Rethinking Development: Transforming Women on Film
Rakshya Devkota
A fear of revolution and change, an insistence on disciplining the individual’s desire to fit the confines of society, an elevation of exclusive or potentially unfulfilling development: though on the surface, these seem to have little to do with classic coming-of-age narratives, the narrative structure as well as the foundational philosophy of the traditional bildungsroman all create these ideologies within the genre. The traditional bildungsroman is a flawed, yet pervasive genre that props up centuries-old ideology about how individuals ought to live their lives, while simultaneously excluding a great number of individuals: essentially, anyone who was not white, middle class, and male lacked access to this narrative. The process of bildung is not elevated as universal in narratives of female development as it is for the traditional bildungsroman. As Susan Fraiman argues in Unbecoming Women, multiplicity of experience is a hallmark of female development narratives as a genre: “[The way to womanhood] is a lifelong act continuing well past any discrete season of youth, and it involves a struggle among diverse narratives: official and also oppositional stories of arriving at adult ‘femininity’” (Fraiman x). These oppositional stories subvert the ideology of faux-universality in the traditional bildungsroman by creating new “conduct books,” expanding access to the narrative as well as subverting the genre’s fear of revolution and insistence on social conditioning as an important part of development. This kind of diversity of narratives can be seen through comparing two texts centered around young women, Broad City and Pariah. Both operate as transformative texts, but they do so in drastically different ways. Broad City creates a new “conduct book” by actively rejecting the process of bildung, thus removing the burden of development from women, giving them the freedom not to develop into polite members of society without facing severe consequences. However, the extent to which this type of narrative is accessible to non-white, non-middle class women is unclear, so this new conduct book arguably still carries some of the limitations of of the old genre. Pariah depicts the process of development not as a reconcilement or compromise with society as it is in the traditional bildungsroman, but instead as a reconcilement with the self. It offers a different new “conduct book,” a cautiously utopic vision that suggests the importance of allowing women the freedom to pursue their development beyond societal constraints rather than compromising their development with conventions of family and respectability.
Broad City rejects the traditional bildungsroman’s focus on development, and instead actively works against the process of narrative development itself. Fraiman suggests that development is a matter of free will in the traditional bildungsroman, which she refers to as “apprentice novels.” She gives the example of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, asserting, “Apprenticeship tends to imply choice…Wilhelm and his kinsmen look around, ask themselves where their unique talents lie, and self-consciously determine to cultivate those talents” (Fraiman 5). Traditionally, the bildungsroman operated as a conduct book for white, middle class men, encouraging them to “look around” themselves and based on what they see, develop their talents within the confines of the society around them. The philosophical ideology of the genre, though, suggests that the individual must actively, freely make the choice to develop within the confines of society: “Goethe stresses the freedom necessary for human development and views personal cultivation as a continuing project of the highest ethical significance…Humboldt also identifies Bildung as the primary goal of humanity…’Our true purpose in life is the cultivate our diverse talents into a balanced whole’” (Kontje 4). This places a clear burden of development on the individual, yet paradoxically suggests that development is a free choice.
