I’d also argue that “diverse” people’s experience is not the same the world over... which also might mean that some non- US “people of colour” are not “racialized” in their countries. Chidi, for instance, being a black African man might have a vastly different experience with race than a black person in the US Edit for a little context: I’m a white Latin American woman living in my Latin American country of birth... this means I have lived in the privilege that all white people have in colonised countries, and this means I have had to face and deconstruct THAT reality. However, I have been told by people in the US that I *am* a “person of colour” because of the fact that Latin American people are “racialised” in the US context, even if that is not my experience of the world
I love how Jason starts off as a quiet monk, like a really stereotypical Asian but then ends up being the exact opposite of the common Asian stereotype XD
Lol, he reminds me a lot of a friend of mine from college. (Who is Cambodia tho). He is both so much like Jason, but also went back to Cambodia one summer and spent three months as a monk. To my understanding it's a pretty common thing to do and also somewhat expected of young men. Just... uhhhh... Filipino culture is a whole other thing. So, I kinda thought that was low-key commentary on grouping all southeast asian people together. Like... I kind of found it hillareous. Not just that Jason, as a person, wasn't very monk-like, but to my understanding the Philippines are like... zero percent Buddhist.
I also really liked how Eleanor was very openly bisexual, its cool that the main character was queer, its always nice to see someone like you represented on screen
I mean it was very clear that she definitely is bi by comments but they never went so far as to show her in an actual romantic relationship with another woman. She does repeatedly point out that she is into Tahani. But she never acts on it beyond those comments.
@@Kram1032 That can also be realistic. If it doesn't come up, then you would only know by comments. I had one friend when I was a teenager who would introduce herself to girls by saying "Hi, I'm Kelly, I'm a lesbian, are you?" Because she wanted to know who her options were before she generated an interest in someone. But as I was a boy, she just told me her name was Kelly and left it at that. I only knew she was gay because of some off-hand comments. (And because some of our mutual female friends thought her initial greeting was entertaining and shared that with me.) And the VAST majority of people, gay or straight, don't follow Kelly's example. She was... shall we say... an unusually DIRECT person.
@@Sam_on_UA-cam Oh certainly. But in the show it did feel quite a bit like they just weren't *quite* getting there. Going like 99% of the way and then having a hard stop at that final bit. Like, they showed her around a ton of women both in the afterlife and in flashbacks, and as far as I can tell, she only ever got as far as "having thoughts". Nothing of her past, iirc, suggests she ever actually explored those feelings.
My favorite scene in the Good Place is when Tahani asks Chidi if he loves French culture just as much as she does and he responds with, "Well they enslaved my people for over 300 years, so no."
@@elbruces I always thought it was weird you would think chidi being a learned guy would understand the French occupation of Senegal was a bad thing. French art, most philosophers, and the city’s are still pretty cool. I think it’s the writers using the character for their own joke they wanted to make.
@@elbruces meh the British colonized hundred of different territories, including my homeland, but I'm still able to appreciate things like the architecture and city planning of English cities. things like that can be divorced for different people
While you're right that racism never really seemed to be addressed much, I do remember at least one scene with The Judge, after coming back from earth, saying something like "Apparently I'm black, which they do not care for down there."
"Race blindness" is usually an excuse not to address the issues that black and minority ethnic people experience. But I genuinely have to be told that folks like Maya Rudolph and Meghan Markle are black. This is not to diminish the very real discrimination they would have faced growing up in a racist society.
I think that Simone does part of the job of more fully exploring racism and sexism. She doesn't dance around it when someone is trying to brush racist or sexist things under the rug. She wants to call them out immediately. I'm surprised that you didn't mention her!
I personally prefer media like this, where race is very obviously considered in the casting process, but not that important in the actual story. I wanna see more representation in media, but I don't want to be reminded racism exists in said media. I like when they give me a world where racial minorities abound and racism doesn't, even if it's less realistic and even if there must also be shows where racism is addressed, this is what I prefer.
Yeah, it reminds me of Schitt's Creek, where queer characters are central in the show, but face a fantastical absence of hate from people who live in a small rural town. I enjoyed that and the writer intentionally wanted to portray such a lovely world. I think T1J's point is valid, though, that the characters' race could have had more impact on their characterization. The Good Place is lovely and perfect and I never considered this myself when watching, but I'm white so I get and appreciate his perspective.
i honestly think more and more folks (probably myself too, in a few years) are going to gravitate to more shows like this. there's something cathartic about seeing folks like you living in a world untouched by the racial realities of real life... i like that the good place sort of came halfway: characters that are diverse in ethnicity, education level, and socioeconomic status BUT we don't spend every episode dissecting their varying identities. the show always pulls us back to the present + each character's development.
There were a few others. The judge mentions finding out that she was a black lady, Jason says heaven is racist because people think he is Taiwanese, and when Chidi asks Eleanor what country he is from, she asks if she would be racist if she said "Africa". There may have been others, but those are the ones I remembered.
As an OCD sufferer I really see myself in Chidi. He’s not outright stated to have it but his paralyzing anxiety and obsessions with doing the right thing are similar to morality OCD symptoms. This isn’t related to the racial aspects of the show, but about the portrayal of mental health diversity
YES, I WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT THIS. I don't know if it was the showrunners intention but I was five minutes into an episode and immediately went "oh...so he has ocd"
@@jinxthelesbian I got into The Good Place a couple years pre-diagnosis and didn’t realize why Chidi’s thought process was considered abnormal because “doesn’t everyone feel that way?”. Turns out they do not and I needed therapy.😂
And confronts the idea that our neurodiverse complications mean we are bad people! Possibly different amounts of annoying to be around, yes, but we are not automatically bad because of our brains, and our need for accommodations or understanding doesn't cause us to be hell-worthy in the Good Place world.
Do you mean OCPD? As far as I know OCPD (the personality disorder) is different from OCD. “*People with OCD are typically distressed by the nature of their behaviours or thoughts, however much they are unable to control them. People with OCPD believe that their actions have an aim and purpose.*” Source: www.verywellmind.com/ocd-vs-obsessive-compulsive-personality-disorder-2510584 Chidi seems more likely to have OCPD.
@@hinnyu7748 interesting perspective. I did mean OCD as reassurance seeking and ruminating excessively to figure something out are common compulsions. I experience feeling like I need certainty and it’s still distressing which reminds me of Chidi. But I’m not a psychologist trying to diagnose him, just someone who also has morality OCD and finds him relatable.
I loved how the bit of LGBT rep we got was treated so normally. Eleanor being bi, Janet (while *techincally* an ai) being nonbinary, and Jason being totally cool with that! The Good Place is something special even if they couldve done a bit more in spots.
@@user-by1df8ok3l I kind of appreciate the fact she didn’t have to “come out” though- she could just be bi, without there being a whole situation addressing it. But I do understand where you’re coming from, as confirming it in words helps solidify the representation. That’s just me though, so idk.
@@mediocreartist7227 Yeah I definitely agree with you. I don't know if it's a gen z thing, but none of my friends actually ever officially came out to me and I've never really officially come out to them either. We just tend to treat it like something normal, we don't feel the need to come out, we know that we know and we don't want to make a big deal out of it.
Another one that did an outstanding job of normalized and effortless diversity was Crazy Ex Girlfriend. They have diversity in class, mental health, and lgbtq.
@@chad5692 its so great for your generation that gets to be the case ! Right before ye with us millenials there was so much drama surrounding having the coming out moment irl and with media representation- definitely moving in the right direction imo!
I took a risk and watched this despite not having finished the show because I already knew the big twist. Thankfully nothing was spoiled for me, but when you were talking about Chidi and started a sentence with "before his death", I had a quick reaction of "NOOOOO, HE DIES!?" before remembering that this show is literally about people in the afterlife lmao.
I think the difference between misogyny and racism in the show was that the demons do seem to have different sexes, but while they have different species, they dont seem to have races, or at least I don't think it's canonically addressed. So making sexist jokes about each other makes sense, but racism doesn't actually hit home. But maybe I'm wrong. That's just my take.
Sure, but that’s an internal, in-show justification. It basically says ‘the writers don’t need to address this thing because they wrote the show in such a way that they wouldn’t have to’. The more important question is the external justification: why did the writers set up the show that way. Not saying they should’ve made the demons racist, just that relying on an internal justification lets writers get away with anything as long as they explain in in show. A stereotypical depiction, just for example, could be justified as ‘just how that character behaves, and look it makes sense because the writers justified it within the fiction of the medium’. Like yeah, cool, but why did the writers decide to write such a stereotypical character?
@@vathek5958 THIS IS SUCH A GOOD AND FASCINATING POINT if we (as viewers of the show and also Real People in general, including writers) recognize that demons don’t have race because they’re separate from that social construct as non-humans and observers-of-but-not-participants-in society what is the imagined difference between that and gender, a similar social construct to race in that it is also related-to-but-also-entirely-separate-from particular aspects of a person’s physical body like why might we view sex and/or gender as more fundamentally Real or intrinsic than race?
@@BeccaMoses That's a good point! It might be because plenty of people still think that every person with XX chromosomes is a woman, and every person with XY chromosomes is a man (they aren't). So, because species cannot reproduce without at least two sexes, and because many people still think gender is the same as sex, they think that it's necessary for every species to have two genders. Never mind that gender is a human invention. On the other hand, it's easy for people to conceptualise a species without race, because no other species besides humans has the concept of race (which is also a human invention). People tend not to think that having separate races is a necessary component of a species' survival, but they often DO (mistakenly) think that a species needs to have at least two genders.
I kind of took it as how the demons were evil, but not THAT evil... a reflection of our society where racism is more clearly considered bad than sexism. I mean, yes, there are still lots of people who think racism is okay but I think it's more common to find someone who thinks racism is wrong who is still casually sexist than someone who is woke on sexism but still thinks racism is good. That is to say, most racists are sexists as well. Some sexists are racist.
I do agree Jason's race was kinda brushed off, or maybe pushed aside for his stoner persona. But it was kinda disappointing having Chidi's very varied background have nothing to do with his life or who he was... felt kind of plugged in. That said I adore the show, and it is one of the best ever put on tv in my opinion. But things can always be better. It's just life.
I always read that as intentional with Chidi, that he'd put so much effort into conforming to a certain idea/image of 'a philosopher' that more personal or individual aspects of himself had been suppressed somewhat. I've not watched it in a while though, I'm going to have to hit it again and see what else I pick up on now.
maybe it's because i'm a filipino stoner myself, but i actually found jason's character pretty relatable to my experience in ways that might not be obvious to non-filipinos. one thing that really jumped out to me was the whole thing about his 40 person dance crew, since edm and modern dance are massive in filipino american communities. even the way he looked and dressed really reminded me of a lot of the people i knew growing up. i do get the point that the specific 'filipino-ness' of his character wasn't really made explicit in the story itself, but i have to say he definitely felt a lot more relatable to my experience as an asian american than most other asian characters i've seen in media (not that there's a very wide selection to choose from or anything lol).
I much prefer that minority characters aren't defined by their minority status. Like, Jason is just casually Asian. Nothing stereotypical about him. And I love that!
True that they could have explored more, but it might be interesting to consider that any explanation would’ve been through a US cultural pensé being applied to people who, in-universe, are not culturally *from* the US
I wonder if the bland names Chris and Tessa were because they wanted ethnically-blind casting? Yes, that implies European names are "neutral", but you're more likely to meet a Black man named Chris or a South Asian woman named Tessa than a white person named Chidi or Tahani, at least in the U.S. That could explain the less fully integrated racial backgrounds to their stories. The show was great (the ending had me bawling), but I do wish it had explored the racial/national backgrounds of the characters more. Two of the main four being Americans was also a lost opportunity.
In the good place the podcast, the casting director had said that going into casting, they were looking for someone very Tahani like, where she would be a tall middle eastern goddess basically lol, but Jason they just stumbled upon him. I forgot how they went into casting chidi though
the show actually has a podcast where the creators talk about how they wanted to first find the character before naming them, create a character kinda around the actor
Personally, I think The Good Place is just an example of the Single Story Problem (if you haven't seen Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talk on that, it's a must). One thing I point out to my friends a lot is that you can't fix the Single Story Problem with a single story. If there were only stories where people of color are centered around their identities, that would be a problem. If they were always ignored, that would also be a problem. But no one story can fix both of those problems at once. We need multiple series where people of color are cast prominently, some of which focus on their identities and some of which just don't. I think that goes for all marginalized identities, too.
Yooooo!!..... i freakingly loved that ted talk by chimamanda...and i agree it's hard telling the story of a people in a sinlge story like one movie or one book, especially when there re other characters involved... thats why the opportunity should be made from the beginning for POC to tell their stories in diff ways.... For instance this story was told from an American view point... even though it was heaven... but telling it from a point of view of diff cultures would have been too complicated..
