Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [78]
It’s difficult to pick a winner in many of the categories. If, for example, one values fruitfulness above all, the JTIT looks attractive. The government’s desire to find WMDs, for instance, would make them apt to accept his theory. Kuhn certainly realizes that it will be rare that one theory wins in every category and that the victories may be slim. He also recognizes that some people will value some criteria over others. He is not, however, willing to rank the criteria or make a more complex metric of theory choice. At the end of the day, one just needs to know he or she is “looking at balls.”
Who Knows What Balls Look Like?
Having established some basic ground rules for how to tell whether you are looking at something through the right theoretical lenses and thus what we know, it is worth exploring who actually knows what they’re looking at. Who we accept as knowing about things—who we accept as a privileged knower—is an important question. Scientists, lawyers and, yes, even philosophers often fill this role. TV critics are supposed to know what is worth watching, but we may privilege critics as knowers and still not listen to them. TV audiences failed to listen to TV critics’ supposed sage opinions about the necessity of watching our beloved Arrested Development, for example.
Wayne Jarvis is a government lawyer and this makes him a privileged knower, able to mobilize the U.S. government and military in short order. Barry Zuckerkorn’s role as a lawyer should make him a privileged knower, but his incompetence and idiocy undermine his position. Just think of his unfamiliarity with the plea bargain and his failure to remove the ding-dong from its foil wrapper prior to microwaving it. In “Sad Sack,” though, Zuckerkorn’s sexual proclivities make him a privileged knower. The show frequently teases Zuckerkorn for his sexual experimentation. In “Justice Is Blind,” for instance, when Michael suggests that the plea is so long that Barry was right not to read it and that they should just take it, Barry responds, “I could kiss you on the nuts.” And in “Motherboy XXX,” Zuckerkorn talks about catching a judge at a drag club. Gob then asks him what he was doing there. It’s his familiarity with male genitalia that makes Zuckerkorn the privileged knower in this scenario, just as his role as a lawyer would make him a privileged knower in most scenarios (if he were a competent lawyer)
Of course, if it were enough to know a pair of testicles to become a privileged knower of photographs of testicles, then George Michael could have been the hero. Even though George Michael may recognize the image in the photograph, he doesn’t offer a theory that explains it. Indeed, George Michael is the opposite of a privileged knower in “Sad Sack.” Wearing prescription glasses that he doesn’t need, George Michael is stuck in a skeptical moment where he cannot assume any knowledge. In one of a few episodes where he has privileged knowledge, he’s unable to articulate even the most basic statement of facts. One’s epistemic position, then, is a social position. Knowing things isn’t enough to make you a knower. Zuckerkorn may be the one who recognizes the balls and creates the theory, but it takes numerous government agencies to accept the theory and the mass media to proliferate it. Zuckerkorn alone, then, is not recognized as a knower until his knowledge is corroborated and disseminated. In Arrested Development, knowledge is societal and political.
In the Absence of Opie (Sorry, Ron)
I’ve referred to Arrested Development’s narrator “Opie,” a reference to Ron Howard’s childhood role as Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show. Likewise, Barry Zuckerkorn’s jumping a shark recalls his earlier role as the Fonz on Happy Days. The humor in Barry’s jumping the shark relies on the viewer being familiar with the actor Henry Winkler’s previous roles and the actions of his character on a decades-old