Broad City is certainly conscious of the bildungsroman’s burden of development, yet uses the vital aspect of freedom within it to subvert that burden and thus, the genre’s status as a conduct book. Abbi and Ilana’s choices drive their narratives, but the choices they make lead them not towards, but away from traditional development through the childishness and circularity of their narratives. Abbi and Ilana lack any sense of self-consciousness when they move through respectable adult spaces, even when they are hopelessly out-of-place and lacking in the social conventions of adulthood. Their prolonged adolescence is not presented as tragic, however: it’s almost normalized. The show makes constant use of circular narratives lacking development, for example, but specific scenes also point to this normalization of the “woman-child”. This features prominently in one particular scene where Abbi and Ilana visit a CPA to get Ilana’s taxes done. Rather than being confined to the script of interactions between responsible adults regarding a financial matters that Killian Casey, CPA is desperately clinging to, Abbi and Ilana basically throw the script out the window--for example, when asked if she has any dependents, Ilana replies, “Uh…I have a lot of independence…but, um…I guess I have people who depend on me, too.” In addition, within the shot/reverse shot sequence of the scene, the camera lingers longer on Abbi and Ilana, making Killian Casey’s abrupt, frustrated responses to Ilana’s vastly unhelpful “tax information” seem out-of-place, and when he eventually loses it and starts screaming at them to leave, his adult response, not Abbi and Ilana’s childishness, is ultimately positioned as truly weird and laughable. The particular picture that Abbi thinks is a magic eye holds significance as well--the fact that she is unable to mentally process an image of a family suggests that the concept of having a family is incomprehensible to her, further emphasizing her state of adolescence. The scene thus suggests that traditional development is stranger than prolonged adolescence, and through this the latter is made not a sign of failure, but instead is normal. Another instance of this juxtaposition between respectful adulthood and prolonged adolescence occurs when Abbi and Ilana go to a fancy restaurant to celebrate Abbi’s birthday, particularly when the two go out for a few minutes to smoke weed and then return to see the disgusted faces of everyone around them as they walk back to their table. The sequence of slow motion close-ups of the other guests’ faces taken at canted angles which slowly come into focus is meant to reflect Abbi and Ilana’s state of mind after getting high. The two, however, are unfazed by the negative reactions of the people around them. In fact, they are too busy taking care of their own matters: making sure the waiter didn’t take the clams Abbi ordered away while they went out. This scene operates as a microcosm of the entire show--Abbi and Ilana act improperly, proper adults around them act disgusted, and Abbi and Ilana are unconcerned by their reaction. The two are in an altered, higher state of mind that allows them to distance themselves from the adverse reactions, and thus, the two remain unchanged despite the constant presence of attempted social conditioning pushing them to “grow up.” Ultimately, Abbi and Ilana do not develop as characters, but their freedom and their will are what drive the narrative, essentially repurposing the ideology of freedom within the bildungsroman to discard its other important ideology of societal conformity. The women of Broad City are given the freedom to do nothing, rather than being force to bear the burden of respectability and success that narrative development within the bildungsroman puts on its central figures.
Broad City effectively creates a new conduct book for women, replacing the traditional bildungsroman’s older conduct book that is both inaccessible and unfulfilling to women in particular. However, the extent to which even this new conduct book is universal is questionable. Broad City’s new conduct book emphasizes sexual freedom and removes the burden of finding and sustaining “proper” romantic relationships from the women at the center. Fraiman asserts that women at the center of the bildungsroman have an adverse relationship with sex compared to male protagonists of the genre: “The female protagonist’s progress, at least until the twentieth century, is generally contingent on avoiding the abyss of extramarital sexuality, on successfully preventing ‘things’ from happening to her. Her paradoxical task is to see the world while avoiding violation by the world’s gaze” (Fraiman 7). Broad City uses this critique of the bildungsroman to create a new narrative, one in which women are given power over their sexualities and relationships outside of the confines of society, creating, as Dorothy Allison said, a “remade world.” Whether it’s guessing the dick sizes of men playing basketball while leering from the street, purely using men for sex, or trying to hook up with as many old (mostly male) acquaintances as possible through Facebook, Abbi and Ilana are unconstrained by the paradox of avoiding the world’s gaze--they gaze right back. Their gaze, too, is remarkable due to the lack of consequences that result from it--Abbi and Ilana are free to pursue whoever they want to without fear of societal retribution, because they simply don’t care about society. Even further, Broad City as a conduct book argues that mutually supportive female friendship should supersede traditional romantic relationships that tend to demand compromise and confinement for women. Fraiman addresses the idea of “courtship as education” for women at the center of the bildungsroman, pointing out that men in the female bildungsroman usually act as insufficient mentors for the female protagonist, teaching her to compromise herself so she is suitable for marriage (Fraiman 5). Broad City, diminishes the significance of this type of courtship, emphasizing instead the importance of female friendship for women not as a stepping stone for individual development, but as a source of mutual comfort and support. In the fancy restaurant episode in particular, the two are incredibly supportive of one another: they shower each other in compliments about how good they look, Ilana cautions Abbi about a man trying to get her pregnant because according to Ilana’s logic, everyone is as in love with Abbi as she is and would thus jump at a chance to “lock her down,” an Epi-pen-fueled Abbi carries Ilana (who is in anaphylactic shock) out of the restaurant in a pose that parallels Michelangelo’s Pietà while Ave Maria plays in the background. Their friendship is depicted in the show as the one consistent source of fulfillment in their lives, to the point that it suggests that female friendship is vital and necessary to women, and thus should be emulated. Abbi and Ilana are a counterpoint to the traditional focus on a solitary figure’s development--they are a duo who rely on each other, not to further one another’s development, but instead as a mutually supportive relationship that is a worthwhile achievement in its own right, far more worthwhile than pursuing development. However, this “new conduct book” may not be as accessible as it appears to be on the surface: there is no indication that a narrative like Abbi and Ilana’s could exist for women of color. Sarah Sahim argues of this, “The hallmarks of a woman-child--messy relationships, career crossroads, financial failure, all-around bad habits--are privileges granted exclusively to white women” (Sahim 7). Sahim goes on to point out that women of color are denied access to this narrative without development because their placement at the center of it would guarantee that they would be perceived as hypersexual, directionless, and lazy. Because of this, just as the traditional bildungsroman’s conduct book was inaccessible to women, Broad City’s conduct book is also not accessible to everyone, despite its wider reach.