YES, THANK YOU! It's like the commentary around stereotypes. Those aren't bad most of the time (if we ignore lazy writing and overusing of them), the problem is when we don't see the other sides of these stereotypes. It's not up to every show or movie to be shuttering stereotypes, but it's important to be mindful and aware of their origins. After all, diversity only exists with different elements at play, like other types of media.
absolutely. I say this all the time about lgbt+ representation too, I just want MORE. more characters whose identity is a major part of them and their narrative, and more where its just a minor thing that is present but mostly unspoken.
Exactly! We need shows where POC is a minor part of their identity, shows when it is big, and why not shows where they don't care at all. This is the only way to make things work.
Apparently they did actually have very specific casting calls. For example, they had a tough time casting Jason because they needed a Filipino man who could, for lack of a better word, "pass" as Taiwanese. I think the names Tessa and Chris were perhaps red herrings, as the crew were VERY detailed about not spilling the beans and avoiding leaks. However, I DO agree, and found it weird myself while watching, that Chidi never discusses in depth any non-white philosophers, but I think that's more simply a blindspot. There were specific philosophies they wanted to talk about, so they picked philosophers that a general American audience would most likely at least have heard of in passing. Doesn't ruin the show for me in any regard, but I think this discussion provides something for other writers who may want to discuss philosophy in their work to consider.
I think the joke about a philosopher being so rigidly twisted with indecision was the point they were making. Exploring philosophy and diverse philosophers was not.
@@kathaama I would concede that point if philosophy did not have such a major presence in the show. Philosophy is how Eleanor and Chidi become closer, and how Tahani learns to better herself and the world around her, and how Michael learns to connect to the human characters. The show even follows an arc of beginning in Western spiritual philosophy at the start of the show and ending in what could be described as a more Eastern spiritual philosophy. The show is ABOUT philosophy and spirituality at its core, so I don't see it as simple as a joke about a philosophy professor plagued with indecision (though I find that trait endlessly amusing).
I'm pretty sure the character names were already written as Chidi and Tahani from early on, they just changed the names and made up fake backgrounds for the auditions for everyone. For example people auditioning for Janet were told she was a health hotline operator.
I only just found this out from watching the video, and I'm kind of incredulous. I don't usually follow awards shows and the like, but I just kind of assumed she would win every single award they give out.
Uuuuggghhhh the episode where she played EVERYONE was pure gold and should have been an Emmy shoe-in. Just more evidence that the major awards shows are trash. They wonder why the viewership keeps going down too lol
@@gateauxq4604 Michael Schur put it best on The Good Place Podcast: “I know you’re not supposed to say this, but how is that not one of the best performances on tv?!”
It would be weird for the demons to be racist because they're all wearing human suits and don't actually look like this. It would be more akin to making fun of clothing choices than discriminating against an identity/something the person can do nothing about
I can’t believe you didn’t talk about that one time when the judge went to earth to learn how hard it is to be a good person but came back traumatized because of the racism she faced a black woman!!! That was such a good moment imo
Chidi not quoting African philosophers might be because he didn't go to college in Senegal. If I remember correctly he mentionned spending years in Paris and La Sorbonne, which is a French university. It's pretty common when you go to a French university to see students from French-speaking African countries so it's not like it would be really unrealistic. La Sorbonne probably teach more about European philosophers than African ones.
The finale gave me the best cry in a long time, that kind where there are so many tears you just give up on trying to wipe them away and just let them flow 😭 especially at Chidi's moment!!
I think the writers didn't want to put work into real ethics, and often wrote off concepts as "well, the middle ground is best". Mike Schur has this vendetta against animal rights for example, where he entirely dismisses valid arguments as being too extreme. Chidi doesn't just dumb it down for El - he dumbs it down because he was written to out of laziness. These concepts aren't exactly high brow, and morality can be taught with far more nuance without confusing the audience.
@@jenm1 when you go deeper into morality you also have to go deeper into issues like racism and that might be why they avoided it which is dumb, they couldve just hired a few poc writers from both inside and outside the US like 😂
I kinda wonder if they partially had Chidi focus on the philosophers that he did just so the joke "Who died and left Aristotle in change?" "....PLATO!" could happen
Another trait in the show i like is the diversity in sexuality. The soulmates ranges from every gender and none of the main characters take issues with it and see it as natural as any sort of relationship. In fact some of them participate in it. Eleanor herself is very clearly Bisexual and constantly compliments both good looking men and women throughout the show, sometime to comedic effect while Jason was very open and willing to marry his homie on the spot if he would just ask him to. I know it seems silly but a lot of shows that tries to put any non-heterosexual representation always cater to the straight audience first and then the characters who aren't straight is shown in the exotic or different light. Worst, when they do appear, the most they do to express their sexuality limits to hand holding or just one kiss, usually at their gay wedding.
i haven't watched the show since spring of last year, but i think i remember there being a pair of soulmates that were just friends instead of lovers. as an aspec that made me quite happy! there were also parts where michael doesn't know/understand/feel romantic stuff because of him being a demon and that was cool too :)
I have so many comments because this is my favorite show in the whole universe and probably will be forever even if half the cast murders a kitten on live TV tomorrow, but I would like to point something out about Tahani, and it's something that struck me as soon as I learned her history watching the show. I think you might be selling her representation and struggle a bit short. It isn't explicit in the show, but you can hear the accent in her parents' British English indicating that they are *from Pakistan,* a British colony with a *particularly* fraught modern history for which they would likely have been present as children, and boy are those two putting on that accent *hard.* We say the children of immigrants and POC work "twice as hard for half as much," and three minutes in the presence of her parents speak volumes of their lives, and how it must have impacted her upbringing. Not only do they carry the parenting influences of their own culture, but they do so as members of a colonized people positively thriving in the society of the colonizers, and they put ALL of that on their daughters. Tahani might not be quite as gifted as her sister and can't earn her place in her parents' hearts or society by painting the prettiest picture, so instead desperately clings to her connections to societal elites, however incidental they may have been. I'm a little surprised you didn't talk about Chidi's name in the context of Eleanor, a kinda crappy white girl who can't be bothered to learn to learn his name and sees remembering the name of the country he comes from as a concession. Her initial reaction to his name and birthplace are so lousy and casually racist it affects their relationship well into the first season.
Dang, you just articulated these two aspects of the show so well. Like, that thing where something was on mind but I didn't even know I was thinking about until I read it. I'm Indian, too, so the thing about Tahani's Pakistani background & culture rearing its head esp hit hard. If I'm honest, I'm 90% sure that it wasn't an intentional choice for Tahani's upper class/snobbish Britishness to be a comment on second-generation Pakistani immigrant, colonial culture. But Mike Schur's writing room made a lot of really incisive observations - Tahani's accent, sense of competition and focus on social accomplishment, her parents' behavior, etc. They portrayed this complex racial dynamic without really meaning to, but because they treat the character with love and compassion (which is, like, Michael Schur's *thing*) it just kind of... works. Tl; dr very cool comment! Crystallized a lot of why I like the "diversity" in this show. It incorporates the lived experiences of being a certain identity without the characters having to deliver a lot of speeches about their Asianness or whatever, lmao.
@@priyabuddhavarapu To also be honest, I spent a while in the UK and I recognize the accent to their British English, as well as the accent they were going for, where perhaps someone else might not. It's entirely possible that it was unintended for the implications to be so strong that they were from Pakistan as children at the time they would have been, but even without it they are Pakistani speaking with a deliberate and particularly posh British accent. That carries the implication on its own, if perhaps a bit more subtly than it came off to me. It's entirely possible that the actors just had a bit of a hard time pulling off the accent perfectly (lord knows I can't), but either way it was there to be read. :) Frankly the absolute cruelty with which the British government treated India and Pakistan always stood out to me, and watching Tahani grapple with her parents and their expectations of her to be exceptional made a lot of sense for people trying to maintain their family's status in a society that is otherwise hostile to them. There is still *so* much really ugly and overt racism toward people from India and Pakistan in the UK that it was difficult for me to ignore in the show. I really feel like even if they *did* start by checking racial diversity off the list of goals for the show (which I don't think they did), they put so much love into making sure the unique identities of the main characters were thoughtfully represented throughout the show, without turning them into caricatures. It was just such a beautiful show.
Idk, I'm British and mixed race Indian and the area I grew up in had a huge Pakistani population, and I have to be honest and say I didn't really think Tahani was a very good representation of British Pakistani culture. Don't get me wrong, I liked her character but it felt like the writers were mostly just concerned with parodying British culture and having their British character be a poc was a more woke way of doing that. Tahani's family is so bizarrely like an upper class old money British family rather than a rich Pakistani family living in Britain and there's no real reference in the show to her Asian heritage. It felt a lot more like an American idea of what rich people in Britain are like rather than a real effort to represent immigrant culture in the UK. I do understand the target audience is American, but as a non-American it gets a little old to see so much media portraying your country as this weird 'other' rather than a real place with a different and diverse culture. Britain has a huge Asian population and it would be nice to see that culture accurately portrayed for once, although I suppose it wouldn't be relatable to an American audience.
Some people thought her children's book was controversial, but I saw it as her "trying" to approach the sensitive topic of people being friends even though they have different political opinions.
@The Tiarra is that what it was about, I thought it was about democrats, republicans & the purple people were the third party (independent, liberals, progressives, green, etc). I think I'm more confused now 🤨
@The Tiarra the book wasn't calling minorities purple- "purple people" were described as people who embraced what makes them special while also finding common ground with others. purple basically represented unity and working together despite any sort of divides (I did an IRA with this book in my preschool class). It definitely isn't the best book out there in terms of teaching this concept, but it wasn't terrible. very simple and enjoyable, especially for young kids (3-5).
Jason Mendoza is my favorite character! Like I love how he is not depicted as an “edgy outsider” Asian or going into the stereotype that all Asians are smart. He just goes with the flow and has a kind heart.
If you dig up The Good Place the Podcast(the official one from NBC hosted by Sean), they actually interview all the actors about their audition process, including William Jackson Harper, who played Chidi, as well as Michael Schur and the casting person. Harper and all the other leads backgrounds were specified and known in detail(ex Michael Schur asked the casting director to find a really tall British Pakistani Grace Kelly for Tahani), except Janet’s where they just auditioned everyone from kids to senior citizens to see who would work. Schur knew the plot and background of the characters for the whole first season when he was pitching it to the studio and the two big names. Everything else was just, as you mentioned, kept very secret as they began production to hide the end of season 1, so it could’ve have been Chris and Tessa at the audition with modified lines to obscure information, but the characters and their backgrounds were always planned out. I do agree that their backgrounds are underdeveloped particularly in relation to those diverse identities, just that was not the reason(don’t actually know what it was. Likely a writers room that was less diverse than its cast not knowing how explore that in an interesting way, but since the information on the planning and audition from the mouths of the people is accessible and fairly in depth, thought you should know). The main source of the disconnect with Chidi philosophy-wise at least, from what I can tell, is that the writers’ main philosophical consultant for the show was a philosopher named Todd May, who’s American and white. Since none of the writers room had more than a few undergrad philosophy classes worth of understanding, he and the people he brought in to teach them were how they got the majority of the philosophy content that ended up on the show. If you’re taking content taught from the perspective of a white American philosopher and then writing it to be spoken by a black Senegalese character without critically considering the difference of perspective or asking someone else with that other perspective to help, you’re going to end up with more than a few blind spots. It’s a place the show really fell short. Especially having a black philosopher uncritically be so hyper-focused on Kant. That guy was racist, even by the standards of 19th century Europe(which is saying something). And given they make jokes about Chidi having read everything by Kant, that would include the ‘Treatise on Race’ where the guy ranks ‘the races’, which seems like something that might be worth comment or not going in that direction or just... Show is fantastic, but they really fell short in some disappointing areas,
It's also worth noting that Chidi at the beginning of the show says that he's speaking French, but because it's the Good Place Eleanor hears English-- and then later in the show when they meet Chidi on Earth he speaks English in an American accent despite the sudden lack of translation. That always seemed like a very clear oversight to me.
His accent was actually either French or Senegalese, but I love the character. By the way, it makes sense to me that he named the same philosophers over and over, because he kept teaching a basic class about moral.
I watched William Jackson Harper as Danny Rebus on The Electric Company when I was a kid, and I've known ever since that man is TALENTED. I was so happy to see him get an amazing role on an amazing show, and recognition for it!
I think Superstore is also an incredibly underrated show in general, but also for diversity, they have three AAPI people in their main cast as of the final season - incredibly rare for a sitcom!! Not only in race, but they're also diverse in age, body type, class, and even ability. It's also super critical about class and how draining capitalism is while managing to still be a funny show. I encourage you to check it out in its final season :)
I dont know if this counts as a reference to Tahani´s racial background. But I always thought it was appropriate she became the afterlife equivalent of a Bodhisattva in the end. For those who don´t know, in Buddhism, this is an elightened being that refrains from entering Nirvana in order to helps others achieve it they are worshipped as deities of compassion Basically, unlike anyone else who leaves the good place to become one with the Universe, she feels despite already feeling fulfilled and done everything there is to do in the Good place, she doesn´t wanna go just yet, and goes on to become a future Architect to help others enter the good place.
