Arrested Development and Philosophy (20 page)

Whereas Kant’s philosophy strives for inner consistency so as to avoid self-contradiction, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) asks whether morality itself is a contradictory project. Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche’s world held Kant’s ethics to be the height of human achievement, and valued the freedom, respect, and disinterestedness (unselfishness) of Kant above all else. For Nietzsche, however, these values were anything but what they seemed; the very “progress” of Kant completed the decline of humanity.

First, Nietzsche reflects extensively on how our values are constructed: what’s the origin of our idea of goodness? He argues that our morality is
reactive
: we develop our sense of goodness, based on what we don’t want done to us, out of resentment (
ressentiment
) of those who could make us suffer. By defining their
actions
as evil, and then seeing them as evil, we develop the concept of goodness: “good” is what those who can cause suffering
don’t
do. This makes inactivity—or weakness—seem to be something good; as Nietzsche writes, “weakness is being lied into something meritorious.”
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By “manufacturing” our virtues, we condemn and seek to destroy our aggressive, active nature: Not asserting ourselves becomes “patience,” denial of our desire becomes “unselfishness,” and not retaliating when injured becomes “forgiveness.” There’s something vicious in our virtue, for Nietzsche, as it demands that we delude ourselves about what’s good and about who we are. Like Gob, we take the strong wine of human virtue and turn it into water.

The deeper problem with this morality is that we
can’t
deny ourselves. Like George Michael’s desire for Maeby, our desires and drives
need
to be expressed, whether we want them to or not. Like everything that lives, we have a will to
be
—to desire, to act, to assert ourselves (this is the root of what Nietzsche calls the will to power). When we try to suppress our aggressive instincts, we only turn them inward: Rather than make others suffer, we inflict suffering on ourselves. It’s this self-destruction—the will “willing its own nothingness” that leads to what Nietzsche calls
nihilism
, the destruction of human life, creativity, and value.
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Morality comes to contradict life—arresting our development, if you will.

The Kantian idea of freedom epitomizes the problem that Nietzsche sees:
free will
confuses us, because it makes us think that we’re sovereign, independent subjects, when in fact we’re obeying someone else, reacting against them, or suppressing our own desire. As we obey the values and standards of others, we become trapped in the “slave morality” that Nietzsche sees as so dangerous. Only through an act of “self-overcoming,” realizing our history and the different forces that shape who we are, can any real freedom be achieved. Yet this requires creating one’s own values, rather than simply following the rules of morality laid down by Kant or our society.

In many ways,
Arrested Development
exposes the sort of self-contradiction that Nietzsche highlights within our quest to be moral. Buster’s courage in going to Iraq is really a cowardly avoidance of a deposition; Lucille’s adoption of Lindsay is just another competition with Stan Sitwell, Lindsay’s altruism is another form of self-assertion, and even Michael’s “keeping the family together” seems to be, in the end, just trying to do what his parents didn’t do. Our virtues, to paraphrase St. Augustine (354–430), are nothing but glittering vices.

For Nietzsche, the “self-overcoming” that will create new values can only happen if we recognize the history that makes us who we are. We are, as he puts it, “hybrids”: the result of multiple, conflicting systems of value, with diverse and contradictory desires. It’s only by accepting these desires, rather than denying them, that we can begin to create a new sense of who we are. Like Michael and George Michael, as they sail away from the family in the last episode, it is only by coming to terms with who we are that we can hope to begin anew. By living with our contradictions, rather than trying to suppress or deny them, we may be able to put them to a different use—a comic one, like a “gay science,” to use Nietzsche’s term, that opens a new future.

Contradiction and the Form of Comedy: There’s Always Money in the Banana Stand

“A joke is a play upon form.”

—Mary Douglas
12

“I think that makes the joke on Gob.”

—Michael Bluth
13

Gob is the joke. His attire, mannerisms, ego, and attempted magic build a form, a caricature through which the show plays on societal expectations and norms, twisting them to draw out humor. As a comedy of moral contradiction, there’s no doubt that
Arrested Development
does this building, use of form, and comedy with each character.
Arrested Development
fans, whether students of Kant, Nietzsche, or the one-armed J. Walter Weatherman, all agree that this show was just plain funny. But what defines a joke? Why do we care who tells the joke and if the situation is appropriate for humor?