Pariah, unlike Broad City, does not jettison the traditional bildungsroman’s concept of development; instead, it redefines development. Pariah does so first by asserting the need for a redefinition by depicting the traditional conduct book’s damaging effects on the individual, particularly on a woman. The traditional bildungsroman as a conduct book suggests that individuals should temper their desires to work harmoniously with society’s limitations (Kontje 5), but when the individual’s desires are in direct conflict with the limitations of society, a problem arises. This is the conflict depicted in Pariah. Expectations of her development are put onto Alike by her family and her environment: she is expected to dress “like a girl”, to go to prom with a boy, and to eventually grow out of her “tomboy phase,” none of which are things she actually wants to do. This conduct book is most prominently depicted through clothing, as Alike constantly has to switch between wearing the more masculine clothes she wears outside of her home and the more feminine clothes her mother wants her to wear. In the first scene where she changes, Alike is on the subway with her friend, Laura, returning home from a club. She insists that Laura get off at her own stop instead of taking Alike home, and after Laura leaves, she shifts up several seats and starts changing out of her more masculine clothes and into clothes her mother would approve of. The camera is angled so that both a close-up of Alike’s face and her reflection can be seen, and Alike’s reflection looks straight out at the viewer before flickering away several times. Alike herself never looks directly at the viewer, but the fact that her reflection does suggests that even though she finds fulfilling the expectations of those around her at the cost of her identity a personally unfulfilling task, her position as a black queer woman from a religious household forces her to outwardly conform. The scene, thus, operates as a commentary on the act of viewing, with Alike’s reflection constantly looking out at the audience (who act as stand-ins for society) for approval as well as depicting the utter despondency of her expression at having to do so in the first place. Later, when Alike is getting ready to go to church, her mother forces her to change out of her comfortable blue collared shirt and pants into a too-tight pink blouse and skirt. While she is doing so, Alike’s mother berates her father for not talking to Alike about fixing her unladylike behavior, saying she is “tired of this tomboy phase.” Alike’s mother’s idea for her development is for Alike to become more feminine, and thus, more within societal constraints. Alike has to conform to a concept of femininity that is literally constraining her in order to please her mother and by extension fall within society’s limitations; the traditional conduct book is clearly unfulfilling for her.
