The number of underachieving, low-functioning female narrators in television series in the last twenty years or so has been so scant; it may as well be nonexistent.
Television shows like Crazy Ex Girlfriend are lauded as being groundbreaking, but they still miss that criteria. Their narrator suffers from mental illness, but is high-functioning and financially independent. On shows that are heavier, there will sometimes be a main female character that has undergone some trauma; but she is always high-functioning, she works or goes to school full-time.
For the most part, female narrators that are directionless, depressed, susceptible to feelings of numbness and extreme boredom, isolated, friendless, hostile, underachieving, low-functioning and most of all– financially destitute– have all but disappeared.
And even within that slim margin, they are typically limited to white women that are more or less conventionally attractive. We have Eleanor of The Good Place, Fleabag of Fleabag, and earlier on we had Jaye of Wonderfalls (which was cancelled), and Georgia of Dead Like Me (which was also cancelled). One exception is Tracey of Chewing Gum.
So what is the message here, in how eclipsed these characters are to the majority of female characters?
I think it goes back to the crux of what is most toxic about American culture (and countries with large wealth inequality) overall– and that is, that if you aren’t successful by society’s definition of success (mainly, financially wealthy, healthy– or at least thin– but also with a full and rich social life, that is, connected and in ‘the network’), you might as well not exist.
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