Grace & Frankie: Netflix shows Hollywood evolving on representation

Firstly, bravo to Netflix for not creating another network show that centers around beautiful young women working as waitresses or successful men womanizing their way to even more success. This show does something that isn’t common in television, and that is have protagonists that we don’t necessarily see ourselves in. It has become old hat for shows to center around a mild anti-hero or an unassuming everyman who wanders into adventure, these characters are familiar and they skew young.  It is a rarity to see women in starring roles, even more rare to find older women, and rarer still to keep them from falling into the stereotype of gentile senior citizen. That isn’t a problem in this Netflix original because after just half an hour it becomes very apparent that Grace & Frankie aren’t exactly Dorothy & Rose from NBC’s The Golden Girls. Grace and Frankie swear (a lot), they take peyote, they work, they’re political, and they’re not just older women (Betty White is 62 during the first season of the Golden Girls, but her character is stated to be 55) but they are old women. Jane Fonda, who stars as Grace, is 80 years old and Lily Tomlin, who stars as Frankie, is 78. 

         But of course Grace & Frankie isn’t about the age of its namesakes, although age plays a not so insignificant role in the show. The premise of the show is Grace’s husband and Frankie’s husband have secretly been homosexual lovers for years and decide to finally leave their respective wives to be with one another. There was a time in our history when being gay was a punchline, it was slapstick and essentially the beginning and end of a joke. Then at some point we transitioned to a period where homosexuality was treated with a stoicism and seriousness that had previously been reserved for films about war, the apex of which I believe was Brokeback Mountain in 2005. This show straddles a reasonable medium, something Modern Family failed to do with their portrayal of a gay couple. Frankie & Grace’s husbands are gay, but that’s not their defining trait in the same way that age does not define Grace & Frankie.

         There’s a concept that has been floated about in sociological circles called “intersectionality”. Recently it’s been co-opted by -insert overzealous ideological movement- to mean any number of things. Intersectionality is partially defined by Oxford as “The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group.” So just for a moment, I’m going to make the point that with marginalized groups it’s important to have media representation but not if that portrayal is as a caricature. Hollywood, for all the liberal values it claims to espouse, has a penchant for promoting stereotypes that aren’t accurate to life and then pat themselves on the back for including groups traditionally left out of media. What is remarkable about Grace & Frankie is that its characters aren’t that remarkable, and while some are gay, female, latino, black, old, and so on, they’re just people. 

         But I digress, if I haven’t made it clear already, I’m thoroughly impressed at Netflix’s ability to create an entertaining program that incorporates age, gender, and sexuality without relying on those traits as crutches. With that being said, it is important for show runners, critics, and activists alike not to do back flips to try to pick apart how shows aren’t sufficiently progressive and therefore are tools of the patriarchy. For all the praise I’ve laid upon Grace & Frankie, there are still critics who pontificate about “whiteness” or “classism”. The editors of the website ma’yan have said the show is “troubling in its normative portrayal of wealth and whiteness”. That might very well be true, but surely just for a moment we can stop and appreciate art for what it is? Every show and movie doesn’t have to center around a working class family comprised of a biracial lesbian couple with a disabled adopted child from Costa Rica, which probably still wouldn’t satisfy some critics. America is a diverse place, rich people and white people exist, their stories are no less important than anyone else’s. An argument can be made that these stories are over represented, but it’s a mistake to think that representation is a zero sum game. We can tell more than one story, and we should.

            Nevertheless, I don’t know that Grace & Frankie will be the show that moves us towards a more open society or if television can even have that effect on us. I can say that Grace & Frankie says a lot about our aspirations for society, and shows the maturation of media as it relates to sensitive subjects like race, age, gender, and sexuality.