After asserting the inability for the traditional conduct book to lead to fulfillment for a central female protagonist, Pariah suggests an alternate view of development outside the confines of society, focusing instead of self-discovery. After Bina tells Alike that she is “not really gay,” that sleeping together the night before was insignificant to her, and that she shouldn’t tell anyone about what happened, Alike flies out in a heartbroken rage, left in a state of despair at the discovery that one of the few people she thought she could be open with is just as ashamed of her as everyone else. The camera tracks her shakily as she runs home, kicking down trash cans and tearing off her scarf. The lighting of her room is red as the camera follows her tearing her room apart. When she tears her curtains down, the lighting turns blue, and she tears the rest of her clothes off, ultimately lying on the floor in her underwear, crying. Her removal of her clothes, the conduct book for her societally constrained development, conveys her realization that her sexuality and the constraints of the world around her are irreconcilable; because of this, she chooses to stop looking around herself for clues as to how to properly develop, but instead strip herself down and look within herself in order to develop. The shift in lighting, in particular, conveys this--as soon as the blue light comes in through the window without the curtains, Alike is able to strip herself down and ultimately, in the next scene, come out to her parents. Her mother’s violent reaction to this further suggests the irreconcilability of Alike’s identity with societal structures, this time with what Dorothy Allison refers to as “the myth of the family” as a source of support rather than as an “incubator of despair” (Allison 215). This rejection of the traditional family structure leads to Alike’s ultimate decision to leave her family and go to college early and further develop her writing skills, developing outside of the societal confines. In the scene where she reconciles with her father and tells him about her decision, she is standing on the roof with him, the bright gold of the sky lighting the shot. In comparison to the dim, dark lighting of the the rest of the film, this scene and the scenes that follow it mark clear development in Alike’s development. Her desires are no longer carefully hidden; she is finally able to pursue her own development openly without worrying about whether or not it fits within societal constraints because she has actively removed herself from society. In the final scene, the sound of Alike reading to her class a poem she wrote about her coming out and her decision to leave is played over shots of her father driving her to the bus station along with Laura and her sister, then Alike sitting on the bus and looking out the window with an expression of cautious optimism as the scene fades to white. “I am not running,” she says. “I’m choosing…I am not broken. I am free.” Alike is only able to gain the freedom to develop by actively resisting societal expectations. She discards the old, confining conduct book in favor of a new one, which the film suggests is one in which she will pursue self-fulfillment and develop her own talents without limits.
Both Broad City and Pariah pinpoint specific issues of the traditional conduct book to critique and transform these ideological flaws into a new, more accessible conduct book. Broad City focuses on using freedom to subvert the burden of narrative development itself, instead creating a new conduct book where women are not expected to develop and instead are encouraged to rely on one another for comfort and fulfillment. This, however, is not accessible to every protagonist, as Broad City’s depiction of freedom would be politicized in a vastly different and more negative way for a potential woman of color protagonist than for the white women who are comfortably at the center of the narrative. Women of color who abandon development would be seen as lazy and directionless, rather than as fun and carefree. The new conduct book presented by Broad City, though, certainly still expands the accessibility of the old genre. Pariah, on the other hand, does not completely abandon narrative development, but instead redefines it for its central queer woman of color: Alike does not develop traditionally within society, but she does progress towards self-fulfillment outside society’s bounds. The removal of societal limitations from development alleviates some of its burden for the woman at the center, allowing her to self-actualize in a way she could not have done within the traditional structures of family and heteronormativity. Pariah’s conduct book, thus, emphasizes the importance of personal fulfillment, even at the cost of moving outside of the limits of society. Both of these narratives make use of the old genre to critique itself, and in doing so transform the genre itself: both pursue the “remade world” through their transformative power, allowing for women to have narratives far more fulfilling than the ones they get in the traditional bildungsroman.
Works Cited
Allison, Dorothy. Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, and Literature. Ithaca: Firebrand Books, 1994. Print.
Fraiman, Susan. Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and the Novel of Development. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Print.
Glazer, Ilana, and Jacobson, Abbi, prod. Broad City. Comedy Central, 2014. Television.
Kontje, Todd. The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Columbia: Camden House, 1993. Print.
Rees, Dee, dir. Pariah. Focus Features, 2011. Film.
Sahim, Sarah. “American Woman-Child: Troubling a New Trope.” Bitch Fall 2015: 7. Web.
Broad City rejects the traditional bildungsroman’s focus on development, and instead actively works against the process of narrative development itself. Fraiman suggests that development is a matter of free will in the traditional bildungsroman, which she refers to as “apprentice novels.” She gives the example of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, asserting, “Apprenticeship tends to imply choice…Wilhelm and his kinsmen look around, ask themselves where their unique talents lie, and self-consciously determine to cultivate those talents” (Fraiman 5). Traditionally, the bildungsroman operated as a conduct book for white, middle class men, encouraging them to “look around” themselves and based on what they see, develop their talents within the confines of the society around them. The philosophical ideology of the genre, though, suggests that the individual must actively, freely make the choice to develop within the confines of society: “Goethe stresses the freedom necessary for human development and views personal cultivation as a continuing project of the highest ethical significance…Humboldt also identifies Bildung as the primary goal of humanity…’Our true purpose in life is the cultivate our diverse talents into a balanced whole’” (Kontje 4). This places a clear burden of development on the individual, yet paradoxically suggests that development is a free choice.
