![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This morning, as I was consuming my coffee, I was flipping through the TV channels, and came across an episode of Saved By The Bell: The College Years, an ouvre largely unfamiliar to me. That particular episode revolved around everyone taking a Cultural Anthropology class. Zack only takes the class so that he can be in the class with some girl he likes. The professor notices this and tells Zack that he has a lot to learn, but if he thinks he is so smart, he can be off the hook for the rest of the semester: if he presents the professor with a scientific explanation of what women want, he won't have to come to class and he'll get a B for the course. Of course, Zack jumps at the opportunity and learns something in the process.
Watching it, I got to thinking: why is Anthropology so frequently portrayed on TV as the college class freshmen take, where there is "symbolic" correspondence between what they learn in school and their own experiences. Then it hit me: anthropology classes, in TV-land insane imaginary of my discipline, is like a narrative proxy for issues of mating. Romance, courtship, sexuality, infidelity, all get conveniently explored in the context of I-am-not-anthropology-but-I-play-one-on-TV educational endeavors.
TV "exoticizes" anthropology in the same way that proto-ethnographers, once upon a time, exoticized the indigenous peoples they were describing. The TV version of anthropology is insane because it's like, this pre-Boas discipline, presented as a science, and taught exclusively by eccentric, extremely unprofessional young & hot professors who are all somehow deviant.
Here is, to the best of my recollection, the "classroom" scene from the Saved by the Bell episode:
The professor is talking about how every culture has a courting ritual. He asks Zack and some blonde girl he is pursuing to come down to the front of the auditorium for a demonstration. He tells Zack to succesfully woo the girl [see above re: unprofessional], but "like primitive people, he can't use language." Zack then struts around the girl, who is pissed at him for kissing Kelly, and the professor notes: "She is not interested. She is thinking that there are plenty of better choices in her own tribe." Based on this, the professor tells Zack that he has to learn a lot about women, and that's how the deal described above transpires. Zack then uses the project as an excuse to get girls' phone numbers (his project is "interviewing" girls on a camera that Screech is wielding), but then he learns a lesson, which is that women want different things. Just like guys. After this amazing scientific insight, the professor keeps his promise, gives him a B and tells him he does not have to come to class for the rest of the semester. Zack says "if I give you the girls' swimming team footage, will you raise it to an A?" The professor seems torn, but then says "don't push it."
The episode concludes by the professor getting ready to start the class, looking homoerotically forlornly at Zack's empty seat, sighing that "I guess everyone who is going to be here is here." But THEN Zack walks in, and the professor beams.
I think later in the season the professor dates Kelly. Who is his student.
Furthermore, all this made me think of my favorite 90210 character ever, Lucinda Nicholson, the ABD student in anthropology who has an affair with Brandon, and also tries to seduce Dylan to get money for her film. Her research is all vaguely concerned with sexuality and polygamy, which is reified by her (it is implied in a self-serving way) as a "healthier" and "more natural" primitive outlook. Lucinda Nicholson is the perfect embodiment of the American cultural stereotypes about female anthropologists: they have an "exotic" aura, and are a weird amalgam of feminist and postfeminist which translates into sexually liberated/promiscuous and ambitious/bitches. Brandon first meets Lucinda at the gym; he gets fascinated with her trips to exotic places like Central America, her collection of Melonesian wines, her several strategically tossed indigenous terms, and her philosophy of polyamory that seems to stem from either cultural relativism or naturalistic fallacy (unclear, because as I mentioned before, TV tends to treat cultural anthropology as a science). Lucinda also teaches an anthropology class that Brenda and Kelly and Andrea enroll in, which is tinted with the aura of vagino-feminism and, like, quilts. First of all, if they all are at a university, there is no way that they would be in a class so small (12 people?) Even my graduate seminars are larger. Second of all, it's very doubtful that an ABD student would teach her own full course. Not inconcievable, but unlikely. She would be more likely to T.A., doing a section of a large class. But noooo, it's her class on the show. Her class which is her platform for second-wave-type waxing about the beauty of polyamory. And she's so exotic with her tanktops and wild curly hair. All subtle implications that she learned a little something from those polyamorous savages and now she is a real Amazon woman in the sack. And although her affair with Brandon isn't strictly unprofessional, since Brandon isn't one of her students, because her students don't have penises, it's still portrayed as deviant because she is married. Because she is not tortured and guilty about cheating on her husband. She's all epicurean and original sin about it.