I think I remember there was a joke were the judge comments about the fact that she looks like a back woman and that if she ever when to earth people would really dislike her for that. But that's all I can think about when it comes to talks on racism.
Yes! She says something like "Apparently I'm black? And they DO NOT like black women down there" I just finished binge rewatching the show and it's fresh in my mind.
@@emmab5555 Yeah you're completely right, she went to earth for a few months (I think?) to get a taste of how messed up it was based on what the characters said and to contextualize how hard it is to be a perfectly "good" person in the modern era. When she came back she understood their point a bit more haha.
"I love Kristen Bell, just like any other human being with a soul." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that that is currently the best quote anywhere to be found on the internet. Yessir. Thank you, sir :)
My best friend is of Filipino descent from Florida and she LOVES Jason. He is, uh, a very accurate depiction of a Florida Man with Filipino heritage. So in a way you could say his heritage IS on display lol. I haven't finished the show yet but I'm into season 3 (watching periodically with a friend when we have the time), and given the tone of the show I can see why they never really get into racism. It tends to keep things light and fluffy for the most part, the absurdism and silliness of the humor being the main focus. But I feel like the backgrounds of all the characters are very well woven in. These characters all feel like real people and real friends.
In season 4 they did feature a character named Brent, who wrote a book that fetishised Tahani (or "Scarlett Pakistan") and was generally an overtly racist, wealthy, egotistical caricature. The only other incidents of racism I can think of come from Eleanor (whose racism is more subtle, for example repeatedly mispronouncing Chidi's name) and the show never really addresses that, which is kind of the problem. Of course it's a little unreasonable to expect a light-hearted sitcom to realistically depict the nuances of racism, but their only depiction of racism that's clearly presented as racism is coming from an individual man who's obviously unlikeable, it's never depicted as something systemic or something that even well-intentioned, likeable people can perpetuate and that's just not the best portrayal.
To elaborate, I think it's much easier to portray (and think of) racism this way, as something individual assholes who no one likes does. If you were to show Chidi expressing that Eleanor's subtle racism was still racism and it made him uncomfortable, or to show Tahani facing colourism while working as a model, or to show Chidi struggling with internalised racism and facing racism from other PoC, or to show Jason's family as struggling to make ends meet as a result of employment discrimination against South-East Asians, it would mean having to think about racism as a system that has to be dismantled and something that everyone has to work towards unlearning and that makes people uncomfortable.
Eleanor's racism with Chidi's name is definitely one of the things that pegs her as being "bad." Chidi is visibly annoyed by it, and she drops this as she becomes a better person.
@@crains8087 yeah, it wasn't brushed off entirely, I just meant that it wasn't clearly addressed as racist in the way Brent's behaviour was, the viewer could think Eleanor's behaviour was just a way of showing that she doesn't care enough about other people to remember their names or places of birth and Chidi was upset because of her egocentrism, whereas with Brent the viewer knows that his behaviour is definitely intended by the writers to be racist.
For sure. It isn't outright mentioned, but the whole conclusion of Season 3 (systems people have almost no control over screw them over) seems to implicate racist systems as one of those things. Would be a nice concept to expand upon, but it more-or-less suffices (for me, anyways).
I think Zootopia was great at showing how good people can be biased. It made me confused when people complained that the main character was "racist" because that was the entire point.
One thing I think the series did do well in terms of representation was with Eleanor’s bisexuality. She’s kind of the stereotype of the always horny bi-person but it’s also presented as her individual personality, not BECAUSE she’s bisexual. ... and like I will take just about any representation at this point lol
I loved _The Good Place._ It was brilliantly put together, and the diversity and inclusivity seemed effortless, like that was just the way a show was supposed to be composed. It wasn't _trying._ It was _succeeding._
Just this week I was talking to my sister about Chidi’s weird obsession with Kant and how it reminded me of Capheus from Sense8 and his unhealthy obsession with that van damme dude
How can an obsession with Kant be weird? I'm more of a utilitarian myself, but the first couple of formulations of the categorical imperative also chime.
@@mikeharrison1868 Kant was a massive racist who never left his hometown so there's no reason for an educated person (nevermind a person of color) to be obsessed with Him specifically. Perhaps his other philosophies removed from his other views but if there ever was a time to employ death of the author then Kant would be it.
@@phosphenevision Indeed. I have an ethicist friend who tells me off for my utilitarian views, prefers a deontological approach. The various articles I skimmed yesterday, after this, suggested that his philosophy is foundational to modern philosophy - whether that's agreeing or disagreeing with various bits of his work. A bit like Marx. The other thing that I saw was that in his later work he repented of his earlier racism. Still not up to today's best thinking, but significantly less horrible than his earlier stuff. (And some people argue that in his more horrible statements, he was quoting others, while trying to argue at least a little against them.)
I very much agree with your criticisms. That said, Chidi was definitely my favorite character, and I loved that he was a core moral compass of the show!
Chidi is awesome! He saves the day. The writers might have missed an interesting opportunity to explain racism when talking about unintended consequences.
I think that I love your videos and I liked this one too! I wonder if they sidestepped racism intentionally. Like, black people in america have been living a lot of trauma every time the TV comes on for decades, maybe they thought they could use a break? Whether it was intentional or not though, I like your take, that they absolutely could have commented on it more.
I think I agree with this with Chidi in particular, Tahani has a very specific backstory that works for her and her personality and Jason I think works as the immigrant who isn't that interested in family background beyond the immediate family. I think these work because they are specific individual backgrounds. Chidi on the other hand it really feels to me like there is something missing.
Man this is such a great show. But I do think although it wasnt missing (i didnt even notice the non inclusion of "lesser known" philosophers till you mentioned) like you said it would have been interesting to see some light touches of acknowledgement of the racial differences but regardless the characters are still amazingly distinct, and memorable in their own right.
adhd is starting this video, immediately scrolling down to read the comments, scrolling back up at 0:30 and wondering how I accidentally switched to one of the 4 other gotham chess videos I have paused in other tabs 😂
similarly: i watched 20 seconds, scrolled down to the comments, wrote 6 different detailed replies, scrolled a bit more, found this one and still haven't watched the damn video ...
The Good Place talkback podcast, they talk a little more about some of the casting calls being flexible. Apparently the bio for Tahani was "Pakistani Grace Kelly," but with the caveat that they would cast the best person "if she were South Korean or something else instead" (paraphrasing). So to me, that sounds like it was always important to them that they cast a POC for representation, BUT that the specific ethnicity of the actress was never going to influence the story beyond "definitely not white." Which is... yea, like cool but as you say, a bit of a missed opportunity. I also think it's noteworthy that the show does talk about colonialism a handful of times (it seems pretty heavily implied that widespread colonization contributed to the "no one got into the Good Place in 500 years" situation, Chidi talks about it the handful of times France comes up in conversation, the aforementioned "Columbus is in the Bad Place" comment), maybe because that felt less current and therefore safer for the writers to address than racism in modern times?
I think the whole show is very Sims-like in its concept and execution. It's a very 'neutral' globalized and westernized world which focuses mainly on exploring american views or morality and religion. I'm very white, but I'm also Russian, meaning a lot of cultural norms and 'good' and 'bad' actions were foreign to me. So I'd say it was a conscious choice to make every character extremely easily digestable and cartoon-ish, describable in two-three adjectives (including race). You know, like in Sims the race you choose for your character affects nothing in the gameplay; you can make your sim black, white or green-skinned and it is just appearance. And then you pick three character traits on top of that. So your ethnicity doesn't inform your upbringing in any way. The world of this sitcom is very clean and simplified; it very much depends on viewer's understanding of american culture and values while satirizing them. All in all, this was a very informative video! Thank you.
There is also this assumption that non-white Americans are nearly identical to people from the country of their ethnicity culturally. (Ex. O you're Chinese-American, so you must pray to your ancestors every day and eat Chinese food with chopsticks at home.) That doesn't make sense. Some people are more connected to their heritage than others, but everyone is primarily affected by the culture they grow up in. I think the point of Jason is that a multi-generation Filipino American from Miami is more likely to have more in common with other multi-generational Americans (of all colors) in general than a person from the Phillipines. That's not a bad thing. It's just who he is.
As a Phil-Am kid who always shrugged off my ethnicity, I appreciate that some characters exist that don't really have an interest. However that's only my perspective and it's valuable to see a few.
The Good Place's diverse cast is so well-implemented you wouldn't really notice. It just has fun, well-written, unique characters which is definitely its' strong suit. IMO they did a fantastic job.
I was also very confused about how Chidi was such a fan of Kant... I mean, he should know Kant was a massive racist, and he should probably have made at least one comment about that
I love Chidi so much. His and Ellen's relationship reminds me of my own so much. I'm not nearly as awful as her, but dating a guy that loves philosphy and military history obsessively can be rough at times lol. I appreciate the passion, but man it can drag on. There's something endearing about that trait though that makes you want to learn so that you can talk about it together, so my heart just gushed whenever he was teaching her or she was trying so hard to give a crap lol Surprised that you didn't bring up her bi-curiousness, too. It was treated more as a running gag than anything else. (As far as I know. Haven't watched the last season yet. )
NBC after the first season said she was bisexual, and i think it’s pretty well done but it would be nice to see it play into her backstory a little more. still really great to have casual representation of lgbt people at all tho especially appropriately done rep
@@joyfulgirl40018 If I’m correct, they actually were soulmates in one of the reboots! I loved how they handled Eleanor’s sexuality. Could we have seen it more in a flashback or something? Absolutely. But I think the subtlety/not trying too hard to be “wow! so progressive!” was refreshing.
The one line I recall that stood out to me is when the Michael's rival demon comments that he took the form of a middle aged white man so that he could fail upwards.
As an adult with a job, I usually do one of three things to watch TV: If it’s really popular/has spoilers, I watch it as soon as it’s available If it’s not that popular, or I don’t know anyone who watches it, I binge it in one sitting when I have a Sunday free If it’s too long to binge, or I just can’t be bothered to watch it yet, I leave it for a time when I’m in the mood. Could be 6 months, could be 3 years... Honestly though , I feel overloaded with choice when it comes to tv and film these days. I don’t feel the FOMO anymore when others are talking about shows I haven’t seen, so I just don’t watch them.
As an adult with a job.. I'm just late for work.. And sometimes take an extra long lunch then finish work later. I'm in my thirties and have no idea when I'll become a proper grown up.
I loved how Janet points out that they're "Not a girl!" A lot. It's good to see some pronoun education without having someone come out in-show (if that makes sense).
I think one of the reasons that racism isn't shown as defining Chidi's experiences is that he grew up in Senegal, surrounded by Black Africans. He surely experienced racism in France and Australia, but that was not his experience as a youth. Tahani, on the other hand, probably experienced intense racism her whole life, and dealt with it by clinging to status (although that would definitely not have shielded her completely--think Meghan Markle). Jason also would have experienced racism, but would it have affected him noticeably? Debatable.
Mostly I loved the show, but you're right there was a missed opportunity to take it further. There was one casting issue that struck a sour note for me though. In one of the last few episodes, they introduce Hypatia of Alexandria and have her played by Lisa Kudrow. I get that they want to have the big guest star, but Hypatia was from Classical Egypt so North African Middle Eastern or Greek and she was turned into a blonde white lady named Patty. It's extra cringey because the text says this is how she's choosing to appear, which has some troubling subtext about western beauty being the standard. I mean it's nice they included a non-European female philosopher and as an Egyptian, I'm kinda used to our history being whitewashed or appropriated in much worse ways, but still, it struck a sour note.
I agree with this criticism, but I think what they were going for was a gag that this amazing, brilliant woman philosopher had devolved into a total airhead.
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl He wasn't blonde either, that's just how Victorians depicted him. "European" in the sense we would use it now wasn't a thing then certainly not in the region. They were both Mediterranean people.
I’m certainly not the type of person to be like “I don’t see race” but it’s really interesting cause I was a big fan of this show when it was on and I literally never thought about the character’s races beyond their backstories, they were just good characters
Is it possible that you don't live in the US, a country full of people obsessed with race (in bad ways) and people on the other side fighting against that negative obsession with race?
@@camelopardalis84 uh no I am an American. Just because the US is full of people who are obsessed with race doesn't mean everyone is, sheesh 🙄 (also you are aware that people are obsessed with race in other countries too, right? The rest of the world isn't some magical post racial society.)
@@mmrw I was asking, not insinuating anything. It wasn't a rhetorical question. I know that not everybody in the US is obsessed with race and that are people like that outside the US. What seems obvious to me, though, is that the US is obsessed with race on a structural level. Which is why I phrased my comment the way I did.
@@camelopardalis84 tbh I kinda don’t understand how the country someone lives in relates to how they view the race of character’s on *one* tv show. Like I suppose it could but it sorta seemed to me like you were saying that a non American would think about said tv show in a different way, which I really don’t agree with cause like again, it’s just one show. But hey, maybe I totally misread your comment, that’s definitely possible.
