Second Core Post

My post this week is responding Hendershot's article, specifically her somewhat overly positive interpretation of Parks and Recreation. While Hendershot chooses to write her analysis of the show in conversation with Newcomb and Hirsch, I found that Giltin's arguments offer an interesting angle in considering how the show portrays civic engagement, liberal/conservative ideologies, and "middle of the road" solutions to controversial issues. Gitlin's arguments would ask us to question how a show like Parks and Recreation reinforces hegemony by, as he states, "domesticating opposition, absorbing it into forms compatible with the core ideological structure" (263).

If we are to agree with Hendershot's argument that the show "is a retort to the rising tide of right-wing, anti-government sentiment" (211), then what Gitlin's arguments tell us is that Parks and Recreation is merely an acceptable (to larger hegemonic structures) retort because it does not condemn them outright. Instead, the show's middle ground ideology reinforces hegemonic ideals because even as it points out the contradictions and conflicts of liberal/conservative characters, it does not deviate from the ideals of a liberal capitalist society. As much as I think Hendershot wants to present Parks and Rec as a show who's centrism is a response to religious conservatives, its existence on NBC, it's comedy format, and its resolution of controversial topics follows Gitlin's argument more closely in that it merely presents us with a product that falls in line with hegemonic ideals. In Hendershot's arguing how political forums are a space for reconciliation I think Harry points to how these spaces are also reproductions of a neoliberal hegemony that the show in turn replicates.

With this in mind, I also question how shows with a more explicit position as a political response to the current resurgence of the alt-right and religious conservative values (thinking here of The Handmaid's Tale) fall in line with hegemonic ideals. What does it mean that the show has become a popular symbol of "resistance"? More generally, do we consider shows that have been accepted by the neoliberal structure of the entertainment industry to be revolutionary? Or do they replicate an already existing ideology even if they are marketed otherwise?