Don't get me wrong, I really, really loved Lucinda. And for about 5 minutes she was actually an interesting character. Of course, in the end she was written as a money-grubbing, ball-busting ho. That always made me sad.
Watching it, I got to thinking: why is Anthropology so frequently portrayed on TV as the college class freshmen take, where there is "symbolic" correspondence between what they learn in school and their own experiences. Then it hit me: anthropology classes, in TV-land insane imaginary of my discipline, is like a narrative proxy for issues of mating. Romance, courtship, sexuality, infidelity, all get conveniently explored in the context of I-am-not-anthropology-but-I-play-one-on-TV educational endeavors.
TV "exoticizes" anthropology in the same way that proto-ethnographers, once upon a time, exoticized the indigenous peoples they were describing. The TV version of anthropology is insane because it's like, this pre-Boas discipline, presented as a science, and taught exclusively by eccentric, extremely unprofessional young & hot professors who are all somehow deviant.
Here is, to the best of my recollection, the "classroom" scene from the Saved by the Bell episode:
The professor is talking about how every culture has a courting ritual. He asks Zack and some blonde girl he is pursuing to come down to the front of the auditorium for a demonstration. He tells Zack to succesfully woo the girl [see above re: unprofessional], but "like primitive people, he can't use language." Zack then struts around the girl, who is pissed at him for kissing Kelly, and the professor notes: "She is not interested. She is thinking that there are plenty of better choices in her own tribe." Based on this, the professor tells Zack that he has to learn a lot about women, and that's how the deal described above transpires. Zack then uses the project as an excuse to get girls' phone numbers (his project is "interviewing" girls on a camera that Screech is wielding), but then he learns a lesson, which is that women want different things. Just like guys. After this amazing scientific insight, the professor keeps his promise, gives him a B and tells him he does not have to come to class for the rest of the semester. Zack says "if I give you the girls' swimming team footage, will you raise it to an A?" The professor seems torn, but then says "don't push it."
The episode concludes by the professor getting ready to start the class, looking homoerotically forlornly at Zack's empty seat, sighing that "I guess everyone who is going to be here is here." But THEN Zack walks in, and the professor beams.
I think later in the season the professor dates Kelly. Who is his student.
Furthermore, all this made me think of my favorite 90210 character ever, Lucinda Nicholson, the ABD student in anthropology who has an affair with Brandon, and also tries to seduce Dylan to get money for her film. Her research is all vaguely concerned with sexuality and polygamy, which is reified by her (it is implied in a self-serving way) as a "healthier" and "more natural" primitive outlook. Lucinda Nicholson is the perfect embodiment of the American cultural stereotypes about female anthropologists: they have an "exotic" aura, and are a weird amalgam of feminist and postfeminist which translates into sexually liberated/promiscuous and ambitious/bitches. Brandon first meets Lucinda at the gym; he gets fascinated with her trips to exotic places like Central America, her collection of Melonesian wines, her several strategically tossed indigenous terms, and her philosophy of polyamory that seems to stem from either cultural relativism or naturalistic fallacy (unclear, because as I mentioned before, TV tends to treat cultural anthropology as a science). Lucinda also teaches an anthropology class that Brenda and Kelly and Andrea enroll in, which is tinted with the aura of vagino-feminism and, like, quilts. First of all, if they all are at a university, there is no way that they would be in a class so small (12 people?) Even my graduate seminars are larger. Second of all, it's very doubtful that an ABD student would teach her own full course. Not inconcievable, but unlikely. She would be more likely to T.A., doing a section of a large class. But noooo, it's her class on the show. Her class which is her platform for second-wave-type waxing about the beauty of polyamory. And she's so exotic with her tanktops and wild curly hair. All subtle implications that she learned a little something from those polyamorous savages and now she is a real Amazon woman in the sack. And although her affair with Brandon isn't strictly unprofessional, since Brandon isn't one of her students, because her students don't have penises, it's still portrayed as deviant because she is married. Because she is not tortured and guilty about cheating on her husband. She's all epicurean and original sin about it.
Don't get me wrong, I really, really loved Lucinda. And for about 5 minutes she was actually an interesting character. Of course, in the end she was written as a money-grubbing, ball-busting ho. That always made me sad.
