Community...Chicken

Contemporary American Poultry is ripe with pop culture and iconography.  Abed’s “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be in a Mafia movie,” anchors this introspection into the antics of a community college study group through a parody of Scorsese’s Good Fella.  Narrated and told mostly from the perspective of the aforementioned character, this episode of the popular sitcom, Community, is living within the realm of the hyperreality.  Introspection into the representation exhibited in this episode is helpful in anamnesing (remembering and reflecting) this thirty minute piece.  Post-modern theory, as defined by Lyotard, tells us that examination of an artifact is a complex but necessary task.  Layers might be stripped down to examine, not to solve, but to observe and upon which to comment.  It might be easy to look at Community as a simple sitcom, but a polysemistic approach will be much more rewarding.  

Let us begin, shall we, with a look at Representation and the Hyperreal within the piece itself and the world of the piece.  Of course, we must first start with…the chicken…the cocaine of the piece.  At a fictional community college (so right there we have our first distancing from the real) in Greendale. Colorado, a motley crew of individuals in a study group decides to stage a coup d’état because the cafeteria keeps running out of the beloved chicken fingers.  In this parody to an already fictional narrative, we see Baudrillard’s breakdown of representation (the sign and the real or its equivalent tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation) taking place.  He notes the levels as: first, a good representation equals reflection.  This could possibly be seen as the original Good Fella’s take on a Mafioso family.  His second level is when an evil representation equals perversion.  Could we not say that this episode of Community fits into this example?  Though their representation is certainly comical, it is distanced from the reality and makes fun of the real crime life.  The third level plays at being appearance; sorcery or absence.  I wonder if this could be manifest in syndication of this episode, or re-viewing on DVD.  A very topical piece, when the episode first came out in 2010, it had reference to the school lunch reform and what was found in chicken nuggets being served in schools.  As we watch now, we are removed for that context, absent from one of the major reasons the piece was initially created.  And in the fourth state, we have something that is no longer an appearance – just a simulation (simulacrum) or no reality.  This could be represented in the number of blogs devoted to this series and especially to this episode.  These bloggers are giving an opinion on something that isn’t real; in fact it’s just a parody of another thing that isn’t real. 

But the outer representation when viewing the series is not enough and we can’t keep ignoring the chicken.  There is a need to look specifically at the world within Greendale – a hyperreality of its own.  Baudrillard notes that the Hyperreal is culturally produced needs that are generated to provide work and profit.  And that it overwhelms the reality of the people we actually live among.  In this piece, the chicken becomes the simulacrum of the need.  It begins to consume the lives and choices of these fictional characters.  A need is created, initially by taste and then by who maintains the power of distribution.  That power dominates the choices of the characters and manipulates the existing hierarchy.  Jeff’s hand gesture no longer works as the group’s loyalty to Abed is rewarded through an eclectic and preposterous array of gifts.  From an entourage with specific names to a pet monkey; the ridiculous demands of celebrity and of “the family” are mocked. 

In this episode, Abed has the pleasure of telling the story from his point of view, and therefore, the meta-humor in the piece must be centered around pop culture – the sphere in which he usually operates.  His observations of human behavior are especially keen as he sends his chicken-emblazoned blazer-wearing cronies a “message” to not upset him or his rule.  He even notes the hyperreality of his actions by narrating: “At that moment, we stopped being a family and started being a family…in italics.”  His reference to the removal of reality from their situation is seen throughout the shifting power structure of “the family”.  The consumers are told what to want – the chicken they can only get if they have the right connections or can bargain – and in this case we can see the precession of simulacra.  They are encouraged to live a certain life and come to need it so much that they become desensitized to the reality of their friends and relationships.  Perhaps we could even state that the chicken becomes a simulation for drugs within this parody.  In all reality, few people would go to such elaborate lengths to get some fried chicken fingers.  But certain people likely would do the same for something both as addictive and as lucrative as drugs. 

            We know that it is the job of a post-modern theorist to look deeper and find the Polysemy – not necessarily to move forward, but rather to examine the representations.  This task is something that suits a sitcom like Community perfectly.  After five seasons – where community college should only take between 2-4 years - one could wonder if these characters are ever able to move forward, or do they merely comment on what they see and experience?  And as a viewer, do we get lost in their illusionary world?  Anyone watching this piece has to realize the absurdity of the situations involved.  Do we watch this and experience what Baudrillard experienced with Disneyland – that we know this is illusion, so we can think our real life is real?  Or do we pattern our college experiences after this, trying to make our adventures “real”? Do we sit through the commercial breaks and observe the product being sold?   Or, as is said of Jeff, are we “not tired of chicken.  You just miss that taste of control.”