Broad City is certainly conscious of the bildungsroman’s burden of development, yet uses the vital aspect of freedom within it to subvert that burden and thus, the genre’s status as a conduct book. Abbi and Ilana’s choices drive their narratives, but the choices they make lead them not towards, but away from traditional development through the childishness and circularity of their narratives. Abbi and Ilana lack any sense of self-consciousness when they move through respectable adult spaces, even when they are hopelessly out-of-place and lacking in the social conventions of adulthood. Their prolonged adolescence is not presented as tragic, however: it’s almost normalized. The show makes constant use of circular narratives lacking development, for example, but specific scenes also point to this normalization of the “woman-child”. This features prominently in one particular scene where Abbi and Ilana visit a CPA to get Ilana’s taxes done. Rather than being confined to the script of interactions between responsible adults regarding a financial matters that Killian Casey, CPA is desperately clinging to, Abbi and Ilana basically throw the script out the window--for example, when asked if she has any dependents, Ilana replies, “Uh…I have a lot of independence…but, um…I guess I have people who depend on me, too.” In addition, within the shot/reverse shot sequence of the scene, the camera lingers longer on Abbi and Ilana, making Killian Casey’s abrupt, frustrated responses to Ilana’s vastly unhelpful “tax information” seem out-of-place, and when he eventually loses it and starts screaming at them to leave, his adult response, not Abbi and Ilana’s childishness, is ultimately positioned as truly weird and laughable. The particular picture that Abbi thinks is a magic eye holds significance as well--the fact that she is unable to mentally process an image of a family suggests that the concept of having a family is incomprehensible to her, further emphasizing her state of adolescence. The scene thus suggests that traditional development is stranger than prolonged adolescence, and through this the latter is made not a sign of failure, but instead is normal. Another instance of this juxtaposition between respectful adulthood and prolonged adolescence occurs when Abbi and Ilana go to a fancy restaurant to celebrate Abbi’s birthday, particularly when the two go out for a few minutes to smoke weed and then return to see the disgusted faces of everyone around them as they walk back to their table. The sequence of slow motion close-ups of the other guests’ faces taken at canted angles which slowly come into focus is meant to reflect Abbi and Ilana’s state of mind after getting high. The two, however, are unfazed by the negative reactions of the people around them. In fact, they are too busy taking care of their own matters: making sure the waiter didn’t take the clams Abbi ordered away while they went out. This scene operates as a microcosm of the entire show--Abbi and Ilana act improperly, proper adults around them act disgusted, and Abbi and Ilana are unconcerned by their reaction. The two are in an altered, higher state of mind that allows them to distance themselves from the adverse reactions, and thus, the two remain unchanged despite the constant presence of attempted social conditioning pushing them to “grow up.” Ultimately, Abbi and Ilana do not develop as characters, but their freedom and their will are what drive the narrative, essentially repurposing the ideology of freedom within the bildungsroman to discard its other important ideology of societal conformity. The women of Broad City are given the freedom to do nothing, rather than being force to bear the burden of respectability and success that narrative development within the bildungsroman puts on its central figures.
Broad City effectively creates a new conduct book for women, replacing the traditional bildungsroman’s older conduct book that is both inaccessible and unfulfilling to women in particular. However, the extent to which even this new conduct book is universal is questionable. Broad City’s new conduct book emphasizes sexual freedom and removes the burden of finding and sustaining “proper” romantic relationships from the women at the center. Fraiman asserts that women at the center of the bildungsroman have an adverse relationship with sex compared to male protagonists of the genre: “The female protagonist’s progress, at least until the twentieth century, is generally contingent on avoiding the abyss of extramarital sexuality, on successfully preventing ‘things’ from happening to her. Her paradoxical task is to see the world while avoiding violation by the world’s gaze” (Fraiman 7). Broad City uses this critique of the bildungsroman to create a new narrative, one in which women are given power over their sexualities and relationships outside of the confines of society, creating, as Dorothy Allison said, a “remade world.” Whether it’s guessing the dick sizes of men playing basketball while leering from the street, purely using men for sex, or trying to hook up with as many old (mostly male) acquaintances as possible through Facebook, Abbi and Ilana are unconstrained by the paradox of avoiding the world’s gaze--they gaze right back. Their gaze, too, is remarkable due to the lack of consequences that result from it--Abbi and Ilana are free to pursue whoever they want to without fear of societal retribution, because they simply don’t care about society. Even