Weeds: The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side

Weeds, Showtime’s hit serial dramady created by female writer and director Jenji Kohan, now on its 5th season, is bold in its negations of race, class, and gender related issues by firmly reinforcing painfully familiar stereotypes related to both race and class, while determinedly challenging hegemonic discourse in relation to female gender and sexuality as it tells about the life of a widowed, upper-middle class, mother who turns to selling pot as a means of maintaining the cookie cutter suburbanite lifestyle she was left upon her husband’s premature death.

Not Everyone’s Laughing: Weeds Season 2, Episode 1

TV, like all media, acts as a forum for the discussion, interpretation, creation, and reinforcement of the cultural, political, and social norms and ideologies that permeate every aspect of our society. From negotiating gender roles and expectancies to creating and reinforcing racial stereotypes, the content that we see on TV can play a major role in how the members of a society create and understand their relationships with each other.

Many scholars argue that in order to properly analyze the content of a media text, we must first consider those that are responsible for the production of that piece of media. For example, when we look to make meaning of African-American representation in mass media we must consider how much creative input African Americans actually had in the creation of that projects content. Would Amos and Andy have been written differently if there had been a black director or producer signed on to the show? Did the Cosby Show escape criticism regarding its African American media representations simply because the show’s content was largely controlled by Bill Cosby, an African American.

Finally, we can not simply look to the production and content of a media text, but we must also pay close attention to the audience that these texts are aimed at entertaining as well as those that are successfully reached.

Weeds is bold in its negations of race, class, and gender related issues by firmly reinforcing painfully familiar stereotypes related to both race and class, while determinedly challenging hegemonic discourse in relation to female gender and sexuality.

Though this episode of Weeds presents its viewers with a lot to unpack regarding its the negotiation of racial roles and stereotypes, if one thing is for sure, it does not make any effort to disguise the racial stereotypes that are in play. Instead, the show uses humor to draw attention to the conceptions about certain races that much of white middle class society shares. An important question to ask however is, does Weeds use humor to combat these played out cookie cutter prejudices about race or do its jokes simply reinforce them. For one, although the show takes place in Southern California, a place highly populated with culturally rich Hispanic communities, the only Latino presence in this episode is that of housekeepers. In addition, when Nancy gets upset that her housekeeper Lupita wont clean the dishes, she threatens to find a new housekeeper, as if housekeepers are disposable utensils...like paper towels.

The representations of African Americans on Weeds proves to be no more complex, showing an adherence to tired racial stereotype that have damaged the African American community for decades. The Black representation on the show thus far is made up of Conrad, a pot growing mastermind who was shot in the leg by his mother as a child, Helia, Conrad’s strong and stern Aunt who heads her own pot dealing operation, and Helia’s daughter, an unmarried, pregnant, teenager who also has her hands tied up in the drug game. It is no coincidence that the White, upper-middle class Nancy has to look to Conrad and Helia for lessons in dealing drugs. The show communicates a reality that because Conrad and Helia are black, they have some implicit knowledge about how to sell drugs. If Nancy is to succeed in her drug dealings, she is to do as Conrad and Helia advise, for they are all knowing and potentially dangerous, while Nancy is to be understood as harmless and naive. In the same, Helia’s unwed, pregnant daughter is not presented as some sort of conflict for any of the characters involved, but instead the audience is to understand her situation as one so obvious and typical of the black community that no mediation or intervention of any type need be mentioned.

The problem with the way in which Weeds goes about dealing with racial representations in its content has as much to do with its content as it does with its production and consumption. Despite the high visibility of both black and Latin characters on the show, such a presence is entirely lacking on the production side of things. With no black or Latin voice behind the shows production, the show’s creator Jengi Kohan is left to impose her white, upper class, and largely hegemonic gaze within her episodes.

Yet another thing that we must consider is who, as an audience, is consuming this programming. Though being on the premium cable network Showtime is the primary reason that Weeds is permitted to produce much of the darker, racier content that has lead to its popularity, it is this very fact that generates very narrow boundaries for its potential viewership. Premium cable television is a luxury good in its truest sense of the word, and as a result, its primary consumers tend to be White, middle to upper middle class members of society.

