Trope Tripe

Though 30 Rock is too honored by the Emmys, it's still pretty good. Last month I defended it against a critical attack, and now nastier one making a similar argument much more poorly comes from Zeeshan Aleem in the Huffington Post.

He calls the show racist, saying the Tracy Jordan character (played by Tracy Morgan, whom show creator Tina Fey worked with on SNL)

is an unsightly amalgamation of every nefarious trope about African Americans conceived of in the past two centuries in the history of our republic. Tracy Jordan is a caricature's caricature; his role in 30 Rock is almost as if the writers earnestly studied minstrelsy, and then went about extending the tradition in the most ambitious manner possible. Given that the show received a record-breaking 22 Emmy Award nominations in 2009 alone, this may be reason for concern.

Poor Tina Fey. If only her show didn't get so many nominations, Aleem might leave her alone.

Leaving aside that irrelevant point (and the hyperbole about "every nefarious trope" of the past two centuries), Aleem's argument is absurd.

Tracy Jordan is a specific character. He isn't particularly close to older racist stereotypes. His main comic feature is a near-absurdist style of humor where anything might come out of his mouth. (Sometimes he shows surprising knowledge of arcane topics.) I've heard the character is loosely based on Tracy Morgan himself.

He's not especially made fun of for being lazy or dumb or many other "tropes" that Aleem feels he must police. Really the humor of his character is Jordan being a major star who doesn't feel normal rules apply to him, and who treats everyone like a lackey--maybe a classic caricature of a star, but not of a black man.

He talks a lot about sex, but that's what all stars feel they deserve as a right (check out Entourage). Furthermore, it's been revealed that much of his sexual exploits are exaggerated, even non-existent, to keep up an image. (So if anything he's subverting a stereotype.)

In fact, it's hard to believe Aleem has even watched the show, since it deals in smart lines spoken by fairly one-dimensional characters. To simplify a bit (but not as much as Aleem does), Tina Fey plays the harried single gal who desperately wants a man. Alec Baldwin is a heartless, right-wing capitalist. Jane Krakowski is a hopelessly vain and fairly stupid aging female star. Jack McBrayer is a hick with bizarre backwoods religious ways. Judah Friedlander is a dirty, disgusting, porn-loving writer. Katrina Bowden is a mindless young hottie. And so on.

In fact, it's the relatively normal characters, like Scott Adsit's producer, who don't really score on the show.

In addition, the other black characters--Tracy's two-man entourage, and the Harvard-trained writer--are quite erudite. Perhaps Aleem missed them, as he was too busy missing the point of Tracy's character.