie feels that way. Of course it’s an uphill battle.” Often the good intentions are wildly misguided, as when the recurring characters Kath and Dave, another of the show’s many couples, free a tied-up dog that turns out to be a beloved family pet.
The perceived affectations of the real Portland, of course, have practical origins.
“Local people made great coffee for their neighborhood, not for franchises but because they valued their four-block radius,” says Krisel. Now that these practices have been adopted by the masses and everywhere is “weird” in the bumper-sticker sense, there’s a theme-park feeling to the city itself. On a recent trip to Portland to do a book reading, I stayed at the Ace Hotel, which was parodied on the show (as the Deuce Hotel). I found a stack of vinyl in my room along with the towels. Walking around the city and observing the old hippies in gray ponytails, the Punk rockers getting drunk in the middle of the day, the pierced bicyclists, the vintage toy shops, it’s as if they all came after the show permeated the culture and not vice versa, and this might make some of the natives a little prickly.
“Oh, no, it’s the opposite,” Armisen, who spends four months of the year in the city, says. “Who knows what happens behind my back, but to my face, everyone’s like, ‘I know this is really Portlandia-ish, but I have this herb garden on my organic farm . . .’ They’re very sweet and proud of it. All I get is the good side. I get handed a lot of business cards. ‘I do this special foot massage with needles . . .’”
In its own way, Portlandia is an artisanal show. It uses, whenever possible, locally sourced real Portlandians, like the aforementioned Brian P., the “actual nerd.” The African-American actor who played (white) Ronald D. Moore, creator of Battlestar Galactica, was merely accompanying his cousin to an audition when he was cast.
Other guests are harvested from the Indie-rock community. To date the show has played host to Aimee Mann, Sarah McLachlan, Eddie Vedder, James Mercer of the Shins, Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, Joanna Newsom, St. Vincent, and Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio, among many other Indie weirdos made major rock stars by Garden State a decade ago. Even ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, a Portland resident and onetime member of Modest Mouse, has appeared.
“I have a theory that all bands have one really funny dude in them who is dying to get in front of the camera,” says Krisel. “Usually their talent is raw and not perfect, but I like putting them in front of the camera to see what happens. My goal in the beginning was very simple. I wanted the show to be something that bands watched on tour. I set my sights on that.”
“That’s just a matter of luck,” says Armisen. “Some of them are just friends of ours.”
When musicians and friends pass through town, either on tour or to visit, Fred and Carrie become ambassadors of a sort. “We take them to dinner and show them around,” Armisen says. This has attracted many movie stars as well. “We just want them to have a good time.”
Sometimes the roles they play (a knot salesman, in the case of Jeff Goldblum) aren’t worked out until the last minute. “We don’t define their characters,” Armisen says. “We just say, ‘Okay, why don’t you be this kind of person.’” It’s the antithesis to the high-pressure, round-the-clock production schedule of just about every other TV show.
And yet Portlandia is not ramshackle. Part of its appeal is its specific detail. Its costume, hair, and makeup staff are spot on, whether it’s applying body-mod earrings to Armisen’s high-strung bike messenger Spyke or underarm hair to Brownstein’s macho Lance. “Costumes and sets are very important,” says Jonathan Krisel. “When Fred and Carrie emerge as the character on the shoot days, we say, ‘Wow, I know that guy.’ Authenticity and attention to detail is important to all of us. We have bulletin boards with pictures of friends and references to real people who inspire the characters. Fred is a master impressionist from SNL, but he also stores people and behavior from all walks of life in his brain.”
Today, of course, everybody knows that guy. You don’t even really need to know the terrain of Portland to know that guy. “We found a show in Quebec that was a shot-for-shot ripoff of Portlandia,” Krisel says, “but in French, and with slightly older actors.”
“I went to Sweden,” Armisen says, “and interviewers kept asking me if I thought it would relate to people in Stockholm. And they just knew it all. I think the world is becoming so small now. Everyone just knows it all.”
All of us, in a way, are now living in a Portlandia sketch. “The show has become synonymous with the absurdity of modern life,” Krisel says, “and that’s an honor.”
So did we win, us bedroom weirdos? The Lambs, did they eat the Tygers? Do we indeed rule the school? The Dream of the ’90s, which stayed alive in Portland for two decades, is now alive everywhere: everywhere is Portlandia, Brooklandia, Tweelandia. Every major city is now a place “where young people go to retire,” as Armisen tells Brownstein in the show’s very first sketch. Everywhere “people were talking about getting piercings and getting tribal tattoos, people talking abo
ut saving the world and forming bands . . .” Is this a good thing? Or is Portlandia nothing more than the music on the deck as the Titanic lurches into the icy drink?
“Our friends and our references are largely nineties. It was an idealistic time that has become the state of affairs now,” Krisel says. “It was revolutionary back then to be vegan—now it’s an option on a menu. The nineties was the war, today is the implementation of those revolutionary demands.”
Epilogue
The Last Donut
2013–Present
There’s an old Mr. Show sketch called “The Last Donut,” in which Bob Odenkirk and David Cross sit in a donut shop straining to have a conversation. Bob is bleeding from his left ear as he offers a donut to David, who wears a scarf and turns up his nose. “I don’t eat donuts, or hamburgers, or any other food that has ‘approval of the masses,’” he says.
Bob asks him if he watched Sanford and Son the previous night.
“I don’t watch television,” David says. “I don’t even own a television.”
Does he want to go to a movie? (“The one about the coupon,” to be specific.)
“I only go and see foreign films.”
Listen to some CDs?
“Please, compact discs blow. People were not meant to hear music with such clarity. People need to hear snaps and pops and that shit. This, my friend, is the only modern piece of equipment I will touch,” David says, putting an old-timey contraption on the tabletop. “It’s a mini Victrola, and it allows me to listen to the only decent music ever committed to vin-yule . . . Just listen . . . it’s so pure it hurts.”