The conflict here is that while Weeds attempts to create humor and entertainment through its employment of such run of the mill stereotypes, it fails to ask an audience that may not have regular interactions with minority communities to question, object, or even contemplate the damaging content that it imparts.

Weeds' Viewers on the Fence: An Ethnographic Analysis

As audiences follow Nancy’s illegal drug dealing antics, questionable mothering tactics, and her perennial mission to maintain a picture perfect, white, upper-middle class lifestyle they are forced to ask themselves about the implications of the show’s representations of sexuality, gender, and race in every episode.

However, the most interesting question to ask in regards to the shows perception is does the employment of humor in dealing with socially and politically volatile material like racism, sexuality, and adult responsibilities sufficiently prompt audiences to question the legitimacy of such content, or does it simple help to reinforce these potentially harmful ideas?

To get a better understanding of how the shows material is being interpreted by its viewers I conducted a screening of two of the shows episodes followed first by a round table discussion and then by more personal, one on one interviews with each participant. In addition I looked to the Internet Movie Data Base for audience's opinions and reactions from around the country.

Many that liked the show cited its violation of norms, conventions, and correctness as its appeal, while others point it its display of “cultural taboos,” and “left-wing,” “pro-ganja” attitudes.

Those that dislike the show cite a reliance on “tired, clichéd, and formulaic” representations of female sexuality as well as race. One viewer voiced her “fear for those who aren’t able to distinguish stereotypes from reality, and good decisions from bad.”

One IMDB user asked, "Would it kill them to have a lawyer or doctor that is a minority? Or at least someone who can string together a full sentence, without using a swear word?" He concluded by saying, "In the end it's just hard to tolerate preaching," about one-dimensional, liberal, and progressive attitudes, "from a show so flawed in so many ways... It's clear that they do not have many writers of color on staff."

Those that love the show are able to connect with and sympathize for Nancy's mission to raise her two boys in the comfortable suburban lifestyle that her husband left them. They find humor and progress in the shows dealings with taboo subject matter and challenging of certain norms. Others find Weeds to be formulaic, one-dimensional, and offensive in more ways than one. And still others find themselves internally torn between wanting to like what is in many ways a unique and entertaining program and, in other ways a potentially harmful reinforcement of damaging stereotypes and generally bad behaviour.

Hung Up on Weeds’ Formula for Success? An Intertextual Comparison

The premium cable television networks HBO and Showtime compete for subscribers by constantly trying to find edgy, innovative concepts for their original programming. However, sometimes the success of one network’s programming has been enough to spark the creation of a similar media text from their rival.

After five seasons of Weeds’ great success, HBO has come up with their own dramady sitcom that follows a similar formula. Having just finished its first season, Hung is a show that also explores the lengths that people are willing go and the social norms that they are willing to violate when economic times get tough.

Hung is about a former high school basketballs star Ray Drecker, played by Thomas Jane, who is in his early forties and is struggling as a divorced, down on his luck, high school coach. When times get really tough, Ray turns to male prostitution in hopes of earning enough money to pay his bills, fix his house, and convince his ex-wife that he is fit to share the custody of their two children.

Weeds and Hung hold similarities in that they both explore the lives of single parents willing to live on the fringe of society in order to maintain a facade of suburban normality. The similarities between the two shows are tied to this ironic dichotomy between maintaining the appearance of normality and the unconventional means by which they do so.

What is most interesting about Weeds’ story line is the extent of the sacrifices that Nancy is willing to make in order maintain the trivial comforts of the suburban ideal. Rather than finding a real, honest, nonetheless legal job, Nancy chooses to break the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior by becoming a drug dealer. While she maintains that she is making a sacrifice for her family by working in the dark margins of society, the reality is that she chooses to sell drugs over making reasonable and pragmatic concessions in the lavish lifestyle that she attempts to maintain.

A central theme to Weeds’ story line is that no matter what burden dealing drugs places on Nancy or her family, her sacrifices are justified so long as the appearance of her lifestyle remains the unchanged.

