So I finally got around to watching Portlandia.
People kept yapping about it on Facebook, and based on the name and the people who were doing that talking about it, I figured I would have less than zero interest in it. Then a friend told me it had ruined Washed Out for her, because now she can’t help thinking of Carrie Brownstein whenever she hears it, and I was like “whaa???” So I watched the first three episodes.
It’s totally unbearable. It’s as if someone turned one of those stupid books of the “Hipster Handbook” or “What White People Like” ilk into a script. Beyond that, the conceit of the show of constantly ridiculing this imagined place of people who don’t work and “sleep until 11” comes off as totally disingenuous. On the one hand, it totally ignores the class issue of perhaps why, if these rumors are true, it might be possible for such a place to exist (people living off of their parents money). And, on the other hand, coming from people who were once involved in the “indie scene” that in the very first episode the show claims this new reality is descended from, you wonder what sort of animosity they must harbor towards people that can continue to live the kind of lifestyle that presumably they once enjoyed before becoming wrapped up in whatever sort of “creative class” jobs they have to constantly be doing in order to afford all of the electronic devices that are preceded by a lower case “i” and the accompanying monthly bills that support them that in the first or second episode they make jokes about being overloaded by.
This show seems to be made for people who, once having been financially coddled by their parents into becoming accustomed to a certain luxury-laden lifestyle, become embittered when they’re no longer able to sustain that lifestyle without having to “leave the fantasy of the 90’s behind” (ie: when they were teenagers/in their early 20’s) and get jobs. As a final criticism, seeing the two of them dressed up as Japanese tourists visiting “Coffee Land” and enacting racial stereotypes was not only fairly offensive, but it was hugely unimaginative and not even remotely funny. What are these people thinking?
In other news, Kurt finally is getting it on with his hunky friend on Glee. I wonder how long that will last before tragedy befalls the young lovers?
In yet other news, a friend of mine decided to buy a new giant HD television, and along with it he bought Planet Earth on Bluray. Planet Earth was probably one of the greatest things on television during my life. I very much look forward to watching the entire show over and over and over again. It’s sort of amusing to me, because I’d recently been thinking about how much I wanted to watch the show, and while I was doing my laundry stopped in a nearby video store to see what they had, and inside they were watching Planet Earth… something must be in the air (Gaia?).
If you don’t live here, you don’t get it. Parent’s money isn’t needed, Portland is cheap, therefore people have to do very little in order to get by. Hence all the free time left over to idealize and daydream.