The Good Place
The Good Place
"In America, everyone does whatever they want [and] society did break down. It's terrible, and it's great. You only look out for number one [and] scream at whoever disagrees with you. There are no bees because they all died, and if you need surgery, you just beg for money on the internet. It's a perfect system."
- Eleanor Shellstrop, The Good Place
One of my favorite shows on television right now is NBC's "The Good Place." It's a hilarious satire of life in the U.S. and an imagining of the afterlife as illustrated through philosophical principles. Like the subject of philosophy itself, the show grapples with questions of morality and how one truly becomes a good person. The basic premise of the show is that the four main characters, Eleanor, Tahani, Jason and Chidi, are humans that died on Earth and went to "The Good Place." However, they eventually discover that they are being psychologically tortured in an alternate version of the Bad Place as they learn about the afterlife universe, including demons and the actual Bad Place. Philosophical theories (created by dead white men) serve as plot points and vehicles in the show, including the famous Trolley problem. I recognize some of them from my undergraduate Intro to Ethics class, which I found super interesting too. Philosophy professors and experts even serve as consultants on the show.
I enjoy that the main character, Eleanor Shellstrop, is a white-American woman that is unabashedly terrible or as she words it, an "Arizona dirtbag." She is the anti-heroine of all the humans sent to The Bad Place and the one that most embodies the concept of a bad person. This is a stark contrast to the archetypal characterization of white women as pure, virginal, innocent victims at risk of being harmed, one that still serves to criminalize people of color today. Her antics both on Earth (as we are shown in flash backs) and in the afterlife are a source of hilarity on the show. It is through said flashbacks that we discover why and how Eleanor, Tahani and Jason became the people that they are: they were shaped by their parents and life circumstances. Eleanor became a notoriously horrible person because her parents were horrible people that abused and neglected her and this taught her not to care about other people and to only look out for herself. I loved this plotline because of the truth it holds: we are all shaped by our life circumstances and we become who we are based on them and other factors. So how can anyone be judged as inherently good or bad? The humans discover that the afterlife's algorithm for sending humans to the Good Place or the Bad Place is broken and no human has gone to the Good Place in over 500 years. So, it becomes the humans' goal to evolve into better people, earn their places in the Good Place and create a new system for placing humans that acknowledges their capacity for change.
Among Eleanor's comrades are Chidi Anagonye, a Nigerian philosophy professor who grew up in Senegal, Jason Mendoza, a lovable doofus and hottie from Florida (I may or may not have a crush on Manny Jacinto) and Tahani Al-Jamil, a British Pakistani socialite and heiress obsessed with status (I may or may not have a girl crush on actress Jameela Jamil for being an amazing activist). The appearance of Jacinto and Jamil in The Good Place has been lauded as much-needed representation of Asian actors in Hollywood. Jacinto's character Jason is considered a send-up of the model minority myth because he is a hot jock/airhead as opposed to a highly intelligent and nerdy character. Jameela Jamil brings body diversity to the show along with her acting chops: she is a tall, brown-skinned woman with a relatively curvy body (representation matters!). Nothing compares to Jameela Jamil in real life though (I recommend following her social media accounts). She is an outspoken activist for body acceptance and regularly impresses with her ability to learn, grow and her willingness to center people more marginalized than her including fat, Black, disabled women among others. Jameela Jamil, like her character, is South Asian and hails from Britain, where she developed anorexia as a teenager because of society and the media's emphasis on thin women. After recovering from anorexia, she later fell ill and took a medication that caused her to gain weight: this lead to her public crucification by the British media (Jamil started out as a TV and radio presenter before traveling to America and landing her role on The Good Place). What I love most about Jamil is that although she was able to return to her original, straight-size, she hasn't forgotten what it was like to be overweight and how she was treated. She fights for other people to this day and that is really admirable. *Edit: It recently came to my attention that Jamil allegedly plagiarized the sentiments of plus-size Black British blogger Stephanie Yeboah in building her body neutrality activism and iWeigh platform. She recently took a high-profile position as a judge on a vogueing competition show, a position that should have gone to a member of the Black and Latinx trans vogueing community. These are mistakes that she should apologize for and rectify on her journey of growth.