HBO’s Hung operates on a similar premise, while retaining a pointed originality. As the show’s protagonist Ray Drecker undergoes a string of bad luck that results in his home being destroyed in a freak accident and the loss of his children in a custody battle to his ex-wife, he too makes the decision to violate norms of social behavior by becoming a gigolo.

Though sex is to Hung as marijuana is to Weeds, the two shows do have a their own take on the what roles their illegal professions play in the character’s lives. In Weeds, Nancy sells pot as a way to avoid slipping from the fantasy like suburban ideal with unnecessary luxuries like maids, high-end SUV’s, and gated communities. In Hung on the other hand, Ray enters prostitution as a way to supplement his underpaying high school coach’s income that falls short of allowing him to pay for his bills, child support, and basic necessities.

He struggles to keep his electricity and his water on, all the while battling his wife for a place in his children’s lives. Even Hung’s creator Colette Burson proclaims that the two show are different in both “style and substance,” insisting that they are “not as interested in playing the secrete of the illegal profession like Weeds does,” (Hickman).

Though both Nancy and Ray opt for an unconventional rout towards earning a living, one does so out of dire necessity, while the other does so in order to fulfill materialistic desires. Since Ray has lost his home and his children he does not have any real concessions that he can make in his life, so he turns to prostitution out of pure desperation. Nancy on the other hand chooses a lucrative and dangerous profession as a means of avoiding making lifestyle concessions, all at the expense of her children’s wellbeing.

To View a Picture Within Its Frame: A Contextual Analysis

In many ways, television shows can be viewed as some of history’s greatest time capsules. Images of the home, work, and family have changed drastically since the birth of the sitcom, and quite often we can understand this change as being indicative of the continuously changing, shared understandings of these very ideas.

Early television “confined women to the home and family setting,” (Press, 139). During the 1950s and early 1960s the TV sitcom touted the picture perfect nuclear family and the idealistic suburban lifestyle. Women maintained the home and cared for the children while the men went off to work in order to provide for their family. In the 1970s, as it became increasingly acceptable for women to enter the workplace and for the utopian suburban ideal to be sidelined in favor of pursuing independent and alternative lifestyles, we began to see shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Julia emerge with great popularity. In the postfeminist era of the 1980s and the 1990s we began to see many of the earlier feminist images give way as “television undercut the ideals of liberal feminism with a series of ambiguous images,” that challenged its previous gains (Press, 139). Here, women on TV were often shown in the workplace, but not without displaying a degree of yearning for and feeling of displacement from their traditional roles within the family and the home. Today’s TV shows present a “third-wave-influenced feminism,” that focus on introducing images more diverse in “race, sexuality, and the choices women are seen to make between work and family,” (Press, 142).

Weeds, Showtime’s hit serial dramady now on its 5th season, makes a pronounced effort to displace many outdated notions of female financial dependence and their relationships to the home and family as it tells about the life of a widowed, upper-middle class, mother who turns to selling pot as a means of maintaining the cookie cutter suburbanite lifestyle she was left upon her husband’s premature death.

Weeds provides us with an interesting convergence of past notions of the suburban ideal coupled with certain postmodern feminist ideologies relating to female independence and sexual agency.
Nancy Botwin brings new meaning to this modern notion of female financial independence by entering a lucrative industry historically dominated my the male gender. Nancy embodies this modern notion that women can be mothers as well as providers, and though at times her judgment and moral compass stray from what many would consider appropriate for a mother of two, she is able to command respect from her peers and business partners alike.

Though Nancy has been able to sustain the upper middle class lifestyle for her and her children for five entire seasons by dealing drugs, we often see her sexuality framed as a means of advancing her status and position in the male dominated world of drug sales. Still others may read Nancy’s employment of her sexuality as not only pragmatic, but supplementary to the creation of the complex image of the female gender that remains central to the present feminist agenda. Nancy displays control over her sexual agency and whether or not her use of it is understood as politically correct, we must acknowledge that her calculated employment of her sexuality offers an empowering and complicated image of women in today’s society.