Ok, don’t freak out. I like the Gilmore Girls as much as the next 30-something White woman. Promise. I like Lorelai and Rory and life in Stars Hollow. I kinda want to live there myself. I’d eat at Luke’s diner and attend the loveably wacky town meetings, gossip about the will-they/won’t-they of Luke and Lorelai, shop at Doose’s, maybe even have Paris yell at me.
When the entire series was released on Netflix, I decided it would make the perfect companion for my workouts. And I fell hard for those Gilmore Girls right from the start. Small town life, quirky characters, romance, innocence and entirely surmountable conflict. It practically made me wish I had gotten knocked up at 16 if it meant I’d have the life and verbal skills of Lorelai Gilmore.
But by the end of the second season, the portrayals of people of color on the show, scanty though they may be, were getting harder and harder for me to overlook as I got swept away in the small town politics and social life of Stars Hollow. I’m guessing a lot of you are scratching your heads and racking your brains, trying to remember if there was some sort of lynching or cross-burning on the WB that you missed.
Here’s the thing: that’s not what racism typically looks like now. Well, it does sometimes, but not as often. Racism nowadays is somewhat different. In some ways I think it might be even more insidious now than it was 80 years ago because it’s gone even further underground. It’s practically invisible to the dominant (read: White) culture, enabling us to sit back with our excellent healthcare, our smart kids, and countless other benefits of Whiteness, all the while patting ourselves on the back for allowing a Black man into the oval office once.
I think most of us mean well. I really do. But if you don’t see racism in our country today it’s because you aren’t paying attention. So circling back to the Gilmore Girls, if watched with a critical eye, there are several things that are problematic with the show’s cast of characters but they are usually overlooked or undetected by the casual White observer.
A quick review of the characters in question…
Michel
This is the show’s only Black character, as of Season 2. He is the concierge at the Inn where Lorelei works and his character is an uptight, high maintenance, rude, feminine but hetero (not so hetero by the revival), irritable snob. He speaks with an exaggerated French Canadian accent and his short scenes presumably provide a comic counterpoint to the other characters’ main plot lines.
Mrs. Kim & Lane
Korean-American mother and daughter. Lane, 16, is best friend to Rory Gilmore. She is the stereotypical 2nd generation kid who just wants to “be normal,” like Rory. Her mother, Mrs. Kim, is an uber-conservative Christian Adventist who forbids Lane to listen to music, talk to boys, or eat anything but her hyper-healthy offerings. She is insanely strict. She speaks with a heavy accent and comes across as harsh and clueless at the same time.
And…
Oh wait, that’s it. There aren’t any others. Well, there is Gypsy, the mechanic, who checks out the car Dean built for Rory. In the show, she is what you might call racially ambiguous (Latina, maybe?) but she, too, speaks with a heavy, over-the-top accent. Her english makes her sound dumb, although she is obviously intelligent enough to inspect a car built from scratch. But she has only the very occasional scene, so we’ll keep our focus on Michel and Mrs. Kim/Lane.
They aren’t characters
The problem with those characters is that they aren’t characters. They’re caricatures.
According to the Oxford English dictionary, a caricature is:
“an imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.”
Mrs. Kim is so over-the-top, so insane, so intense. Her character is indeed a grotesque exaggeration of a stereotypical Asian immigrant parent. Michel (who admittedly grows on viewers as the show progresses), while not what one would call “stereotypical Black” is likewise entirely outlandish. He is so petty, so snobbish, so rude. Both characters are at once unbelievable and entirely one-dimensional.
There are, of course, other characters on the show that are largely one-dimensional as well. Ms. Patty, the flamboyant dance teacher, for example. Or Babette the cat lady who lives in that weird house with her strange husband. But see, the difference is that those characters are portrayed as charming. A little out there, maybe, but overall lovable and endearing. Not so with Michel and Mrs. Kim. They aren’t remotely like-able in the first few seasons, either one. But we aren’t meant to like them. We’re meant to loathe them. They are portrayed as less real and therefore less relatable. Less human.
Lane is like-able but only because she wants to be like Rory and the other “normal American teenagers.” We root for her and pray she can pull a fast one on her mom because she wants to be like us! She wants to ditch the Korean doctor set ups and listen to rock & roll and kiss boys. Her Korean-ness isn’t to be celebrated or even explored. It’s to be escaped.
The Repetition Principle
In the case of the Gilmore Girls it could be argued that this was all mere coincidence. And that may well be. But the reason it’s problematic is because it’s something that has been repeated regularly on TV and in the movies for decades. Screenwriters and marketers are the modern day story-tellers and the story of Michel & Mrs. Kim is one that is repeated again and again and again.
Repetition Principle tells us that if something happens often enough, we will eventually be persuaded. If we are shown a particular depiction of something often enough, even if we disagree with it, we will eventually be persuaded to believe what we see. No one is immune to this. So if we allow these grotesque exaggerations to go unchecked, if we continue to puff up these portrayals of characters we love to hate, if we continue to tell these un-true stories about people of color, we will eventually be persuaded to believe them — when maybe all we really wanted was something entertaining to distract us on the treadmill.
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Nancy Myers Rust is a writer and ghostwriter living in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two young boys. She writes about the intersections of faith, race, gender and culture.