I always wonder about how to bring someone's culture to be a part of their story. Sometimes people are pretty separate from their culture and are kinda Americanized, not because of bullying, racism, or trying to adapt to their surroundings because they are American in a cultural sense. Others are pretty mixed and have very personal versions of their traditions. Like I remember a UA-camr who's Jewish talking about how they made homemade Chinese food and celebrated Christmas. Hell Christmas is so varied in the states too!
I just finished this series last week. This video is really good timing. I appreciated the analysis! The backstories definitely have the audience going, “And then?...” Only for it not to matter all that much. Which is weird given all the detailed writing and callbacks in the show itself. I think it could’ve benefited from a bit more explanation which might have resulted in richer characters and deeper meaning. Just my two cents
Whilst The Good Place absolutely deserves the praise it received for the diverse cast (and the amazing story), I think it would’ve been even better if the Australian cast represented Australian minorities better. For example, Simone could’ve been an Indigenous Australian, a Pacific Islander or even an African-Australian, which could’ve provided her character with a lot more depth
One of my pet peeves from this show that I only vaguely remember is when Chidi (in the real world) is getting philosophy books from the library. He holds up a book by a French philosopher (it's been a while but I think it was Camus) and . . . it's in English. I'm happy to believe that Chidi speaks and reads English perfectly but one of the first things we learn about him in season one is that he thinks and speaks primarily in French. Just a tiny thing that stuck in my head, but it did stick in my head. The Good Place is still amazing and in a way these small things show that there's just more room to grow.
In the good place the podcast they discussed the making of the show and Schur said they were purposefully looking for “wealthy-looking South Asian woman” for Tahani. Indian Grace Kelly they called it. Casting for Janet was extremely funny because the fake script was a script of customer service phone operator for broken dolls. I think Chidi makes no references to african philosophy because he is treated as mouth piece for show creators to teach audience and philosophy professors that been involved in show are Canadians and Schur wanted to make show about philosophy after dipping his own toes into it so i doubt he himself read more diverse books.
my favourite joke was when the judge went to the world and when she came back and said "apparently i am a black women down there and they really don't like me huh"
I can agree with a lot of this. In Jason's case, however, I do think his background probably informs his character the most as being raised alone by a hot mess thief of a father ultimately shaped both him but led to his death
"You don't even notice [the diversity]" welp that's very true, I didn't even notice the cast was that diverse, the story is independant enough from appearances (apart from the gags and special traits) that you don't really think about the identity of these peeps apart from their mindset and decisions. Really well thought out show.
I was personally really pleased by the other mixed race couple of Jason and Janet. I am a white woman in a relationship with an Asian man, similarly to the aforementioned couple. We often laugh at white men with Asian women, but this is the first time I have ever seen the reverse in a tv show. I do hope that we see more shows with this level of racial diversity, if not more, in the future. America was supposedly founded on the principle of being a “melting pot of cultures,” and I feel that the Good Place brought a lot of that mentality to the table. I do hope to see more of that.
What really impacted me was how the race was cast against type. If the types are Wealthy snob, academic nerd, dumb bro, and professional scammer, you'd usual see them portrayed as white, Asian, Black, and South Asian respectively. The face that this show mixes up that formula does some great work in making these characters people rather than just types.
I’d also be interested to hear your thoughts on the diversity in Superstore. I’ve always thought they did a pretty good job of having a diverse cast and they cover issues of race, immigration, and gender fairly frequently.
The best kind of diversity is the diversity you don't even notice.. like seriously, when you don't even have to think about it, because it's just so natural and not at all forced. I give this show so much credit for having a diverse cast and not shoving that in your face or having the characters personality revolve it.
as G pointed out already, tessa and chris were deliberately not the actual names for the characters (and when brandon scott jones read for john, the character he was interacting with was named cassandra or something). d'arcy carden auditioned with sides for a telephone operator**. mitch narito said the dummy sides he got had michael just called "officer", tahani was "some generic name", and jason was "pillboi". so it's pretty normal for the show to have miscellaneous names as placeholders. mike schur did discuss casting on the podcast, and mentioned he had pretty specific ideas about who he wanted for each character. so while I think there's definitely a lot to be discussed regarding chidi's unexplored background, I don't think it's because they slotted chidi into a role made for chris, because chris never existed outside of the casting call. I think it's just a failing on the writers' parts to really get into that background it was interesting listening to the podcast honestly, I really recommend it. in one episode manny jacinto talked about doing scenes with eugene cordero and how fun it was to play two filipino dudes without speaking tagalog or highlighting their being filipino, and it seems like alan yang had some input there as well in terms of not wanting to portray "stereotypical asians" **ETA: she auditioned with telephone operator sides but they fake leaked to deadline that she would be playing "janet della-denunzio, a violin salesperson with a checkered past" which is 10/10 hilarious: deadline.com/2016/03/good-place-darcy-garden-cast-mike-schur-nbc-series-ucb-1201719813/
I like how you mentioned that the main group of the show were from all around the world (okay Eleanor and Jason are both Americans, but the fact that Tahani and Chidi weren't is a big deal considering American shows often center around a 100% American cast - I'm talking about where characters predominantly lived, not ethnicity). I think the international aspect of these characters is often forgotten because, as you said, the Good Place was a very Americanized version of the afterlife. I wrote a paper on this show for school, and in my research, I found a lot of reviews for the Good Place that categorized it as "forced diversity" because of how "unlikely" it was for all the of the cast to not be white?? People making those comments would spout statistics about the ratio of white and non-white people in the United States (like shows have a duty to make their cast be a specific ratio of skin colors based on population anyway?? what??). The amazing thing to me was how Ameri-centric this view of the world is! As if the afterlife would be separated by country of origin! 😂
I love that these commentaries are nuanced and hesitant to like pass judgement on the creators. "Make your art however you want" is a good thing to return to!
SPOILERS AHEAD: In the latter season when the cast was doing the Good Place 2.0 trial run, the character of Brent was introduced, him being the typical, straight, cis, entitled douchebag and extremely privileged white man that we can’t stand. He created a lot of negative tension and general annoyance to the group, one scene that stands out was when they were playing charades, Brent says something like “yeah my brotha!” to Chidi, and Simone (the black neuroscientist woman), who is understandably the most annoyed by Brent, glares at him and says “oh no,no, no”. Because coming from someone like Bret, him saying words like “brotha” can totally be interpreted as appropriating Black culture/vernacular. On a different occasion, Tahini outright calls him racist This scene and also where Simone and Chidi argue about whether or not they should save Brent from falling into the sinkhole as he’s clinging for dear life, because he’s such an insensitive asshole who’s painfully unaware of his own racism/sexism
The one thing that you missed is that people mispronouncing Chidi’s name (including Eleanor) occurs throughout the series. That definitely ties back to his Senegalese background. And is common for many non-Americans talking to Americans. But I do agree that Jason’s race was largely brushed off. It does sound like his parents were also from the US though and he had several Filipino friends as well, and many people in those types of situations will care less about their race and be relatively disconnected from their ethnicity. Some more racial commentary would have been cool, but they definitely weren’t completely off base. Great video, though! Would love to see you talk more about the plot and world if you wanna do another good place video :)
In all serious, though, I really love how your videos so perceptively point out different media's treatment of race/diversity without necessarily drawing conclusions about it. Just like, "this is a thing that they definitely did, it's important that we notice it and think about it." I liked your Tina Fey video for the same reason. Thanks!!!
They do have some racism jokes though like when Judge Gen goes down to Earth and says "apparently I'm black and they do not it like it" or something and Brent and Simone's interactions are very much commentaries racial (and cultural) differences. Jason calls The Good Place racist for believe the monk story (which the show supports given the big twist).
I really dig your point of view. Thanks for giving much space for so many gray areas, individual expressions, but also shining light and exploring some issues that many folks are/should/would be concerned about...
Thank you for expanding my point of view on something like this. I think you brought a lot of great points for and against the construction of the show. I do have to wonder if "Chris" and "Tessa" were placeholder names, to maintain some secrecy. But at the same time, I can agree that Chidi is very euro-centric in his philosophy. Which might have been a blindspot of the writers, which they just didn't see themselves. I don't want to make excuses for the writers, still love the show and once again, thanks for the great content.
love this video, could have watched you talk abt it for twice as long. I was also bothered by how the show handles Chidi's background but I didn't really put a lot of though into the other stuff you mentioned at all so this was super interesting
great content as always. I really hadn't thought about it that much, despite watching the entire show. also, it took me about 5 of your videos before I realised where the "follow me" sound bite at the start is from. well played, sir.
I'd imagine a lot of minorities simply are born a minority and have a relatively normal life not really dictated by the minority status (except for people saying racist things to them) and as such they wouldn't be expressing themselves that differently. If you just assume these characters immigrated to a different culture at a young age the only portrayal of their racial background would be what influence their parents had and we all know a lot of people deviate from their parents. That's why the diversity in the Good Place never even registered to me, it seemed normal as opposed to shows that force their minority characters to be severely impacted by being a minority. I'm fine with representation, no one is harmed and minorities are helped, what I hate is blatant pandering that comes across as grifting and does very little if anything to helping make society less racist.
Thank you so much for this video! I kinda got a similar vibe from the series. Although i really appreciated when they addressed all the facets of modern life that make doing good so difficult by the end of the show (there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all)
Now that I think of it, since Chidi isn't American, it's likely he wouldn't namedrop modern American philosophers. But the point still stands!
Was actually going to comment that... I’m not American and I honestly don’t know who Frederick Douglas is
I’d also argue that “diverse” people’s experience is not the same the world over... which also might mean that some non- US “people of colour” are not “racialized” in their countries. Chidi, for instance, being a black African man might have a vastly different experience with race than a black person in the US
Edit for a little context: I’m a white Latin American woman living in my Latin American country of birth... this means I have lived in the privilege that all white people have in colonised countries, and this means I have had to face and deconstruct THAT reality. However, I have been told by people in the US that I *am* a “person of colour” because of the fact that Latin American people are “racialised” in the US context, even if that is not my experience of the world
Having done philosophy courses at an Australian university, you either get Greek ethicists or French existentialists, so your point definitely stands
I mean, you'd think he at least quote Aimé Césaire or Frantz Fanon who are more popular in French speaking African philosophy and literature circles
@@bradypus55 okay I KNOW he mentioned Fanon at some point... I just gotta... rewatch all 4 seasons to be sure...
I love how Jason starts off as a quiet monk, like a really stereotypical Asian but then ends up being the exact opposite of the common Asian stereotype XD
Lol, he reminds me a lot of a friend of mine from college. (Who is Cambodia tho). He is both so much like Jason, but also went back to Cambodia one summer and spent three months as a monk. To my understanding it's a pretty common thing to do and also somewhat expected of young men. Just... uhhhh... Filipino culture is a whole other thing. So, I kinda thought that was low-key commentary on grouping all southeast asian people together. Like... I kind of found it hillareous. Not just that Jason, as a person, wasn't very monk-like, but to my understanding the Philippines are like... zero percent Buddhist.
He actually reminds me very strongly of the Asian restaurant owner in Orgasmo
And shoutout to the writers for fully capturing the stereotypical Jacksonville resident!
I'm just glad he got a chance (and yes I'm Filipino~)
Meanwhile he went from no Asian person I've ever known well to EVERY ASIAN DUDE IVE EVER KNOWN WELL.
also thank you Janet for confirming what we all knew: Christopher Columbus is in the Bad Place.
The hit is somewhat lessened by the fact that EVERYONE from the last ~500 years is in the Bad Place (aside from Mindy), so, like, so is Gandhi. 😬
@@marissarae I mean if we're talking about historical figures that turned out to be extremely racist Gandhi is up there.
@@edvarderikson5614 Pick literally anyone you want from the last 500 years then!
I mean when even the Crown of colonial Spain thinks you're shady...
@@marissarae Frantz Fanon
I also really liked how Eleanor was very openly bisexual, its cool that the main character was queer, its always nice to see someone like you represented on screen
it was really nice to see lgbt representation that wasnt tragic or overblown, just a really bisexual woman
Really? I thought they never openly said it, just vaguely referred to it but I saw the show a while ago, maybe I forgot.
I mean it was very clear that she definitely is bi by comments but they never went so far as to show her in an actual romantic relationship with another woman. She does repeatedly point out that she is into Tahani. But she never acts on it beyond those comments.
@@Kram1032 That can also be realistic. If it doesn't come up, then you would only know by comments. I had one friend when I was a teenager who would introduce herself to girls by saying "Hi, I'm Kelly, I'm a lesbian, are you?" Because she wanted to know who her options were before she generated an interest in someone. But as I was a boy, she just told me her name was Kelly and left it at that. I only knew she was gay because of some off-hand comments. (And because some of our mutual female friends thought her initial greeting was entertaining and shared that with me.) And the VAST majority of people, gay or straight, don't follow Kelly's example. She was... shall we say... an unusually DIRECT person.
@@Sam_on_UA-cam Oh certainly. But in the show it did feel quite a bit like they just weren't *quite* getting there. Going like 99% of the way and then having a hard stop at that final bit.
Like, they showed her around a ton of women both in the afterlife and in flashbacks, and as far as I can tell, she only ever got as far as "having thoughts". Nothing of her past, iirc, suggests she ever actually explored those feelings.
