Remember when Arrested Development went to Iraq?
TV CRITICISM: The American traveler as globalizing actor + RIP Jessica Walter.
I was planning on posting my essay on Arrested Development and Master of None tonight, (seriously, check out my twitter poll from last week) and the news of Jessica Walter’s passing has only encouraged me to remember her role as Lucille Bluth and the beauty of such a deranged sitcom. I, like many others it seems, feel that this moment is perfect to rewatch AD, and after watching the first episode today, I can ensure you we’re right. Lucille Bluth’s introduction one minute into the series pilot is brilliant in itself— she rushes down the stairs of the yacht towards Michael wearing a ridiculous coiffed jacket, aggressively ripping her sunglasses from her eyes, carping “Look what they’ve done Michael. Look what the homosexuals have done to me.”
Aged like fine wine. So, cheers to you Jessica Walter! Thank you for your work and your art and your humor. Onwards.
Here is an essay I wrote for one of my favorite classes: Literature & Pop Culture: The Sitcom. I apologize for the academic-style writing. Today we’ll be looking at American empire in pop culture! What a fun mix. Remember when Arrested Development went to Iraq? Do you really think I would let you forget that?
This essay is a study of Arrested Development, Master of None, and the spectre of globalization in the American sitcom. I argue, essentially, that the American traveler is the “globalizing actor” in the sitcom, presented through the creation of “abroad” that is simply a destination defined through the American lens. The shows physically take us to Iraq and Italy, respectively; and while we’re there, we can’t help but notice American empire at work.
American Travelers: Transnational Subjects as Actors of Globalization
Arrested Development and Master of None are two twenty-first century sitcoms that work to understand our ever-changing world. The episodes “Exit Strategy” and “The Thief,” respectively, both use their characters to evoke a sense of Americanness abroad that facilitates a mode of globalization through cross-racial social interactions. Globalization can only occur after establishing a “non-place,” in this case, Italy and Iraq. Where “non-places” exist, so too does globalization, through the globalizing actor—the American traveler.
In order to delve into exactly how globalization is mapped onto non-places, a definition of a non-place must be determined. As Marc Augé explains it, a non-place is a “‘place of memory’ assigned to a circumscribed and specific position” (Augé 78). They are, most simply, places that “exist only through the words that evoke them” (95). Sitcoms give us many examples of the typified “non-place,” a place that usually exists abroad and is often experienced by travelers or those who usually do not have direct contact with the setting. Both Iraq and Italy are “non-places” in their respective sitcom depictions, and their categorization as such prepares them for global intrusion.
Prior to our entrance into the non-place of Iraq, “Exit Strategy” tricks us into thinking we have entered it. Buster and Michael Bluth are on their way to Iraq to get their brother out of the American prison. Buster and Michael sit in the backseat of an Arab cab driver’s car, speaking Arabic with him. The show’s narrator states “and soon the Bluth boys found themselves in a strange land” (00:11:58-00:12:04). They are driving through a desert and petroleum extractors can be seen out the window of the car, evoking a stereotypically understood image of Iraq. Said “strange land” turns out to be a farce when we realize the characters are still on their way to LAX. This illusion presents the first depiction of Iraq as a non-place—existing as a name but non-distinguishable from the landscape of LA. When the characters finally do enter Iraq, the non-placeness of it is connoted immediately. The screen flashes white with the word “IRAQ” plastered upon it—the only continuity break in the episode. Through naming, the show is able to define Iraq within the limited American understanding of the word: “there are words that make images: the imagination of a person who has never been to Tahiti or Marrakesh takes flight the moment those names are read or heard” (Augé 95). Arrested Development has to use the insertion of the word in order to “create the image, produce the myth, and make it work" (95). This is only continued through the episode with the reference to the street names “Cheney” “Halliburton” and “Condoleezza Rice”—all of which help define Iraq under the guise of US intervention. The myth of Iraq—a non-place that only exists under the guise of US intervention—is solidified.
In “The Thief,” Italy is established as a non-place through it's creation bound by a specific time and place, a vision of a generalized Italy and Italian life. Dev, an Indian-American man from New York, travels to Italy to learn the art of pasta making. The episode is entirely filmed in black and white and imitates a lax, old lifestyle. The episode mirrors a widely known Italian Fellini film, Ladri di Biciclette. This immediate introduction into a romanticized version of Italy presents an attempt to recreate Italy as a non-place. This is further supported through the reference to Under the Tuscan Sun, a movie about an American travelling to Italy after a breakup. The assumption becomes that Dev must have the same experiences as those portrayed in the movie (00:12:00-00:12:05). By using well-known films about Italy to define the Italian experience, Master of None successfully places itself in an unmoving timeframe: “everything proceeds as if space has been trapped by time… as if each individual history were drawing its motives, its words and images, from the inexhaustible stock of an unending history in the present” (Augé 104-105). Dev’s present is straight out of the movies that inform it. There is no separate present to which he claims, which creates the context for the non-place to exist.
Dev is the globalizing American subject, and he himself acts to create the Italy he traverses, “the traveller’s space may thus be the archetype of non-place” (86). Dev’s globalizing action continues when he and Sara, a Black British woman he meets in Italy, stumble upon a large cathedral they’ve never seen before, and Dev rewrites its history. Sara asks “‘What’s that?’ ‘I don’t know shit about history. Looks cool though. You wanna snap a pic?’” limiting Italian history to that which is to be easily consumed and further re-defined by the American traveler, which is further proven by Dev’s following lines: “‘I can make up some history about it. This is the first ever McDonald’s playplace’” (00:14:30-00:14:38). Dev maps the structure of McDonald’s onto the cathedral. He trivializes Italian truth, oozing American confidence and apathy.