further, Broad City as a conduct book argues that mutually supportive female friendship should supersede traditional romantic relationships that tend to demand compromise and confinement for women. Fraiman addresses the idea of “courtship as education” for women at the center of the bildungsroman, pointing out that men in the female bildungsroman usually act as insufficient mentors for the female protagonist, teaching her to compromise herself so she is suitable for marriage (Fraiman 5). Broad City, diminishes the significance of this type of courtship, emphasizing instead the importance of female friendship for women not as a stepping stone for individual development, but as a source of mutual comfort and support. In the fancy restaurant episode in particular, the two are incredibly supportive of one another: they shower each other in compliments about how good they look, Ilana cautions Abbi about a man trying to get her pregnant because according to Ilana’s logic, everyone is as in love with Abbi as she is and would thus jump at a chance to “lock her down,” an Epi-pen-fueled Abbi carries Ilana (who is in anaphylactic shock) out of the restaurant in a pose that parallels Michelangelo’s Pietà while Ave Maria plays in the background. Their friendship is depicted in the show as the one consistent source of fulfillment in their lives, to the point that it suggests that female friendship is vital and necessary to women, and thus should be emulated. Abbi and Ilana are a counterpoint to the traditional focus on a solitary figure’s development--they are a duo who rely on each other, not to further one another’s development, but instead as a mutually supportive relationship that is a worthwhile achievement in its own right, far more worthwhile than pursuing development. However, this “new conduct book” may not be as accessible as it appears to be on the surface: there is no indication that a narrative like Abbi and Ilana’s could exist for women of color. Sarah Sahim argues of this, “The hallmarks of a woman-child--messy relationships, career crossroads, financial failure, all-around bad habits--are privileges granted exclusively to white women” (Sahim 7). Sahim goes on to point out that women of color are denied access to this narrative without development because their placement at the center of it would guarantee that they would be perceived as hypersexual, directionless, and lazy. Because of this, just as the traditional bildungsroman’s conduct book was inaccessible to women, Broad City’s conduct book is also not accessible to everyone, despite its wider reach.
Pariah, unlike Broad City, does not jettison the traditional bildungsroman’s concept of development; instead, it redefines development. Pariah does so first by asserting the need for a redefinition by depicting the traditional conduct book’s damaging effects on the individual, particularly on a woman. The traditional bildungsroman as a conduct book suggests that individuals should temper their desires to work harmoniously with society’s limitations (Kontje 5), but when the individual’s desires are in direct conflict with the limitations of society, a problem arises. This is the conflict depicted in Pariah. Expectations of her development are put onto Alike by her family and her environment: she is expected to dress “like a girl”, to go to prom with a boy, and to eventually grow out of her “tomboy phase,” none of which are things she actually wants to do. This conduct book is most prominently depicted through clothing, as Alike constantly has to switch between wearing the more masculine clothes she wears outside of her home and the more feminine clothes her mother wants her to wear. In the first scene where she changes, Alike is on the subway with her friend, Laura, returning home from a club. She insists that Laura get off at her own stop instead of taking Alike home, and after Laura leaves, she shifts up several seats and starts changing out of her more masculine clothes and into clothes her mother would approve of. The camera is angled so that both a close-up of Alike’s face and her reflection can be seen, and Alike’s reflection looks straight out at the viewer before flickering away several times. Alike herself never looks directly at the viewer, but the fact that her reflection does suggests that even though she finds fulfilling the expectations of those around her at the cost of her identity a personally unfulfilling task, her position as a black queer woman from a religious household forces her to outwardly conform. The scene, thus, operates as a commentary on the act of viewing, with Alike’s reflection constantly looking out at the audience (who act as stand-ins for society) for approval as well as depicting the utter despondency of her expression at having to do so in the first place. Later, when Alike is getting ready to go to church, her mother forces her to change out of her comfortable blue collared shirt and pants into a too-tight pink blouse and skirt. While she is doing so, Alike’s mother berates her father for not talking to Alike about fixing her unladylike behavior, saying she is “tired of this tomboy phase.” Alike’s mother’s idea for her development is for Alike to become more feminine, and thus, more within societal constraints. Alike has to conform to a concept of femininity that is literally constraining her in order to please her mother and by extension fall within society’s limitations; the traditional conduct book is clearly unfulfilling for her.