My favorite scene in the Good Place is when Tahani asks Chidi if he loves French culture just as much as she does and he responds with, "Well they enslaved my people for over 300 years, so no."
When I tell you I felt seen by that quote! Yes 🙌🏽
And yet, his favorite place in the world is to be Paris.
@@elbruces I always thought it was weird you would think chidi being a learned guy would understand the French occupation of Senegal was a bad thing. French art, most philosophers, and the city’s are still pretty cool. I think it’s the writers using the character for their own joke they wanted to make.
@@elbruces meh the British colonized hundred of different territories, including my homeland, but I'm still able to appreciate things like the architecture and city planning of English cities. things like that can be divorced for different people
yea
While you're right that racism never really seemed to be addressed much, I do remember at least one scene with The Judge, after coming back from earth, saying something like "Apparently I'm black, which they do not care for down there."
there was also Brent in season 4
Yeah, she snidely brought up both racism and sexism - she said “apparently I’m a black lady, which they do NOT like down there”
"Race blindness" is usually an excuse not to address the issues that black and minority ethnic people experience. But I genuinely have to be told that folks like Maya Rudolph and Meghan Markle are black. This is not to diminish the very real discrimination they would have faced growing up in a racist society.
Yeah that was how I found out that Maya Rudolph is black. Before then I thought she was a tan white person. Is she mixed?
@@theshire9173 she's minnie rippertons daughter
I think that Simone does part of the job of more fully exploring racism and sexism. She doesn't dance around it when someone is trying to brush racist or sexist things under the rug. She wants to call them out immediately. I'm surprised that you didn't mention her!
i was too i wondered if he saw the 4th season or if he just forgot about it
I loved Simone! I wish we had seen a little more of her.
Simone was such a good character.
Simone was the best. Always call your Brents out on their bullshit.
i thought about simone too! she was such a great addition and revived my interest in the show that season.
I personally prefer media like this, where race is very obviously considered in the casting process, but not that important in the actual story. I wanna see more representation in media, but I don't want to be reminded racism exists in said media. I like when they give me a world where racial minorities abound and racism doesn't, even if it's less realistic and even if there must also be shows where racism is addressed, this is what I prefer.
That's a great point. For me it's not a preference, but I do think this kind of media is very valid.
Yeah, it reminds me of Schitt's Creek, where queer characters are central in the show, but face a fantastical absence of hate from people who live in a small rural town. I enjoyed that and the writer intentionally wanted to portray such a lovely world. I think T1J's point is valid, though, that the characters' race could have had more impact on their characterization. The Good Place is lovely and perfect and I never considered this myself when watching, but I'm white so I get and appreciate his perspective.
In b99 too
i honestly think more and more folks (probably myself too, in a few years) are going to gravitate to more shows like this. there's something cathartic about seeing folks like you living in a world untouched by the racial realities of real life...
i like that the good place sort of came halfway: characters that are diverse in ethnicity, education level, and socioeconomic status BUT we don't spend every episode dissecting their varying identities. the show always pulls us back to the present + each character's development.
idk i feel like they couldve had more of their background be in the story without necessarily making it racism oriented
I think the only joke about race in the bad place is when Sean says "I'm a middle aged white man, I can only fail up."
Yeah but it was such a good joke 😂
There were a few others. The judge mentions finding out that she was a black lady, Jason says heaven is racist because people think he is Taiwanese, and when Chidi asks Eleanor what country he is from, she asks if she would be racist if she said "Africa".
There may have been others, but those are the ones I remembered.
Brent is definitely racist in his manner of claiming that he “totally isn’t racist”
Sean also specifically says he chose the form of a middle aged white man because it's the most evil or something like that.
@@daniellehenderson6906 the direct quote is “i can only fail up.”
As an OCD sufferer I really see myself in Chidi. He’s not outright stated to have it but his paralyzing anxiety and obsessions with doing the right thing are similar to morality OCD symptoms. This isn’t related to the racial aspects of the show, but about the portrayal of mental health diversity
YES, I WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT THIS. I don't know if it was the showrunners intention but I was five minutes into an episode and immediately went "oh...so he has ocd"
@@jinxthelesbian I got into The Good Place a couple years pre-diagnosis and didn’t realize why Chidi’s thought process was considered abnormal because “doesn’t everyone feel that way?”. Turns out they do not and I needed therapy.😂
And confronts the idea that our neurodiverse complications mean we are bad people! Possibly different amounts of annoying to be around, yes, but we are not automatically bad because of our brains, and our need for accommodations or understanding doesn't cause us to be hell-worthy in the Good Place world.
Do you mean OCPD? As far as I know OCPD (the personality disorder) is different from OCD.
“*People with OCD are typically distressed by the nature of their behaviours or thoughts, however much they are unable to control them. People with OCPD believe that their actions have an aim and purpose.*”
Source: www.verywellmind.com/ocd-vs-obsessive-compulsive-personality-disorder-2510584
Chidi seems more likely to have OCPD.
@@hinnyu7748 interesting perspective. I did mean OCD as reassurance seeking and ruminating excessively to figure something out are common compulsions. I experience feeling like I need certainty and it’s still distressing which reminds me of Chidi. But I’m not a psychologist trying to diagnose him, just someone who also has morality OCD and finds him relatable.
I loved how the bit of LGBT rep we got was treated so normally. Eleanor being bi, Janet (while *techincally* an ai) being nonbinary, and Jason being totally cool with that! The Good Place is something special even if they couldve done a bit more in spots.
meh i thought that could've been better as well. the very least they could've have done was atleast have eleanor say she's bi onscreen
@@user-by1df8ok3l I kind of appreciate the fact she didn’t have to “come out” though- she could just be bi, without there being a whole situation addressing it. But I do understand where you’re coming from, as confirming it in words helps solidify the representation. That’s just me though, so idk.
@@mediocreartist7227 Yeah I definitely agree with you. I don't know if it's a gen z thing, but none of my friends actually ever officially came out to me and I've never really officially come out to them either. We just tend to treat it like something normal, we don't feel the need to come out, we know that we know and we don't want to make a big deal out of it.
Another one that did an outstanding job of normalized and effortless diversity was Crazy Ex Girlfriend. They have diversity in class, mental health, and lgbtq.
@@chad5692 its so great for your generation that gets to be the case ! Right before ye with us millenials there was so much drama surrounding having the coming out moment irl and with media representation- definitely moving in the right direction imo!
I took a risk and watched this despite not having finished the show because I already knew the big twist. Thankfully nothing was spoiled for me, but when you were talking about Chidi and started a sentence with "before his death", I had a quick reaction of "NOOOOO, HE DIES!?" before remembering that this show is literally about people in the afterlife lmao.
This is the only show where "everyone dies" isn't a spoiler
I forget that their actually dead so many times, and have thought ive gotten spoilers before too lol
I think the difference between misogyny and racism in the show was that the demons do seem to have different sexes, but while they have different species, they dont seem to have races, or at least I don't think it's canonically addressed. So making sexist jokes about each other makes sense, but racism doesn't actually hit home. But maybe I'm wrong. That's just my take.
Sure, but that’s an internal, in-show justification. It basically says ‘the writers don’t need to address this thing because they wrote the show in such a way that they wouldn’t have to’. The more important question is the external justification: why did the writers set up the show that way. Not saying they should’ve made the demons racist, just that relying on an internal justification lets writers get away with anything as long as they explain in in show. A stereotypical depiction, just for example, could be justified as ‘just how that character behaves, and look it makes sense because the writers justified it within the fiction of the medium’. Like yeah, cool, but why did the writers decide to write such a stereotypical character?
@@vathek5958 THIS IS SUCH A GOOD AND FASCINATING POINT
if we (as viewers of the show and also Real People in general, including writers) recognize that demons don’t have race because they’re separate from that social construct as non-humans and observers-of-but-not-participants-in society what is the imagined difference between that and gender, a similar social construct to race in that it is also related-to-but-also-entirely-separate-from particular aspects of a person’s physical body
like why might we view sex and/or gender as more fundamentally Real or intrinsic than race?
@@BeccaMoses That's a good point!
It might be because plenty of people still think that every person with XX chromosomes is a woman, and every person with XY chromosomes is a man (they aren't). So, because species cannot reproduce without at least two sexes, and because many people still think gender is the same as sex, they think that it's necessary for every species to have two genders. Never mind that gender is a human invention.
On the other hand, it's easy for people to conceptualise a species without race, because no other species besides humans has the concept of race (which is also a human invention).
People tend not to think that having separate races is a necessary component of a species' survival, but they often DO (mistakenly) think that a species needs to have at least two genders.
@@vathek5958 "they should have made the demons racist" is an incredibly funny turn of phrase, thank you
I kind of took it as how the demons were evil, but not THAT evil... a reflection of our society where racism is more clearly considered bad than sexism. I mean, yes, there are still lots of people who think racism is okay but I think it's more common to find someone who thinks racism is wrong who is still casually sexist than someone who is woke on sexism but still thinks racism is good. That is to say, most racists are sexists as well. Some sexists are racist.
I do agree Jason's race was kinda brushed off, or maybe pushed aside for his stoner persona. But it was kinda disappointing having Chidi's very varied background have nothing to do with his life or who he was... felt kind of plugged in. That said I adore the show, and it is one of the best ever put on tv in my opinion. But things can always be better. It's just life.
I always read that as intentional with Chidi, that he'd put so much effort into conforming to a certain idea/image of 'a philosopher' that more personal or individual aspects of himself had been suppressed somewhat. I've not watched it in a while though, I'm going to have to hit it again and see what else I pick up on now.
maybe it's because i'm a filipino stoner myself, but i actually found jason's character pretty relatable to my experience in ways that might not be obvious to non-filipinos. one thing that really jumped out to me was the whole thing about his 40 person dance crew, since edm and modern dance are massive in filipino american communities. even the way he looked and dressed really reminded me of a lot of the people i knew growing up. i do get the point that the specific 'filipino-ness' of his character wasn't really made explicit in the story itself, but i have to say he definitely felt a lot more relatable to my experience as an asian american than most other asian characters i've seen in media (not that there's a very wide selection to choose from or anything lol).
@@user-cn6kc7jq4i I didn't know that, but definitely appreciated that they didn't go for the model minority treatment.
@@user-cn6kc7jq4i this!!
I much prefer that minority characters aren't defined by their minority status. Like, Jason is just casually Asian. Nothing stereotypical about him. And I love that!
I love The Good Place. It was diverse without falling on stereotypes, but I do agree that there was more they could have explored.
True that they could have explored more, but it might be interesting to consider that any explanation would’ve been through a US cultural pensé being applied to people who, in-universe, are not culturally *from* the US
@@BreakingStubad true... that will be very complicated from varying points of cultures.
I wonder if the bland names Chris and Tessa were because they wanted ethnically-blind casting? Yes, that implies European names are "neutral", but you're more likely to meet a Black man named Chris or a South Asian woman named Tessa than a white person named Chidi or Tahani, at least in the U.S. That could explain the less fully integrated racial backgrounds to their stories.
The show was great (the ending had me bawling), but I do wish it had explored the racial/national backgrounds of the characters more. Two of the main four being Americans was also a lost opportunity.
In the good place the podcast, the casting director had said that going into casting, they were looking for someone very Tahani like, where she would be a tall middle eastern goddess basically lol, but Jason they just stumbled upon him. I forgot how they went into casting chidi though
The podcast is on all podcast platforms and it goes over all the episodes individually sooo there’s a lot of episodes lol
the show actually has a podcast where the creators talk about how they wanted to first find the character before naming them, create a character kinda around the actor
Personally, I think The Good Place is just an example of the Single Story Problem (if you haven't seen Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talk on that, it's a must). One thing I point out to my friends a lot is that you can't fix the Single Story Problem with a single story. If there were only stories where people of color are centered around their identities, that would be a problem. If they were always ignored, that would also be a problem. But no one story can fix both of those problems at once. We need multiple series where people of color are cast prominently, some of which focus on their identities and some of which just don't. I think that goes for all marginalized identities, too.
Yooooo!!..... i freakingly loved that ted talk by chimamanda...and i agree it's hard telling the story of a people in a sinlge story like one movie or one book, especially when there re other characters involved... thats why the opportunity should be made from the beginning for POC to tell their stories in diff ways....
For instance this story was told from an American view point... even though it was heaven... but telling it from a point of view of diff cultures would have been too complicated..
YES, THANK YOU! It's like the commentary around stereotypes. Those aren't bad most of the time (if we ignore lazy writing and overusing of them), the problem is when we don't see the other sides of these stereotypes. It's not up to every show or movie to be shuttering stereotypes, but it's important to be mindful and aware of their origins. After all, diversity only exists with different elements at play, like other types of media.
absolutely. I say this all the time about lgbt+ representation too, I just want MORE. more characters whose identity is a major part of them and their narrative, and more where its just a minor thing that is present but mostly unspoken.
Exactly! We need shows where POC is a minor part of their identity, shows when it is big, and why not shows where they don't care at all. This is the only way to make things work.
