Ashlynn Steele

English 101

Phillips

April 18, 2016

Historical-Cultural Analysis

Portlandia is an American offbeat comedy show with a focus on the flaws in modern culture and society that can be overlooked on an everyday basis. The show uses different approaches to achieve a mutual goal of humorous entertainment that still reflects truth within real-life situations in our society today. Over the course of the six seasons and fifty-seven episodes, they cover a wide range of topics such as hipsters to feminism to aspiring business entrepreneurs. This type of entertainment has added to and joined a genre similar to shows such as, The Office, Parks and Recreation and Saturday Night Live that achieve the same goal as Portlandia. In season one episode one called "Farm", the main characters played by Fred Arimsen, a former "Saturday Night Live" cast member, and Carrie Brownstein are overly curious to hear about the life of the chicken they were contemplating ordering as a meal at a restaurant. 

Within this first episode, the scene called "Is it local?" is about the couple eating at a restaurant and immediately begins asking questions about a chicken entree such as if it organic, how local the chicken was, what kind food the chicken was fed and so on. By initially having the first question "Is it organic?" sets the tone for the episode to be a real-world situation since there will be customers who will ask if their food is organic due to their health needs and desires. This appeals to the audience by presenting a topic that is very well-known and has been gaining attention with for these past few years. More people are becoming aware of what chemicals and processed ingredients are in their food through different medias and advertisements, those consumers will be more concerned about what they are eating and ordering when out to eat at places that don't serve all organic food. This is a concern that has been arising in our society today and has been growing to be more of a controversial topic, hence making it a topic to be satirically criticized. 

In the first half of the decade, organic food sales grew by 17 to 20 percent a year, while conventional food sales grew by about 2 to 3 percent a year (SMITHSONIAN). By creating this to be a humorous and satirical topic, the show Portlandia knew their audience being of the younger generations feeding into the trend that is constantly growing throughout each generation. Organic eaters, along with vegetarian and vegans, have the belief that anything other than organic food is hurting your body and a wrong way to go about a healthy lifestyle. More research is being done to support both sides of this argument as they both have values and morals they strive to uphold when arguing about. You will find healthy eaters will be more proactive about advocating for organic and healthier food such as this episode portrays in a more dramatic visual than people who do not eat or care about organic foods. 

As the scene goes on, the humor and irony begins as the couple continues to ask more ridiculous questions that typically a customer, even a continuous organic eater, wouldn't ask about the life of the chicken they are contemplating ordering for their dinner. This is representing how outrageous it is deemed in society to ask any or multiple questions about the food you're about to consume in an annoying demeanor. This scene "Is it local?" focuses on the humorous way to portray organic eaters in public settings as if they are just being organic to follow a trend in society and follow the stereotype in the modern day culture. The couple even addresses how it bothers them that people would "cash out on pretending to be organic" because in a flaw in society today is that anyone who labels themselves as an organic eater, vegetarian or vegan tend to inform everyone even in situations where it is not relevant, in an overbearing matter. In this scene, it is very much relevant making this the perfect setting for this satirical skit. When the waitress walks away, the couple looks at each other and says "we are doing the right thing" and "I'm too apologetic" and "I drove too slow here today". This represents how society sees organic eaters as nit-picky and too self conscious of their actions and choices, hence why they chose to eat nothing with preservations and additional chemicals and hormones because they see it as the right thing to do. With these additional comments, it adds to the negative stereotype of "eco-freaks" and appeals to the younger generations that make up most of organic eaters and advocates for that lifestyle.

To continue the style of the show Portlandia, the waitress remains very collected and casual in this scene as if this was an everyday situation in her job and even brings the couple a profile of this individual chicken with a bunch of useless information such as the name and an image which is completely irrelevant to whether or not the chicken was organic. Even with all the information requested and more, the couple still continues to ask questions about the chicken's personal life and features; there, the irony within the scene begins. Organic eaters, along with vegetarians, vegans and other eco-friendly advocates, have a reputation of being hippies, peace provoking and very down the earth, yet in the restaurant the couple is being slightly overbearing with their questions and their responses to the waitress by interrupting her while she is trying to answer them and not letting her answering one questions before asking another. The couple is shaking their head when they would receive an answer from their waitress that wasn't satisfactory to them and look at each other in disbelief and appear to not be understanding or accepting despite finding out the chicken was in fact organic from the first couple of questions. This can show their disbelief that not everyone thinks the same way they do about their eating style. Eating organically should be a personal decision and not appear to be outlandish if someone else choses to eat food that is not labeled organic. This has an effect on how the mindset of organic and other eaters see people who do not follow their path of eating habits and lifestyle. 

The couple then proceeds to criticize the possibilities of who farmed and took care of this chicken, even making sure the farmer wasn't "some guy on a yacht who lives in Miami just saying he is organic" portraying themselves as if they deserve better and the farmer needs to be organic as well in order for them to consume this chicken. They stereotype themselves even though they commented about that earlier on in the scene, ironically about someone who is wealthy and that there is no way they can be organic like themselves. According to Gallop, a credible online news website, a little less than half of Americans, around forty-five percent of Americans actively include organic foods in their diets while fifteen percent of Americans try to avoid all organic foods. Overall, the irony of the situation is that the couple is not only concerned about the meat itself but also if the farmer and owner are also organic which plays no role in the purpose of going organic and represents them going overboard with the idea of being an organic eater and making that apparent to their waitress. 

The curiosity and judgment from the couple about the farmer of the chickens reflects their need to want everything to live up to their standard and ethical lifestyle, even though the couple is nicely dressed and in what seems to be a fine dining restaurant with white table cloths and elegant dining setting. The couple requires so much validation from the waitress about this one chicken and then the farmer, it makes the question the true intentions of why people in society today go vegetarian, vegan and organic. Is it for the health benefits from no preservatives and artificial hormones? Or is it for the image of being so eco-friendly, health conscious stereotype that society has created over the past ten years or so? Portlandia puts these questions in the viewer's mind after watching just the first episode ever created. Since this is growing in our society and culture today, Portlandia gained more view attention and commentary after opening their show with an ongoing controversial topic but also by addressing it from both sides. Later in this first episode, the couple takes it a step further and then goes to the farm that the chicken was raised to learn more about the chicken and the farm himself. 

After the first season of Portlandia, they received mixed feedback about the show trying to copy other shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Office in the way they presented their shows to be humorous and sometimes about similar topics that these shows have addressed in the past. Although, the show did receive an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from reviewers and growing viewer ratings allowing them to return with two additional seasons. Phillip Maciak, a writer for Slant Magazine who reviews other TV shows and movies wrote a review and make a quote I see relevant to summarizing this show: "Indeed, the brilliance of Portlandia, and part of what I imagine will be its staying power, is that the jokes work both as insider cultural reference and rank absurdism". This show does well with elaborately addressing flaws or situation in society enough for the audience who may know nothing at all to understand what they're trying to get across and allow the humor to stick as well. Since one of the main characters in Portlandia is from Saturday Night Live and also happens to be a writer for Portlandia as well, Armisen and the producers made a point to separate Portlandia from the other shows it was being compared to and explore their own way to make fun of any topics or stereotypes they want to.

Despite the negative criticism received for the controversial topics brought up over the past six seasons, Portlandia still remains on air today because the show's ability to create humorous entertainment while bringing attention to commons overlooked flaws in modern culture today.

Work Cited

"Portlandia: Season One | TV Review." Slant Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

Matthewjohnwinters. "Is the Chicken Local?" YouTube. YouTube, 18 Jan. 2011. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

"Smithsonian." History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