Mary Douglas, a British anthropologist, writes about what makes jokes funny on a universal level. People all over the world create comedy based on the situations and societies in which they live; jokes follow patterns of social deconstruction. Douglas writes, “. . . a joke is seen and allowed when it offers a symbolic pattern of a social pattern occurring at the same time.”
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By contradicting the existing social hierarchy, a joke disrupts our expectations and lets us see things in a different light. The Bluths are built entirely as a reflection of current society; George Sr. sells bananas not for a profit, but to hide in-case-of-emergency-cash in the banana stand itself. The dominant social structure, in Douglas’ words, is challenged by an alternative one: our view of the legitimate small business is undermined by its being used to conceal embezzlement. When Lucille “baited the balcony” in the episode “Queen for a Day,” the form being played on is that of the societal elite. Lucille epitomizes the respected matriarch, but her manipulation shows there is not “an ounce of mother’s milk” in her body. By subverting the expectations of our society, the show’s jokes “destroy hierarchy and order.”
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The joke is obviously, and almost always, on Gob, but it’s also on all of us. In many ways, comedy emerges from the depiction of the contradictions within the social order, undermining our sense of necessity and value. After all, who hasn’t had the civics teacher?

Since the style of
Arrested Development
is spontaneous itself, the jokes have a more natural feel than those on other shows. The show begins and the audience knows, from the quips and upbeat tone of the theme, that the show is a comedy. The players are introduced, the plot is set, and the stage opens to jokes continued from previous episodes and seasons. With contradictory moments or early references come flashbacks, showing Lucille saying that she dislikes Gob, or Tobias saying that he and Lindsay had some good times (Footage Not Found). Sometimes these shots date to before the show was created, giving the show a continuous and realistic feel. In this way the show ignores normal filters and levels of control.
Arrested Development
allows each episode to live as a bubble within the whole, outside of the expected consciousness. Douglas writes, following an idea first articulated by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), “The pleasure of a joke lies in a kind of economy. At all times we are expending energy in monitoring our subconscious so as to ensure that our conscious perceptions come through a filtering control. The joke, because it breaks down the control, gives the monitoring system a holiday.”
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By giving up our conscious perceptions of reality to the television, we are freeing ourselves from control. We are accepting humor as a reflection of society.

The narrator also builds this subconscious bubble, exposing the characters’s lies and deceptive behavior to show how they contradict their self-presentation. The narrator, then, provides a literal voice of reason, through which the viewer is shown the contradictions within each character and how societal expectations are reversed. If Gob wasn’t shown as a social form in the environment based in television, he would appear as nothing more than a selfish jerk. With narration, he is comedic, a man who matches the attempted sincerity of his brother and the perceived charity of his sister. Since the show is set in documentary style, this element is crafted without the laugh track or obvious pauses of the average sitcom. Thus, as even its form contradicts the standard sitcom format and sense of comedy,
Arrested Development
creates a wider range of comic material—playing not only off social order and hierarchy, but even off of the expectations and order of television itself.

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.”
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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,
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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 craziness of the Bluth family. During an especially far-out plot twist in “S.O.B.s,” for example, our show’s narrator offers helpful guidance from above when he remarks: “Now that’s a clear-cut situation with the promise of comedy.”

Looking closely at the stories that make up the developing narrative of
Arrested Development
gives us a chance to examine our own relation to narrative—how and why we relate to stories the way we do, and how we can find meaning in the world by and through stories. Narrative is a way of organizing and understanding events that makes them meaningful and coherent to us. Much like the narrator of
Arrested Development
, we impose a narrative structure on the seemingly unconnected events of our daily existence to create a feeling of progression, of
something
leading
somewhere
. In his
Poetics
, Aristotle (384–322 bce) observes that a story cannot be just any sequence of events. Rather, it must have a beginning, middle, and an end that relate to each other. As a result, we create stories that will explain why things are the way they are, how they relate, how they begin, and how they end. In fact, the philosopher and neuroscientist Mark Turner has gone so far as to say that narrative is “basic to human thinking”; we make sense of events in terms of how one thing leads to another, and hence the ability to understand the world in narrative is “the root of human thought.”
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Aristotle also suggests that our stories are an important way of seeking truth because stories do more than entertain us. Our enjoyment of narrative stems from the sense of shared meaning that stories provide. Stories are told and retold because they take on a sense of timelessness and universality. For that reason we learn of our most fundamental values through stories, parables, and fables.
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Precisely what lessons
Arrested Development
teaches is an open question. But one of the things that makes the show fascinating is its playful use of explanatory narrative. In “Burning Love,” for example, when Michael asks Gob how he hurt his ankle, Gob replies that he must’ve hurt it “shooting hoops, or something.” A cut-scene then immediately shows Gob actually hurting his ankle during his patented chicken dance, ending in a hilarious bit of chaos with both Gob and Buster screaming and wailing. So perhaps stories may give us hope that there is an underlying order to our lives. Real life, of course, is never quite so neat and tidy. Things rarely happen at precisely the right moment, we almost never get the facts in exactly the right order, and we can only ever operate with incomplete knowledge of the world, left to wonder about the stories that remain untold to us.