Apparently they did actually have very specific casting calls. For example, they had a tough time casting Jason because they needed a Filipino man who could, for lack of a better word, "pass" as Taiwanese. I think the names Tessa and Chris were perhaps red herrings, as the crew were VERY detailed about not spilling the beans and avoiding leaks.
However, I DO agree, and found it weird myself while watching, that Chidi never discusses in depth any non-white philosophers, but I think that's more simply a blindspot. There were specific philosophies they wanted to talk about, so they picked philosophers that a general American audience would most likely at least have heard of in passing. Doesn't ruin the show for me in any regard, but I think this discussion provides something for other writers who may want to discuss philosophy in their work to consider.
I think the joke about a philosopher being so rigidly twisted with indecision was the point they were making. Exploring philosophy and diverse philosophers was not.
@@kathaama I would concede that point if philosophy did not have such a major presence in the show. Philosophy is how Eleanor and Chidi become closer, and how Tahani learns to better herself and the world around her, and how Michael learns to connect to the human characters. The show even follows an arc of beginning in Western spiritual philosophy at the start of the show and ending in what could be described as a more Eastern spiritual philosophy. The show is ABOUT philosophy and spirituality at its core, so I don't see it as simple as a joke about a philosophy professor plagued with indecision (though I find that trait endlessly amusing).
I'm surprised they had a tough time casting Jason; we have a sizable Chinese immigrant population.
I'm pretty sure the character names were already written as Chidi and Tahani from early on, they just changed the names and made up fake backgrounds for the auditions for everyone. For example people auditioning for Janet were told she was a health hotline operator.
D'arcy Carden WAS robbed at the Emmys. Yes I'm only two mins in and commenting, but I'm excited okay? Gimmie a break.
I only just found this out from watching the video, and I'm kind of incredulous. I don't usually follow awards shows and the like, but I just kind of assumed she would win every single award they give out.
Uuuuggghhhh the episode where she played EVERYONE was pure gold and should have been an Emmy shoe-in. Just more evidence that the major awards shows are trash. They wonder why the viewership keeps going down too lol
Truth
@@gateauxq4604 Michael Schur put it best on The Good Place Podcast:
“I know you’re not supposed to say this, but how is that not one of the best performances on tv?!”
It would be weird for the demons to be racist because they're all wearing human suits and don't actually look like this. It would be more akin to making fun of clothing choices than discriminating against an identity/something the person can do nothing about
Damn, they really should've made that joke tho.
There's a good quote from Shawn, "I took the form of a 45-year-old white man for a reason. I can only fail up." I loved how transparent that was.
I can’t believe you didn’t talk about that one time when the judge went to earth to learn how hard it is to be a good person but came back traumatized because of the racism she faced a black woman!!! That was such a good moment imo
I always loved how Janet say shes "not a girl, not a robot, not a guy" when somebody calls her as a woman.
@@wickedstreets Janet is nonbinary and uses she/her pronouns. Not all nonbinary people use they/them.
Janet is not human, or even biological.
Chidi not quoting African philosophers might be because he didn't go to college in Senegal. If I remember correctly he mentionned spending years in Paris and La Sorbonne, which is a French university. It's pretty common when you go to a French university to see students from French-speaking African countries so it's not like it would be really unrealistic. La Sorbonne probably teach more about European philosophers than African ones.
I was really hormonal when we watched the finale of The Good Place and cried and made my husband promise he wouldn't go through the door
The finale gave me the best cry in a long time, that kind where there are so many tears you just give up on trying to wipe them away and just let them flow 😭 especially at Chidi's moment!!
@@viam14 so sad!!!
@@notcoolenoughforschool1825 I had that with Bojack Horseman
@@notcoolenoughforschool1825 I would advise not watching if you're feeling fragile
@@notcoolenoughforschool1825 I only did after a lot of therapy, it was good to feel stuff
I always thought Chidi stuck to more "mainstream" philosophers so that Eleanor could understand easier.
Totally! Chidi was a brilliant character doing a good job of explaining an aspect of his expertise to someone who was clueless.
I think the writers didn't want to put work into real ethics, and often wrote off concepts as "well, the middle ground is best". Mike Schur has this vendetta against animal rights for example, where he entirely dismisses valid arguments as being too extreme. Chidi doesn't just dumb it down for El - he dumbs it down because he was written to out of laziness. These concepts aren't exactly high brow, and morality can be taught with far more nuance without confusing the audience.
@@jenm1 when you go deeper into morality you also have to go deeper into issues like racism and that might be why they avoided it which is dumb, they couldve just hired a few poc writers from both inside and outside the US like 😂
@@ThirrinDiamond I think it would've been great if they delved deeper.
I kinda wonder if they partially had Chidi focus on the philosophers that he did just so the joke "Who died and left Aristotle in change?" "....PLATO!" could happen
Another trait in the show i like is the diversity in sexuality. The soulmates ranges from every gender and none of the main characters take issues with it and see it as natural as any sort of relationship. In fact some of them participate in it. Eleanor herself is very clearly Bisexual and constantly compliments both good looking men and women throughout the show, sometime to comedic effect while Jason was very open and willing to marry his homie on the spot if he would just ask him to. I know it seems silly but a lot of shows that tries to put any non-heterosexual representation always cater to the straight audience first and then the characters who aren't straight is shown in the exotic or different light. Worst, when they do appear, the most they do to express their sexuality limits to hand holding or just one kiss, usually at their gay wedding.
i haven't watched the show since spring of last year, but i think i remember there being a pair of soulmates that were just friends instead of lovers. as an aspec that made me quite happy! there were also parts where michael doesn't know/understand/feel romantic stuff because of him being a demon and that was cool too :)
I have so many comments because this is my favorite show in the whole universe and probably will be forever even if half the cast murders a kitten on live TV tomorrow, but I would like to point something out about Tahani, and it's something that struck me as soon as I learned her history watching the show.
I think you might be selling her representation and struggle a bit short. It isn't explicit in the show, but you can hear the accent in her parents' British English indicating that they are *from Pakistan,* a British colony with a *particularly* fraught modern history for which they would likely have been present as children, and boy are those two putting on that accent *hard.* We say the children of immigrants and POC work "twice as hard for half as much," and three minutes in the presence of her parents speak volumes of their lives, and how it must have impacted her upbringing. Not only do they carry the parenting influences of their own culture, but they do so as members of a colonized people positively thriving in the society of the colonizers, and they put ALL of that on their daughters. Tahani might not be quite as gifted as her sister and can't earn her place in her parents' hearts or society by painting the prettiest picture, so instead desperately clings to her connections to societal elites, however incidental they may have been.
I'm a little surprised you didn't talk about Chidi's name in the context of Eleanor, a kinda crappy white girl who can't be bothered to learn to learn his name and sees remembering the name of the country he comes from as a concession. Her initial reaction to his name and birthplace are so lousy and casually racist it affects their relationship well into the first season.
Dang, you just articulated these two aspects of the show so well. Like, that thing where something was on mind but I didn't even know I was thinking about until I read it. I'm Indian, too, so the thing about Tahani's Pakistani background & culture rearing its head esp hit hard.
If I'm honest, I'm 90% sure that it wasn't an intentional choice for Tahani's upper class/snobbish Britishness to be a comment on second-generation Pakistani immigrant, colonial culture. But Mike Schur's writing room made a lot of really incisive observations - Tahani's accent, sense of competition and focus on social accomplishment, her parents' behavior, etc. They portrayed this complex racial dynamic without really meaning to, but because they treat the character with love and compassion (which is, like, Michael Schur's *thing*) it just kind of... works.
Tl; dr very cool comment! Crystallized a lot of why I like the "diversity" in this show. It incorporates the lived experiences of being a certain identity without the characters having to deliver a lot of speeches about their Asianness or whatever, lmao.
@@priyabuddhavarapu To also be honest, I spent a while in the UK and I recognize the accent to their British English, as well as the accent they were going for, where perhaps someone else might not. It's entirely possible that it was unintended for the implications to be so strong that they were from Pakistan as children at the time they would have been, but even without it they are Pakistani speaking with a deliberate and particularly posh British accent. That carries the implication on its own, if perhaps a bit more subtly than it came off to me. It's entirely possible that the actors just had a bit of a hard time pulling off the accent perfectly (lord knows I can't), but either way it was there to be read. :)
Frankly the absolute cruelty with which the British government treated India and Pakistan always stood out to me, and watching Tahani grapple with her parents and their expectations of her to be exceptional made a lot of sense for people trying to maintain their family's status in a society that is otherwise hostile to them. There is still *so* much really ugly and overt racism toward people from India and Pakistan in the UK that it was difficult for me to ignore in the show.
I really feel like even if they *did* start by checking racial diversity off the list of goals for the show (which I don't think they did), they put so much love into making sure the unique identities of the main characters were thoughtfully represented throughout the show, without turning them into caricatures. It was just such a beautiful show.
This is such a big brain comment chain, I love it
@@s.g.7572 And then you ruined it by essentially yelling BIG BRAIN!!! 🤣🤣🤣
Idk, I'm British and mixed race Indian and the area I grew up in had a huge Pakistani population, and I have to be honest and say I didn't really think Tahani was a very good representation of British Pakistani culture. Don't get me wrong, I liked her character but it felt like the writers were mostly just concerned with parodying British culture and having their British character be a poc was a more woke way of doing that.
Tahani's family is so bizarrely like an upper class old money British family rather than a rich Pakistani family living in Britain and there's no real reference in the show to her Asian heritage. It felt a lot more like an American idea of what rich people in Britain are like rather than a real effort to represent immigrant culture in the UK. I do understand the target audience is American, but as a non-American it gets a little old to see so much media portraying your country as this weird 'other' rather than a real place with a different and diverse culture. Britain has a huge Asian population and it would be nice to see that culture accurately portrayed for once, although I suppose it wouldn't be relatable to an American audience.
I don't see Kirsten Bell being cancelled for anything
Some people thought her children's book was controversial, but I saw it as her "trying" to approach the sensitive topic of people being friends even though they have different political opinions.
@The Tiarra is that what it was about, I thought it was about democrats, republicans & the purple people were the third party (independent, liberals, progressives, green, etc).
I think I'm more confused now 🤨
She's a democrat :/
once a bunch of moms on instagram hated Kristen Bell because she's pro-vaccination for her kids lmao
@The Tiarra the book wasn't calling minorities purple- "purple people" were described as people who embraced what makes them special while also finding common ground with others. purple basically represented unity and working together despite any sort of divides (I did an IRA with this book in my preschool class). It definitely isn't the best book out there in terms of teaching this concept, but it wasn't terrible. very simple and enjoyable, especially for young kids (3-5).
Jason Mendoza is my favorite character! Like I love how he is not depicted as an “edgy outsider” Asian or going into the stereotype that all Asians are smart. He just goes with the flow and has a kind heart.
If you dig up The Good Place the Podcast(the official one from NBC hosted by Sean), they actually interview all the actors about their audition process, including William Jackson Harper, who played Chidi, as well as Michael Schur and the casting person. Harper and all the other leads backgrounds were specified and known in detail(ex Michael Schur asked the casting director to find a really tall British Pakistani Grace Kelly for Tahani), except Janet’s where they just auditioned everyone from kids to senior citizens to see who would work. Schur knew the plot and background of the characters for the whole first season when he was pitching it to the studio and the two big names. Everything else was just, as you mentioned, kept very secret as they began production to hide the end of season 1, so it could’ve have been Chris and Tessa at the audition with modified lines to obscure information, but the characters and their backgrounds were always planned out. I do agree that their backgrounds are underdeveloped particularly in relation to those diverse identities, just that was not the reason(don’t actually know what it was. Likely a writers room that was less diverse than its cast not knowing how explore that in an interesting way, but since the information on the planning and audition from the mouths of the people is accessible and fairly in depth, thought you should know).
The main source of the disconnect with Chidi philosophy-wise at least, from what I can tell, is that the writers’ main philosophical consultant for the show was a philosopher named Todd May, who’s American and white. Since none of the writers room had more than a few undergrad philosophy classes worth of understanding, he and the people he brought in to teach them were how they got the majority of the philosophy content that ended up on the show. If you’re taking content taught from the perspective of a white American philosopher and then writing it to be spoken by a black Senegalese character without critically considering the difference of perspective or asking someone else with that other perspective to help, you’re going to end up with more than a few blind spots. It’s a place the show really fell short. Especially having a black philosopher uncritically be so hyper-focused on Kant. That guy was racist, even by the standards of 19th century Europe(which is saying something). And given they make jokes about Chidi having read everything by Kant, that would include the ‘Treatise on Race’ where the guy ranks ‘the races’, which seems like something that might be worth comment or not going in that direction or just...
Show is fantastic, but they really fell short in some disappointing areas,
It's also worth noting that Chidi at the beginning of the show says that he's speaking French, but because it's the Good Place Eleanor hears English-- and then later in the show when they meet Chidi on Earth he speaks English in an American accent despite the sudden lack of translation. That always seemed like a very clear oversight to me.
