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Posts tagged representation
The problem with Tom and Ann
The problem with the Tom and Ann subplot in this season of Parks & Recreation is that it’s forcing viewers to confront the unpleasant fact that if they actually knew Tom Haverford in real life, they would hate him so, so, so much.
I actually couldn’t disagree with this more. (Surprise!) Tom’s into hip-hop, being silly, giving away iPads, looking out for friends, being sweet, being sweetly naive about how things work, #menswear, and not getting a lot done at work. That actually sounds, in the aggregate, a lot like me and most of the people I call my friends.
The ‘negative’ parts of his personality are: That he’s clingy? That he’s little? Not good at hunting? I mean, the message not-so-secretly coded into Tom’s character is that he’s… wait for it: kind of like a girl. Oh, sort of like another character on TV… wait for it: Barney Stinson! A man who also, via caricature, tries to supersede traditionally masculine/feminine roles. What I’m saying is that gay men and people of color tend to get either super-feminized or super-masculinized. Tom and Barney do a decent job, I think, of walking the line.
The whole ‘Ezra Klein doesn’t like people like that thing’ is an Ezra Klein-problem. It’s not a Tom-problem. I feel like, to be charitable, a nagging dislike of the character probably says more about sedimented notions of personhood than it does about the characters themselves. But I would, I hazard to say, have no problem hanging out with Tom all day.
TWO VERY ENTHUSIASTIC THUMBS UP.
So torn about this. If Tom was real I would find him funny and quirky, yeah I get that, I have friends that are like that; if I was Donna I could hang out with Tom. But the way Tom has always talked to Ann, in a really inappropriate and not really straight-forward or adult way, making it obvious that he views her as a playful object of his desire and that really he only wants to gain her trust to get in her pants (recently this has turned more in the direction of a serious romance though). In the show this works better than it would in real life, in real life when a dude won’t leave you alone because he fancies you, it’s truly threatening and intimidating. It’s not nice to be worn down until you say yes, it’s better when your ‘no’ actually gets taken as a ‘no’. So! I think in real life, Tom would be in danger of being a ‘nice guy tm’ rather than a nice guy.
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#complicated feelings about this
Come to think of it, her character in Roswell was like this too, by the time it got to the 3rd series she was all about getting married and being a good wife and learning to cook and not using her alien powers because that’s a betrayal of her human husband. That was so awful because I liked her character before that, she was sassy.
(Source: synecdoche)
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