Since this storytelling aspect (of which the narrator is very proud, exclaiming in the episode “Spring Breakout”, “now that’s how you narrate a story”) of the show is so much a part of its distinctive style, it also serves to remind us of an important point: that this narrative way of understanding is not simply relegated to fiction. We might even imagine that our lives are lived in narrative:

Our knowledge of the world and ourselves is in fact shaped by narrative: We dream in narrative, day-dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, gossip, learn, hate, and love by narrative.
4

Narrative in this way presents us with an analogy for the larger task of philosophy. When we ask questions of
why
, we are seeking the story of
what.
To be sure, the process of understanding our relation to stories and how we derive meaning from them is no small task—as
Arrested Development
narrator Ron Howard so aptly puts it in “S.O.B.s,” “It was a complex situation without an easy solution”—but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a fun process for us along the way.

“And That’s Why You Always Leave a Note”: What Lessons Can We Learn From Our Narratives?

To understand things in terms of narrative also entails an act of interpretation—an act that gives meaning and form to events that we experience. What makes
Arrested Development
unique is that this interpretive function is built into the structure of the show, most prominently in the form of its narrator. The narrator might be a necessity for a viewer who is presented with an often self-deceiving (see: Lucille; Gob) or very confused (see: Tobias; Buster) cast of characters who are rarely, if ever, reliable sources of knowledge. To take one subtle yet amusing example, in “Hand to God,” Lindsay half-heartedly guesses that her daughter Maeby is in Sacremende for her debate club semifinals. The narrator is quick to point out that Maeby wasn’t, and that a Google search of the word “Sacremende” came up with zero results and the following helpful question, “Did you mean ‘Sacramento’?” That sort of interpretive activity is built into the way in which we relate to the world, and the show’s narrative makes clear the ways in which we could, or should, be asking those questions of interpretation.

Characters on the show, however, are often highly selective and self-interested in their interpretation of events. Consider the case of J. Walter Weatherman.

Narrator:
George Sr. had used his considerable means to stage intricate scenarios, to teach his children what he considered valuable life lessons.

George Sr.:
We’re out of milk. I could have got it earlier if someone would have left a note.

(Tires screeching. Car collides with a man on the street, whose arm falls off, spurting blood. Screaming and yelling.)

George Sr.:
Why?! If someone had left a note, this innocent man would still have his arm! Why?!

J. Walter Weatherman:
And that’s why you always leave a note. [“Pier Pressure”]

George Sr.’s lessons and their “meanings” show just how far selective interpretation can be stretched. Switch to Michael and Lindsay in the present:

Michael:
Well, those lessons worked, didn’t they? I mean, we still leave notes to this day.

Lindsay:
Oh, that’s what that was about. I thought he was trying to get us off of dairy. [“Pier Pressure”]

George Sr. is nothing if not consistent, as he takes every advantage to reinterpret the meaning of those lessons to whatever purpose best suits his present needs.

Michael:
I want the guy with the one arm and the fake blood. J. Walter Weatherman. How do I get a hold of him?