He went to high school in the States. Not sure if that really explains it, though, considering where his formative years were.
@@ReneKnights That's a good real-life explanation, and I agree, but I imagine Felix may be looking for an in-universe explanation.
His accent was actually either French or Senegalese, but I love the character.
By the way, it makes sense to me that he named the same philosophers over and over, because he kept teaching a basic class about moral.
It would have been really funny too, if Eleanor had went to all the trouble trying to find him and then couldn't talk to him because he spoke French.
I watched William Jackson Harper as Danny Rebus on The Electric Company when I was a kid, and I've known ever since that man is TALENTED. I was so happy to see him get an amazing role on an amazing show, and recognition for it!
OMG I remember him thanks for reminding me lol
I think Superstore is also an incredibly underrated show in general, but also for diversity, they have three AAPI people in their main cast as of the final season - incredibly rare for a sitcom!! Not only in race, but they're also diverse in age, body type, class, and even ability. It's also super critical about class and how draining capitalism is while managing to still be a funny show. I encourage you to check it out in its final season :)
Love Superstore. Mateo's arc is great.
yesss! agree big time! Plus they also actually address some racial problems
Would love a show about class consciousness but superstore is garbage im sorry
I dont know if this counts as a reference to Tahani´s racial background. But I always thought it was appropriate she became the afterlife equivalent of a Bodhisattva in the end.
For those who don´t know, in Buddhism, this is an elightened being that refrains from entering Nirvana in order to helps others achieve it they are worshipped as deities of compassion
Basically, unlike anyone else who leaves the good place to become one with the Universe, she feels despite already feeling fulfilled and done everything there is to do in the Good place, she doesn´t wanna go just yet, and goes on to become a future Architect to help others enter the good place.
I think I remember there was a joke were the judge comments about the fact that she looks like a back woman and that if she ever when to earth people would really dislike her for that. But that's all I can think about when it comes to talks on racism.
Oh yeah, that would be have been a good thing to mention in the video!
Yes! She says something like "Apparently I'm black? And they DO NOT like black women down there"
I just finished binge rewatching the show and it's fresh in my mind.
@@emmab5555 Yeah you're completely right, she went to earth for a few months (I think?) to get a taste of how messed up it was based on what the characters said and to contextualize how hard it is to be a perfectly "good" person in the modern era. When she came back she understood their point a bit more haha.
"I love Kristen Bell, just like any other human being with a soul." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that that is currently the best quote anywhere to be found on the internet. Yessir. Thank you, sir :)
Nah man, the Plato line is better
My best friend is of Filipino descent from Florida and she LOVES Jason. He is, uh, a very accurate depiction of a Florida Man with Filipino heritage. So in a way you could say his heritage IS on display lol.
I haven't finished the show yet but I'm into season 3 (watching periodically with a friend when we have the time), and given the tone of the show I can see why they never really get into racism. It tends to keep things light and fluffy for the most part, the absurdism and silliness of the humor being the main focus. But I feel like the backgrounds of all the characters are very well woven in. These characters all feel like real people and real friends.
In season 4 they did feature a character named Brent, who wrote a book that fetishised Tahani (or "Scarlett Pakistan") and was generally an overtly racist, wealthy, egotistical caricature. The only other incidents of racism I can think of come from Eleanor (whose racism is more subtle, for example repeatedly mispronouncing Chidi's name) and the show never really addresses that, which is kind of the problem. Of course it's a little unreasonable to expect a light-hearted sitcom to realistically depict the nuances of racism, but their only depiction of racism that's clearly presented as racism is coming from an individual man who's obviously unlikeable, it's never depicted as something systemic or something that even well-intentioned, likeable people can perpetuate and that's just not the best portrayal.
To elaborate, I think it's much easier to portray (and think of) racism this way, as something individual assholes who no one likes does. If you were to show Chidi expressing that Eleanor's subtle racism was still racism and it made him uncomfortable, or to show Tahani facing colourism while working as a model, or to show Chidi struggling with internalised racism and facing racism from other PoC, or to show Jason's family as struggling to make ends meet as a result of employment discrimination against South-East Asians, it would mean having to think about racism as a system that has to be dismantled and something that everyone has to work towards unlearning and that makes people uncomfortable.
Eleanor's racism with Chidi's name is definitely one of the things that pegs her as being "bad." Chidi is visibly annoyed by it, and she drops this as she becomes a better person.
@@crains8087 yeah, it wasn't brushed off entirely, I just meant that it wasn't clearly addressed as racist in the way Brent's behaviour was, the viewer could think Eleanor's behaviour was just a way of showing that she doesn't care enough about other people to remember their names or places of birth and Chidi was upset because of her egocentrism, whereas with Brent the viewer knows that his behaviour is definitely intended by the writers to be racist.
For sure. It isn't outright mentioned, but the whole conclusion of Season 3 (systems people have almost no control over screw them over) seems to implicate racist systems as one of those things. Would be a nice concept to expand upon, but it more-or-less suffices (for me, anyways).
I think Zootopia was great at showing how good people can be biased. It made me confused when people complained that the main character was "racist" because that was the entire point.
One thing I think the series did do well in terms of representation was with Eleanor’s bisexuality. She’s kind of the stereotype of the always horny bi-person but it’s also presented as her individual personality, not BECAUSE she’s bisexual. ... and like I will take just about any representation at this point lol
I loved _The Good Place._ It was brilliantly put together, and the diversity and inclusivity seemed effortless, like that was just the way a show was supposed to be composed. It wasn't _trying._ It was _succeeding._
I agree. The diversity was there just because it was normal to be there, and I appreciated that.
Just this week I was talking to my sister about Chidi’s weird obsession with Kant and how it reminded me of Capheus from Sense8 and his unhealthy obsession with that van damme dude
How can an obsession with Kant be weird? I'm more of a utilitarian myself, but the first couple of formulations of the categorical imperative also chime.
@@mikeharrison1868 Kant was a massive racist who never left his hometown so there's no reason for an educated person (nevermind a person of color) to be obsessed with Him specifically. Perhaps his other philosophies removed from his other views but if there ever was a time to employ death of the author then Kant would be it.
@@AgentPedestrian OK, thanks for that extra info. Best wishes.
As someone who has friends who are philosophers/studied philosophy, an obsession with Kant isn't that uncommon lol
@@phosphenevision Indeed. I have an ethicist friend who tells me off for my utilitarian views, prefers a deontological approach.
The various articles I skimmed yesterday, after this, suggested that his philosophy is foundational to modern philosophy - whether that's agreeing or disagreeing with various bits of his work. A bit like Marx. The other thing that I saw was that in his later work he repented of his earlier racism. Still not up to today's best thinking, but significantly less horrible than his earlier stuff. (And some people argue that in his more horrible statements, he was quoting others, while trying to argue at least a little against them.)
I very much agree with your criticisms.
That said, Chidi was definitely my favorite character, and I loved that he was a core moral compass of the show!
Chidi is awesome! He saves the day. The writers might have missed an interesting opportunity to explain racism when talking about unintended consequences.
I think that I love your videos and I liked this one too! I wonder if they sidestepped racism intentionally. Like, black people in america have been living a lot of trauma every time the TV comes on for decades, maybe they thought they could use a break? Whether it was intentional or not though, I like your take, that they absolutely could have commented on it more.
I think I agree with this with Chidi in particular, Tahani has a very specific backstory that works for her and her personality and Jason I think works as the immigrant who isn't that interested in family background beyond the immediate family. I think these work because they are specific individual backgrounds. Chidi on the other hand it really feels to me like there is something missing.
Man this is such a great show. But I do think although it wasnt missing (i didnt even notice the non inclusion of "lesser known" philosophers till you mentioned) like you said it would have been interesting to see some light touches of acknowledgement of the racial differences but regardless the characters are still amazingly distinct, and memorable in their own right.
adhd is starting this video, immediately scrolling down to read the comments, scrolling back up at 0:30 and wondering how I accidentally switched to one of the 4 other gotham chess videos I have paused in other tabs 😂
similarly: i watched 20 seconds, scrolled down to the comments, wrote 6 different detailed replies, scrolled a bit more, found this one and still haven't watched the damn video
...
The Good Place talkback podcast, they talk a little more about some of the casting calls being flexible. Apparently the bio for Tahani was "Pakistani Grace Kelly," but with the caveat that they would cast the best person "if she were South Korean or something else instead" (paraphrasing). So to me, that sounds like it was always important to them that they cast a POC for representation, BUT that the specific ethnicity of the actress was never going to influence the story beyond "definitely not white." Which is... yea, like cool but as you say, a bit of a missed opportunity.
I also think it's noteworthy that the show does talk about colonialism a handful of times (it seems pretty heavily implied that widespread colonization contributed to the "no one got into the Good Place in 500 years" situation, Chidi talks about it the handful of times France comes up in conversation, the aforementioned "Columbus is in the Bad Place" comment), maybe because that felt less current and therefore safer for the writers to address than racism in modern times?
I think the whole show is very Sims-like in its concept and execution. It's a very 'neutral' globalized and westernized world which focuses mainly on exploring american views or morality and religion. I'm very white, but I'm also Russian, meaning a lot of cultural norms and 'good' and 'bad' actions were foreign to me. So I'd say it was a conscious choice to make every character extremely easily digestable and cartoon-ish, describable in two-three adjectives (including race). You know, like in Sims the race you choose for your character affects nothing in the gameplay; you can make your sim black, white or green-skinned and it is just appearance. And then you pick three character traits on top of that. So your ethnicity doesn't inform your upbringing in any way. The world of this sitcom is very clean and simplified; it very much depends on viewer's understanding of american culture and values while satirizing them.
All in all, this was a very informative video! Thank you.
There is also this assumption that non-white Americans are nearly identical to people from the country of their ethnicity culturally. (Ex. O you're Chinese-American, so you must pray to your ancestors every day and eat Chinese food with chopsticks at home.) That doesn't make sense. Some people are more connected to their heritage than others, but everyone is primarily affected by the culture they grow up in. I think the point of Jason is that a multi-generation Filipino American from Miami is more likely to have more in common with other multi-generational Americans (of all colors) in general than a person from the Phillipines. That's not a bad thing. It's just who he is.
@@sarahtaylor4264 yes, exactly!
As a Phil-Am kid who always shrugged off my ethnicity, I appreciate that some characters exist that don't really have an interest. However that's only my perspective and it's valuable to see a few.
The Good Place's diverse cast is so well-implemented you wouldn't really notice. It just has fun, well-written, unique characters which is definitely its' strong suit. IMO they did a fantastic job.
I was also very confused about how Chidi was such a fan of Kant... I mean, he should know Kant was a massive racist, and he should probably have made at least one comment about that
I love Chidi so much. His and Ellen's relationship reminds me of my own so much. I'm not nearly as awful as her, but dating a guy that loves philosphy and military history obsessively can be rough at times lol. I appreciate the passion, but man it can drag on. There's something endearing about that trait though that makes you want to learn so that you can talk about it together, so my heart just gushed whenever he was teaching her or she was trying so hard to give a crap lol
Surprised that you didn't bring up her bi-curiousness, too. It was treated more as a running gag than anything else. (As far as I know. Haven't watched the last season yet. )
NBC after the first season said she was bisexual, and i think it’s pretty well done but it would be nice to see it play into her backstory a little more. still really great to have casual representation of lgbt people at all tho especially appropriately done rep
@@Alice-gr1kb A casual mention that in one of the reboots Eleanor ended up with Tahani would have been magical for me.
@@joyfulgirl40018 If I’m correct, they actually were soulmates in one of the reboots! I loved how they handled Eleanor’s sexuality. Could we have seen it more in a flashback or something? Absolutely. But I think the subtlety/not trying too hard to be “wow! so progressive!” was refreshing.
@@joyfulgirl40018 That already happened in the show...
The one line I recall that stood out to me is when the Michael's rival demon comments that he took the form of a middle aged white man so that he could fail upwards.
Glad to see analysis on this show, been obsessed with it for so long myself!
As an adult with a job, I usually do one of three things to watch TV:
If it’s really popular/has spoilers, I watch it as soon as it’s available
If it’s not that popular, or I don’t know anyone who watches it, I binge it in one sitting when I have a Sunday free
If it’s too long to binge, or I just can’t be bothered to watch it yet, I leave it for a time when I’m in the mood. Could be 6 months, could be 3 years...
Honestly though , I feel overloaded with choice when it comes to tv and film these days. I don’t feel the FOMO anymore when others are talking about shows I haven’t seen, so I just don’t watch them.
As an adult with a job.. I'm just late for work.. And sometimes take an extra long lunch then finish work later. I'm in my thirties and have no idea when I'll become a proper grown up.
@@Misstressofdons I'm also in my thirties, and I'm asking myself that question every day!
I loved how Janet points out that they're "Not a girl!" A lot. It's good to see some pronoun education without having someone come out in-show (if that makes sense).