After asserting the inability for the traditional conduct book to lead to fulfillment for a central female protagonist, Pariah suggests an alternate view of development outside the confines of society, focusing instead of self-discovery. After Bina tells Alike that she is “not really gay,” that sleeping together the night before was insignificant to her, and that she shouldn’t tell anyone about what happened, Alike flies out in a heartbroken rage, left in a state of despair at the discovery that one of the few people she thought she could be open with is just as ashamed of her as everyone else. The camera tracks her shakily as she runs home, kicking down trash cans and tearing off her scarf. The lighting of her room is red as the camera follows her tearing her room apart. When she tears her curtains down, the lighting turns blue, and she tears the rest of her clothes off, ultimately lying on the floor in her underwear, crying. Her removal of her clothes, the conduct book for her societally constrained development, conveys her realization that her sexuality and the constraints of the world around her are irreconcilable; because of this, she chooses to stop looking around herself for clues as to how to properly develop, but instead strip herself down and look within herself in order to develop. The shift in lighting, in particular, conveys this--as soon as the blue light comes in through the window without the curtains, Alike is able to strip herself down and ultimately, in the next scene, come out to her parents. Her mother’s violent reaction to this further suggests the irreconcilability of Alike’s identity with societal structures, this time with what Dorothy Allison refers to as “the myth of the family” as a source of support rather than as an “incubator of despair” (Allison 215). This rejection of the traditional family structure leads to Alike’s ultimate decision to leave her family and go to college early and further develop her writing skills, developing outside of the societal confines. In the scene where she reconciles with her father and tells him about her decision, she is standing on the roof with him, the bright gold of the sky lighting the shot. In comparison to the dim, dark lighting of the the rest of the film, this scene and the scenes that follow it mark clear development in Alike’s development. Her desires are no longer carefully hidden; she is finally able to pursue her own development openly without worrying about whether or not it fits within societal constraints because she has actively removed herself from society. In the final scene, the sound of Alike reading to her class a poem she wrote about her coming out and her decision to leave is played over shots of her father driving her to the bus station along with Laura and her sister, then Alike sitting on the bus and looking out the window with an expression of cautious optimism as the scene fades to white. “I am not running,” she says. “I’m choosing…I am not broken. I am free.” Alike is only able to gain the freedom to develop by actively resisting societal expectations. She discards the old, confining conduct book in favor of a new one, which the film suggests is one in which she will pursue self-fulfillment and develop her own talents without limits.
Both Broad City and Pariah pinpoint specific issues of the traditional conduct book to critique and transform these ideological flaws into a new, more accessible conduct book. Broad City focuses on using freedom to subvert the burden of narrative development itself, instead creating a new conduct book where women are not expected to develop and instead are encouraged to rely on one another for comfort and fulfillment. This, however, is not accessible to every protagonist, as Broad City’s depiction of freedom would be politicized in a vastly different and more negative way for a potential woman of color protagonist than for the white women who are comfortably at the center of the narrative. Women of color who abandon development would be seen as lazy and directionless, rather than as fun and carefree. The new conduct book presented by Broad City, though, certainly still expands the accessibility of the old genre. Pariah, on the other hand, does not completely abandon narrative development, but instead redefines it for its central queer woman of color: Alike does not develop traditionally within society, but she does progress towards self-fulfillment outside society’s bounds. The removal of societal limitations from development alleviates some of its burden for the woman at the center, allowing her to self-actualize in a way she could not have done within the traditional structures of family and heteronormativity. Pariah’s conduct book, thus, emphasizes the importance of personal fulfillment, even at the cost of moving outside of the limits of society. Both of these narratives make use of the old genre to critique itself, and in doing so transform the genre itself: both pursue the “remade world” through their transformative power, allowing for women to have narratives far more fulfilling than the ones they get in the traditional bildungsroman.
Works Cited
Allison, Dorothy. Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, and Literature. Ithaca: Firebrand Books, 1994. Print.
Fraiman, Susan. Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and the Novel of Development. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Print.
Glazer, Ilana, and Jacobson, Abbi, prod. Broad City. Comedy Central, 2014. Television.
Kontje, Todd. The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Columbia: Camden House, 1993. Print.
Rees, Dee, dir. Pariah. Focus Features, 2011. Film.
Sahim, Sarah. “American Woman-Child: Troubling a New Trope.” Bitch Fall 2015: 7. Web.