George Sr.:
Well, he’s, uh, dead. You killed him when you left the door open with the air conditioner on. [“Pier Pressure”]

How can we decide whether George Sr.’s interpretation of those events is any more or less “right” than Lindsay’s? Is either interpretation more valuable than the other, since neither portrays an accurate understanding of the events as they actually are? One of the difficulties of a narrative view of things is that we are oftentimes presented with a proliferation of possible meanings—we may quickly become entangled in different ways of understanding the same events. As Judith Butler points out: “Any one of those is a possible narrative, but of no single one can I say with certainty that it alone is true.”
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Narrative thus presents a moral choice—given that a story can be told in many ways, there are choices that must be made about what’s right to include, and to exclude. When we tell the stories of our own lives, how do we justify ourselves, and the choices we make in the telling? Do we paint a truthful picture of our story to ourselves and others, or do we simply tell the story we want (and perhaps wish) to be true? Fortunately, the show’s narrator provides us with those deep psychological insights rather handily, such as in “Hand of God”: “Michael had always thought of himself as that great a guy. The kind of guy who could raise someone else’s baby . . . But he wasn’t.” For us, truthfulness can be a tricky thing when we’re talking about something as personal as the story of our own lives—and what we tell of ourselves, both to ourselves and to others. We have a need to make sense of our existence, and we want our lives to have a sense of purpose. We want “existential coherence”
6
—things need to fit together in a certain way and not merely be a series of random, unconnected events. The risk of such a desire, unfortunately is, “that we often deceive others and ourselves by leaving out the details of our past life that don’t fit the version of the story that we want to tell.”
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But on
Arrested Development
such willful self-deception appears to be second nature for most of the characters. Notice for instance Gob while he attempts unsuccessfully to annul his marriage:

Gob:
Well, we did have sex . . . and I’m not a great liar.

Narrator:
Both things he just said were lies. [“Motherboy XXX”]

In truth, “None of us wants to tell stories about ourselves that are dull or ugly,”
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and as a result different versions of ourselves are created through the stories that we tell. And yet, there is something intrinsically valuable in thinking about ourselves in such narrative terms—we come to realize an evolving sense of self over time, what matters most to us, and why. There’s always a version of the story to be told. But how do we go about deciding the right version, for us or for others? Who would be in a position to decide whether our version of our story is right or wrong?

“And That’s How You Narrate a Story”—What We Tell, What We Are

At least in the universe of
Arrested Development
, the narrator provides us with a version of the story that has an appearance of objectivity. The narrator, as both observer and interpreter, is in the privileged position to observe how “action reveals itself fully only to the storyteller . . . who indeed always knows better what it was all about than the participants.”
9
When we think about it, a story’s narrator can represent very different philosophical outlooks. An all-knowing, authoritative narrator can give the impression of a world that is comprehensible and inherently knowable. But, a story with a limited or unreliable narrator can suggest the unpredictability of a world that we can never fully hope to understand.

For an example of the way
Arrested Development
provides a semblance of narrative certainty, we might recall the episode “Amigos” in which the Bluths head south of the border. During a very confused conversation, the narrator comments that: “At no point were Michael and Maeby talking about the same person. And there were only four people in their group.” The narration of
Arrested Development
reminds us that without comic misunderstandings the whole story of the world around us would be pretty boring. Some moments in the show typically (and in a very funny way) depict what the world looks like without that measure of narrative certainty. Even the most straightforward of communications can take dramatically different turns. Take for instance the following conversation between Gob and his then-wife:

Wife of Gob:
I’m in love with your brother-in-law.

Gob:
You’re in love with your own brother.

Wife of Gob:
No, your sister’s husband.

Gob:
Michael? Michael.

Wife of Gob:
No, that’s your sister’s brother.

Gob:
No, I’m my sister’s brother. You’re in love with me. Me.

Wife of Gob:
NO! I’m in love with Tobias.

Gob:
My brother-in-law?

Wife of Gob:
Anyways, I’m enlisting in the army.

Gob:
To be with your brother?

Wife:
No! [“Whistler’s Mother”]

Just as the narrator plays a very prominent role in
Arrested Development
, we likewise must act as narrators of the stories that we live everyday: “We are constantly adopting the narrator’s position with respect to our own lives and also the lives of others.”
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This storytelling impulse is ingrained in our thinking. It’s a crucial part of how we identify with ourselves and others: “Our own existence cannot be separated from the account we can give of ourselves. It’s in telling our own stories that we give ourselves an identity. We recognize ourselves in the stories that we tell about ourselves.”
11
Stories also allow us to grapple with the mundane objects of the world—to place them in contexts that allow us to make sense of them. In this respect, narrative is “indispensible to human cognition generally.”
12