I think one of the reasons that racism isn't shown as defining Chidi's experiences is that he grew up in Senegal, surrounded by Black Africans. He surely experienced racism in France and Australia, but that was not his experience as a youth. Tahani, on the other hand, probably experienced intense racism her whole life, and dealt with it by clinging to status (although that would definitely not have shielded her completely--think Meghan Markle). Jason also would have experienced racism, but would it have affected him noticeably? Debatable.
Maybe Jason didn’t notice because people already treated him differently for being stupid?
Mostly I loved the show, but you're right there was a missed opportunity to take it further. There was one casting issue that struck a sour note for me though. In one of the last few episodes, they introduce Hypatia of Alexandria and have her played by Lisa Kudrow. I get that they want to have the big guest star, but Hypatia was from Classical Egypt so North African Middle Eastern or Greek and she was turned into a blonde white lady named Patty. It's extra cringey because the text says this is how she's choosing to appear, which has some troubling subtext about western beauty being the standard. I mean it's nice they included a non-European female philosopher and as an Egyptian, I'm kinda used to our history being whitewashed or appropriated in much worse ways, but still, it struck a sour note.
I agree with this criticism, but I think what they were going for was a gag that this amazing, brilliant woman philosopher had devolved into a total airhead.
@@crains8087 I get, I think they've earned some benefit of the doubt. I just wished they'd thought it through more.
@@sara_sah-raezzat5086 she was Greek and alexindria a Greek colony she was not from Egypt
@@sara_sah-raezzat5086 also you think that greeks were not blond or European just check Alexander the great
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl He wasn't blonde either, that's just how Victorians depicted him. "European" in the sense we would use it now wasn't a thing then certainly not in the region. They were both Mediterranean people.
I’ll have to come back and watch this after I watch the good place. I’ve heard good things about that show.
It's well worth it.
I just watched it for the firs time over the past 2 weeks or so. Finished maybe 3 days ago. It's fantastic and well worth it.
I’m certainly not the type of person to be like “I don’t see race” but it’s really interesting cause I was a big fan of this show when it was on and I literally never thought about the character’s races beyond their backstories, they were just good characters
Is it possible that you don't live in the US, a country full of people obsessed with race (in bad ways) and people on the other side fighting against that negative obsession with race?
@@camelopardalis84 uh no I am an American. Just because the US is full of people who are obsessed with race doesn't mean everyone is, sheesh 🙄 (also you are aware that people are obsessed with race in other countries too, right? The rest of the world isn't some magical post racial society.)
@@mmrw I was asking, not insinuating anything. It wasn't a rhetorical question. I know that not everybody in the US is obsessed with race and that are people like that outside the US. What seems obvious to me, though, is that the US is obsessed with race on a structural level. Which is why I phrased my comment the way I did.
@@camelopardalis84 tbh I kinda don’t understand how the country someone lives in relates to how they view the race of character’s on *one* tv show. Like I suppose it could but it sorta seemed to me like you were saying that a non American would think about said tv show in a different way, which I really don’t agree with cause like again, it’s just one show. But hey, maybe I totally misread your comment, that’s definitely possible.
I always wonder about how to bring someone's culture to be a part of their story. Sometimes people are pretty separate from their culture and are kinda Americanized, not because of bullying, racism, or trying to adapt to their surroundings because they are American in a cultural sense. Others are pretty mixed and have very personal versions of their traditions. Like I remember a UA-camr who's Jewish talking about how they made homemade Chinese food and celebrated Christmas. Hell Christmas is so varied in the states too!
I loved the casting in The Good Place. Although I have to say Vicki is probably my favorite antagonist.
I just finished this series last week. This video is really good timing.
I appreciated the analysis! The backstories definitely have the audience going, “And then?...” Only for it not to matter all that much. Which is weird given all the detailed writing and callbacks in the show itself. I think it could’ve benefited from a bit more explanation which might have resulted in richer characters and deeper meaning. Just my two cents
Whilst The Good Place absolutely deserves the praise it received for the diverse cast (and the amazing story), I think it would’ve been even better if the Australian cast represented Australian minorities better. For example, Simone could’ve been an Indigenous Australian, a Pacific Islander or even an African-Australian, which could’ve provided her character with a lot more depth
One of my pet peeves from this show that I only vaguely remember is when Chidi (in the real world) is getting philosophy books from the library. He holds up a book by a French philosopher (it's been a while but I think it was Camus) and . . . it's in English. I'm happy to believe that Chidi speaks and reads English perfectly but one of the first things we learn about him in season one is that he thinks and speaks primarily in French.
Just a tiny thing that stuck in my head, but it did stick in my head. The Good Place is still amazing and in a way these small things show that there's just more room to grow.
In the good place the podcast they discussed the making of the show and Schur said they were purposefully looking for “wealthy-looking South Asian woman” for Tahani. Indian Grace Kelly they called it.
Casting for Janet was extremely funny because the fake script was a script of customer service phone operator for broken dolls.
I think Chidi makes no references to african philosophy because he is treated as mouth piece for show creators to teach audience and philosophy professors that been involved in show are Canadians and Schur wanted to make show about philosophy after dipping his own toes into it so i doubt he himself read more diverse books.
my favourite joke was when the judge went to the world and when she came back and said "apparently i am a black women down there and they really don't like me huh"
This was Contrapoints-level in terms of it being fair and nuanced, and I really appreciated it. Very balanced take
I can agree with a lot of this. In Jason's case, however, I do think his background probably informs his character the most as being raised alone by a hot mess thief of a father ultimately shaped both him but led to his death
Oh wow look it’s a video about my favorite show of all time. Hell yeah
"You don't even notice [the diversity]" welp that's very true, I didn't even notice the cast was that diverse, the story is independant enough from appearances (apart from the gags and special traits) that you don't really think about the identity of these peeps apart from their mindset and decisions. Really well thought out show.
I was personally really pleased by the other mixed race couple of Jason and Janet. I am a white woman in a relationship with an Asian man, similarly to the aforementioned couple. We often laugh at white men with Asian women, but this is the first time I have ever seen the reverse in a tv show.
I do hope that we see more shows with this level of racial diversity, if not more, in the future. America was supposedly founded on the principle of being a “melting pot of cultures,” and I feel that the Good Place brought a lot of that mentality to the table. I do hope to see more of that.
What really impacted me was how the race was cast against type. If the types are Wealthy snob, academic nerd, dumb bro, and professional scammer, you'd usual see them portrayed as white, Asian, Black, and South Asian respectively. The face that this show mixes up that formula does some great work in making these characters people rather than just types.
What got me watching The Good Place, same thing that got me into Schitt's Creek: the memes
I’d also be interested to hear your thoughts on the diversity in Superstore. I’ve always thought they did a pretty good job of having a diverse cast and they cover issues of race, immigration, and gender fairly frequently.
I really liked the background music in this video :3
loved this analysis!
Huge fan of The Good Place. Loved this thought piece.
Deffo wasn't a missed opportunity with Bambadjan. I love that man.
The best kind of diversity is the diversity you don't even notice.. like seriously, when you don't even have to think about it, because it's just so natural and not at all forced. I give this show so much credit for having a diverse cast and not shoving that in your face or having the characters personality revolve it.
as G pointed out already, tessa and chris were deliberately not the actual names for the characters (and when brandon scott jones read for john, the character he was interacting with was named cassandra or something). d'arcy carden auditioned with sides for a telephone operator**. mitch narito said the dummy sides he got had michael just called "officer", tahani was "some generic name", and jason was "pillboi". so it's pretty normal for the show to have miscellaneous names as placeholders. mike schur did discuss casting on the podcast, and mentioned he had pretty specific ideas about who he wanted for each character. so while I think there's definitely a lot to be discussed regarding chidi's unexplored background, I don't think it's because they slotted chidi into a role made for chris, because chris never existed outside of the casting call. I think it's just a failing on the writers' parts to really get into that background
it was interesting listening to the podcast honestly, I really recommend it. in one episode manny jacinto talked about doing scenes with eugene cordero and how fun it was to play two filipino dudes without speaking tagalog or highlighting their being filipino, and it seems like alan yang had some input there as well in terms of not wanting to portray "stereotypical asians"
**ETA: she auditioned with telephone operator sides but they fake leaked to deadline that she would be playing "janet della-denunzio, a violin salesperson with a checkered past" which is 10/10 hilarious: deadline.com/2016/03/good-place-darcy-garden-cast-mike-schur-nbc-series-ucb-1201719813/
I like how you mentioned that the main group of the show were from all around the world (okay Eleanor and Jason are both Americans, but the fact that Tahani and Chidi weren't is a big deal considering American shows often center around a 100% American cast - I'm talking about where characters predominantly lived, not ethnicity).
I think the international aspect of these characters is often forgotten because, as you said, the Good Place was a very Americanized version of the afterlife. I wrote a paper on this show for school, and in my research, I found a lot of reviews for the Good Place that categorized it as "forced diversity" because of how "unlikely" it was for all the of the cast to not be white?? People making those comments would spout statistics about the ratio of white and non-white people in the United States (like shows have a duty to make their cast be a specific ratio of skin colors based on population anyway?? what??). The amazing thing to me was how Ameri-centric this view of the world is! As if the afterlife would be separated by country of origin! 😂
I love that these commentaries are nuanced and hesitant to like pass judgement on the creators. "Make your art however you want" is a good thing to return to!
SPOILERS AHEAD:
In the latter season when the cast was doing the Good Place 2.0 trial run, the character of Brent was introduced, him being the typical, straight, cis, entitled douchebag and extremely privileged white man that we can’t stand. He created a lot of negative tension and general annoyance to the group, one scene that stands out was when they were playing charades, Brent says something like “yeah my brotha!” to Chidi, and Simone (the black neuroscientist woman), who is understandably the most annoyed by Brent, glares at him and says “oh no,no, no”. Because coming from someone like Bret, him saying words like “brotha” can totally be interpreted as appropriating Black culture/vernacular. On a different occasion, Tahini outright calls him racist
This scene and also where Simone and Chidi argue about whether or not they should save Brent from falling into the sinkhole as he’s clinging for dear life, because he’s such an insensitive asshole who’s painfully unaware of his own racism/sexism
thread of days kristen bell isn’t cancelled:
day 1
Day 3
Day 4.
The one thing that you missed is that people mispronouncing Chidi’s name (including Eleanor) occurs throughout the series. That definitely ties back to his Senegalese background. And is common for many non-Americans talking to Americans. But I do agree that Jason’s race was largely brushed off. It does sound like his parents were also from the US though and he had several Filipino friends as well, and many people in those types of situations will care less about their race and be relatively disconnected from their ethnicity. Some more racial commentary would have been cool, but they definitely weren’t completely off base. Great video, though! Would love to see you talk more about the plot and world if you wanna do another good place video :)
In all serious, though, I really love how your videos so perceptively point out different media's treatment of race/diversity without necessarily drawing conclusions about it. Just like, "this is a thing that they definitely did, it's important that we notice it and think about it." I liked your Tina Fey video for the same reason. Thanks!!!
They do have some racism jokes though like when Judge Gen goes down to Earth and says "apparently I'm black and they do not it like it" or something and Brent and Simone's interactions are very much commentaries racial (and cultural) differences. Jason calls The Good Place racist for believe the monk story (which the show supports given the big twist).
I really dig your point of view. Thanks for giving much space for so many gray areas, individual expressions, but also shining light and exploring some issues that many folks are/should/would be concerned about...
I'm an adult with a job. I watch these things because I have no real life.
Thank you for expanding my point of view on something like this. I think you brought a lot of great points for and against the construction of the show.
I do have to wonder if "Chris" and "Tessa" were placeholder names, to maintain some secrecy. But at the same time, I can agree that Chidi is very euro-centric in his philosophy. Which might have been a blindspot of the writers, which they just didn't see themselves.
I don't want to make excuses for the writers, still love the show and once again, thanks for the great content.
The Good Place isn't perfect rep, but I think we can all agree it's a good (aha) step.
love this video, could have watched you talk abt it for twice as long. I was also bothered by how the show handles Chidi's background but I didn't really put a lot of though into the other stuff you mentioned at all so this was super interesting
Two days after this video and Kristen Bell hasn't gotten canceled but she did have a baby adopt a dog and get bangs so she's been busy
great content as always. I really hadn't thought about it that much, despite watching the entire show.
also, it took me about 5 of your videos before I realised where the "follow me" sound bite at the start is from. well played, sir.
I'd imagine a lot of minorities simply are born a minority and have a relatively normal life not really dictated by the minority status (except for people saying racist things to them) and as such they wouldn't be expressing themselves that differently. If you just assume these characters immigrated to a different culture at a young age the only portrayal of their racial background would be what influence their parents had and we all know a lot of people deviate from their parents. That's why the diversity in the Good Place never even registered to me, it seemed normal as opposed to shows that force their minority characters to be severely impacted by being a minority. I'm fine with representation, no one is harmed and minorities are helped, what I hate is blatant pandering that comes across as grifting and does very little if anything to helping make society less racist.
Thank you so much for this video! I kinda got a similar vibe from the series. Although i really appreciated when they addressed all the facets of modern life that make doing good so difficult by the end of the show (there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all)