Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [96]
According to Douglas, “The wise sayings of lunatics, talking animals, children and drunkards are funny because they are not in control; otherwise they would not be an image of the subconscious.”17 By being a comedic jerk, Gob provides an insight into society that might otherwise be missed. We can learn about what is wise, or moral, by listening to those who are funny and out of control. The control in Arrested Development is outside the Bluth family. The Bluths are children, talking animals, drunkards (especially Lucille). They act in ways that upset what is expected, without realizing that they’re creating comedy for the outside viewer. Yet their lack of control, and their many forms of self-contradiction, may help us to laugh at the contradictions in ourselves as well.
So, whether it’s Kant, Nietzsche, or comedy itself, the contradictions of the Bluths afford us insight into ourselves. The only way to learn the lessons of contradiction more thoroughly would involve J. Walter Weatherman, an accident, and a lost arm.
NOTES
1. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1930), p. 44.
2. Ibid., p. 44.
3. Ibid., p. 177.
4. Ibid., p. 216.
5. “Shock and Aww,” season 1, episode 14.
6. Alasdair MacIntyre, A Brief History of Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), p. 198.
7. Immanuel Kant, Foundations for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1985), p. 16.
8. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), p. 86.
9. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 137.
10. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 47.
11. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 203.
12. Mary Douglas, “Jokes,” in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, ed. C. Mukerji and M. Schudson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 296.
13. “Ready, Aim, Marry Me,” season 2, episode 10.
14. Douglas, p. 298.
15. Ibid., p. 301.
16. Ibid., 296.
17. Ibid., 296.
PART SIX
AND ON THE EPILOGUE . . .
Chapter 18
AND NOW THE STORY OF A WEALTHY FAMILY WHO LOST EVERYTHING
Arrested Development, Narrative, and How We Find Meaning
Tyler Shores
Narrating the Bluths: “A Clear-Cut Situation with the Promise of Comedy”
With its unique pseudo-documentary style, pastiche of cutaway scenes, flashbacks, sneak previews,1 and running narrator commentary, Arrested Development presents us with a rather interesting example of television sitcom storytelling. We can appreciate Arrested Development as a show about a wealthy—and deeply flawed—family and what happens when its cozy-yet-ennui-filled lifestyle is turned upside down. Sort of like the opposite of The Beverly Hillbillies. But we also understand Arrested Development as a show about the way in which a television show tells a story.
Part of that distinctive storytelling style is Arrested Development’s clever way of creating order from seeming chaos. Recall, for instance, the complex series of events that led to Buster losing his hand. Many things could have saved that left hand, and kept Buster en route to Iraq. If Gob hadn’t given a seal the taste for mammal flesh (by feeding it cats!), and if he hadn’t then released that flesh-eating, bow-tie wearing seal into the wild—and if Buster hadn’t chosen that exact moment to overcome his lifelong fear of the ocean, and if he hadn’t misinterpreted the warning of “watch out for loose seal” (“watch out for Lucille” should go without saying!). . . . If any one of those things had gone differently, it would have made for a much less interesting episode. In other ways, the show humorously provides us as viewers with a certain sense of assurance amidst the