Other representations in the show include Maya Rudolph, a biracial Black woman/actress as a God-like character and Nicole Byers, a plus-size Black woman/comedian as an employee of the actual Good Place. What I noticed about the episode in which we partially see the actual Good Place, is that many of the employees/residents are plus-size. I like the idea that this imagery fosters: that plus-size people are not only equal human beings, but integral to the operation of the Good Place in the afterlife. Other than this, it appears that the afterlife is largely operated and controlled by white folk. This is only worrisome because we are living in a world that was largely colonized by this group and that is also largely being destroyed by wealthy corporations run by members of this group (The Good Place's quandary has been summarized as the impossibility of ethical consumption under capitalism). But as Janet (the neutral robot-like being operating the fake Good Place and then aiding the four humans) states in the last episode of season 3: "If there were an answer I could give you to how the universe works, it wouldn't be special...it would just be a big, dumb food processor." Only time will tell.
Among Eleanor's comrades are Chidi Anagonye, a Nigerian philosophy professor who grew up in Senegal, Jason Mendoza, a lovable doofus and hottie from Florida (I may or may not have a crush on Manny Jacinto) and Tahani Al-Jamil, a British Pakistani socialite and heiress obsessed with status (I may or may not have a girl crush on actress Jameela Jamil for being an amazing activist). The appearance of Jacinto and Jamil in The Good Place has been lauded as much-needed representation of Asian actors in Hollywood. Jacinto's character Jason is considered a send-up of the model minority myth because he is a hot jock/airhead as opposed to a highly intelligent and nerdy character. Jameela Jamil brings body diversity to the show along with her acting chops: she is a tall, brown-skinned woman with a relatively curvy body (representation matters!). Nothing compares to Jameela Jamil in real life though (I recommend following her social media accounts). She is an outspoken activist for body acceptance and regularly impresses with her ability to learn, grow and her willingness to center people more marginalized than her including fat, Black, disabled women among others. Jameela Jamil, like her character, is South Asian and hails from Britain, where she developed anorexia as a teenager because of society and the media's emphasis on thin women. After recovering from anorexia, she later fell ill and took a medication that caused her to gain weight: this lead to her public crucification by the British media (Jamil started out as a TV and radio presenter before traveling to America and landing her role on The Good Place). What I love most about Jamil is that although she was able to return to her original, straight-size, she hasn't forgotten what it was like to be overweight and how she was treated. She fights for other people to this day and that is really admirable. *Edit: It recently came to my attention that Jamil allegedly plagiarized the sentiments of plus-size Black British blogger Stephanie Yeboah in building her body neutrality activism and iWeigh platform. She recently took a high-profile position as a judge on a vogueing competition show, a position that should have gone to a member of the Black and Latinx trans vogueing community. These are mistakes that she should apologize for and rectify on her journey of growth.
Other representations in the show include Maya Rudolph, a biracial Black woman/actress as a God-like character and Nicole Byers, a plus-size Black woman/comedian as an employee of the actual Good Place. What I noticed about the episode in which we partially see the actual Good Place, is that many of the employees/residents are plus-size. I like the idea that this imagery fosters: that plus-size people are not only equal human beings, but integral to the operation of the Good Place in the afterlife. Other than this, it appears that the afterlife is largely operated and controlled by white folk. This is only worrisome because we are living in a world that was largely colonized by this group and that is also largely being destroyed by wealthy corporations run by members of this group (The Good Place's quandary has been summarized as the impossibility of ethical consumption under capitalism). But as Janet (the neutral robot-like being operating the fake Good Place and then aiding the four humans) states in the last episode of season 3: "If there were an answer I could give you to how the universe works, it wouldn't be special...it would just be a big, dumb food processor." Only time will tell.
Comments
Post a Comment