Dev also uses language to perpetuate American globalization. Dev navigates Italian with his own American imposition on multiple occasions. In recurring scenes, he directly transplants American sayings into the Italian language, the first being the well-understood photography phrase “one, two, three, cheese” which he translates into “uno, due, tre, formaggio!” (00:05:34- 00:05:36). Seemingly confused by Dev’s imposition, the episode’s subtitles state “[in Italian] one, two, three, cheese!” recognizing the misplacement of the American phrase in Italian. The second time Dev uses this phrase, the subtitles have gotten the hint and have integrated his phrase into the Italian landscape presented, “Uno, due, tre, formaggio!” indicating an emergence of a global force, the traveling American man, that redefines the linguistic landscape (00:14:27-00:14:29).
Dev shows a confidence with the language he continues to struggle with over the course of the episode, proven through his incessant use and exotification of the word “allora,” a word that, much to Dev’s dismay, is rather bland in its English translation. Dev uses “allora” excessively and in an exaggerated fashion, before knowing what it means. When he asks Francesca its translation, this dialogue opens up: “‘Well.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah. Just ‘well’” (00:06:30-00:06:32). It is not just well until the American intervenes and suggests that well is not enough. There is an American expectation of “abroad” that cannot be met, which fuels Dev’s disappointment. Dev’s rampant American presence and his domination of Italian space makes him an emblematic example of the reach of American-influenced globalization on the rest of the world.
The identities of the Americans themselves are also indicative of a form of globalization. Dev not only acts as a globalizing American force on the rest of the world, he also exists as a transnational figure. Dev moves from India to America to Italy. Sara moves from Africa to Britain to America to Italy. These “globalized bodies” are a necessary presentation of how non-white American and British people also act in globalization due to their existence within Western domination. Their interactions as non-white figures in a predominantly white space lends itself to their ability to not engage in or support the expanse of globalization, but they fail. As globalized figures, Dev and Sara should notice the implications of globalization abroad, but cannot due to their existence within a dominant West.
“Exit Strategy” employs different tactics to place us on the map of globalization, specifically through the Bluth’s entrance into a predominantly non-white space as white figures. The only white figures besides the Bluths are American soldiers. As we discover by the end of the episode, however, neither the Bluths nor the American soldier are there of their own volition, unlike Dev and Sara. Both the Bluth family and the soldiers act on behalf of or due to the American state. The soldiers train Iraqis to do what they order them to, socializing them through military integration. On two separate occasions, American soldiers can be seen telling Iraqis what they should be doing as law enforcement agents. The American soldier scolds the Iraqi: “‘No. What’d you forget? Walk them through the—the what?’ ‘The metal detector.’ ‘That’s okay. Try again’” (00:12:46-00:12:54). The soldiers do not ooze the confidence and force that Dev does, rather, they urge the Iraqis to try again. The American military has entered Iraq, making it a non-place and preparing it for it's indoctrination into the global military. The socialization of Iraqi civilians successfully completes the globalization process.
Gob, a Bluth brother arrested by American authorities in Iraq, attempts to socialize Iraqi civilians through his “Jesus street magic.” His use of the phrase “bush” during the magic show that triggers an anti-American demonstration, landing him in jail (00:13:38-00:13:40). As mainly non-English speakers, it is not until the reference to “Bush” that the Iraqis understand any of Gob’s act, and still their understanding is misconstrued due to American politics. The American state is the actor that incites Gob’s being in Iraq in the first place, as well as the actor that causes the anti-American demonstration. George W. Bush is the figure that is able to connect Gob to the Iraqis, however accidental. American intervention redefines Iraqi understanding. American forces tell the Iraqi soldiers to arrest Gob for inciting the demonstration, reassuring them what they are doing is okay (00:13:50-00:13:53). This scene parallels directly with the previous scene between an American and Iraqi soldier, including repetition of the phrase “That’s okay. Try again” (00:13:53-00:13:56). Arrested Development proves the American state’s indoctrination of its own citizens as Americans act to socialize Iraqis to perform unnecessary state sanctioned violence devoid of explicit arrogance.
Through cross-racial socialization in both sitcoms, the audience is presented with two depictions of globalization. One of the non-white American civilian traveling a white non-place of their own volition, and the other of white American soldiers and civilians traveling a non-white non-place due to state imposition. Whereas Arrested Development recognizes itself and its depiction of Iraq as a non-place to promote the American globalization project, Master of None cannot do so. As transnational Western subjects, Dev and Sara create the conditions for globalization because they volunteered to inhabit that space. The American soldiers and the Bluths, not necessarily bodies affected by globalization, are actors in the globalization project itself, but do not actively decide to enter Iraq and engage in the process in the first place—it is not their own choice to travel abroad, it is the decision of the state—but when they do, they cannot help but partake in the globalizing effort, often in destructive ways.
The traveling American cannot help but exist as a globalizing force. As a freely traveling subject, their decision to go abroad has broader implications for the places to which they travel—but the American traveler is never exempt from the globalizing act. Americans are always American first, determined by their ability to travel without limitation. Arrested Development illustrates the American and Iraqi relationship as one that is reliant on the state, whereas Master of None presents interactions between a Black British woman and Indian American man of their own volition, naming them supreme mobilizers of the global conquest, instead of the white Americans. Their complicity is dependent on their Western arrogance intertwined with their desire to travel transnationally although already marked as globalized subjects.
Works Cited
Augé, Marc. Non-Places: an Introduction to Supermodernity. Verso, 2008.
“Exit Strategy.” Arrested Development, Season 3, episode 12, 2006.
“The Thief.” Master of None, Season 2, episode 1, Netflix, 2018.