2 Broke Girls is an American sitcom about two white girls working in a diner in Brooklyn and their interactions with various characters of differing backgrounds. The show has received a lot of criticism for being racist, by perpetuating racist stereotypes. For example an Asian-American character Han Lee represents a very reductive caricature of small, child-like, sexless, broken-English speaking, greedy immigrant. The show’s creator Michael Patrick King defends the show by saying it’s an equal opportunity offender. But why does offending everyone as opposed to offending just one group, make it okay?
Going back to our lecture about the racial politics of comedy, I decided to put this show through the test.
Firstly, who is telling the joke? Michael Patrick King, a white homosexual male (I mention his sexual orientation because he uses it as a defence later on) He is telling these jokes through two white women. So immediately the humour is coming from a place of power and privilege compared to the object of the humour: non-white characters embodying negative stereotypes and jokes that revolve around further ridiculing these stereotypes. Aside from Han Lee’s qualities above, there’s also the predatory Ukrainian, Oleg, overly sexual and cannot look at a woman without making some sleazy, sexist remark.
Straightaway King’s targeted audience (white Americans, ratings show college males as the largest demographic) is prompted to laugh at, not with these caricatures who are never offered a chance to retort or challenge the jokes they are essentially always the butt of. The jokes do not promote understanding nor do they affirm the identity of these marginalised groups. There’s no engagement with racial politics and the jokes seem to fulfil the sole purpose of being “funny” and “edgy”. There seems to be no cross-over appeal in fact it caused an uproar in Australia last year when an offensive joke was made about Aboriginals. The show also offensively reaffirms negative stereotypes in the way in which the non-white, one-dimensional characters just “take it.” This is regressive comedy at it’s finest.
Yes, the show does make fun of the white characters too, sexist and blonde jokes abound, my problem with this type of equal opportunity offending though, is that the two white characters always have a snappy retort to challenge an otherwise offensive joke in a sassy, empowered way. They’re more multidimensional and represent more than just their stereotypes. While they are the main characters of the show, you’d think that by the 5th season, King would have been able to flesh out his side characters a bit more.
The problem here is that King doesn’t think he’s doing anything regressive. When questioned about the appropriateness of his jokes he responded with "I'm gay! I'm putting in gay stereotypes every week! I don't find it offensive, any of this. I find it comic to take everybody down, which is what we are doing." It almost seems like King sees himself as an insider with Oleg and Han Lee. But I don’t think being marginalised in one aspect merits membership into all marginalised groups. While it’s easy to forget your white privilege when you don’t have straight privilege, it doesn’t mean it’s not still there and you are still benefiting from it.
Overall, I think 2 Broke Girls is a very regressive sitcom whose jokes only serve to entrench racial stereotypes while very debatably being somewhat progressive toward white, blonde, brunette and maaaaybe sexist stereotypes. Not only is the creator’s “equal opportunity” offence not equal in that he only allows the white characters to fight back, but also in his inability (or refusal) to separate his white privilege from his homosexual non-privilege, in recognising that when it comes to race, he is not an insider.
Sources and further reading: (or just google "2 Broke Girls stereotype")
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