Working Women and Sitcom Humour: A Comparative Study of
Workplace Sitcoms Brooklyn Nine-Nine and 2 Broke Girls
Meera Hari,
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
Postgraduate and Research Department of English,
All Saints’ College, University of Kerala,
Kerala, India.
Abstract: This paper explores
how gender operates in the workplace in the sitcoms Brooklyn Nine-Nine and 2
Broke Girls. The prime focus of the study is how female labour is viewed
and valued in a place of work. Although both of the selected sitcom texts
feature female characters in lead roles, the portrayals are quite different. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, set in a fairly
egalitarian workspace, follows well-developed plotlines and subtexts that
acknowledge and value female labour, both visible as well as invisible. 2 Broke Girls, with its lead
characters employed in a low-paying, unfair workspace, had the opportunity to
question the existing hierarchical social structures. However, the sitcom ends
up trivializing and invalidating female labour and the associated struggles.
Humour is used in two different ways in these two sitcoms: the former uses it for
empowerment and the latter uses it for degradation. The study highlights how
workplace sitcoms perceive women’s labour and how humour is used to uphold or
dismantle gendered attitudes in the workplace.
Keywords: Female labour, Gendered workplace, Humour, Sitcom,
Media representation
Sitcoms are prominent cultural texts consumed by a large
majority of people. American sitcoms, in particular, have a global appeal and a
wide viewership. Considering sitcoms as influential cultural texts, they can
reflect, question or even shape social attitudes and public mentality. This
extends to every aspect of social life depicted in sitcoms including notions of
gender. Workplace sitcoms are mainly set in a workplace scenario and the major
plotlines untangle in the shared workplace. Such a genre of sitcoms is
influential in the perception and visibility of gendered labour and can
subvert, reinforce or neutrally reflect social hierarchies. This paper focuses
on two popular American workplace sitcoms Brooklyn Nine-Nine and 2
Broke Girls and examines how female labour is portrayed in these.
Considering the fact that sitcoms are situational comedies, the study also
explores how humour correlates with gender in the sitcom workplaces.
Both the sitcoms under study enjoy widespread popularity
not just among the American audience but among the global audiences as well. Brooklyn
Nine-Nine and 2 Broke Girls share the common ground that they both
belong to the genre of workplace sitcoms. But this is where the similarities
end. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is set in a New York City police precinct, and
the majority of the show's plotlines involve the detectives solving cases. 2
Broke Girls narrates the journey of two women employed in a local
Williamsburg neighbourhood diner and their efforts to overcome socio-economic
hardships. One has an institutional workplace setting whereas the other is set
in an unstable service economy. This paper intends to explore how the lead
female characters are positioned in their workplace. As an extension of this,
the paper also explores what kind of labour these women perform in their
workplace and also how their labour is valued.
Though both of these sitcoms have working women in
the lead roles, their portrayal of these women have a marked difference. While
both sitcoms acknowledge the bias and challenges faced by women in the
workplace, the narrative treatment of these characters navigating a gendered
workspace is different. The institutional setting of a police precinct calls
for a deeply hierarchical structure allowing the possibility of an unjust
workplace where normalised sexism thrives. However, Brooklyn Nine-Nine
resists reinforcing any such traditional gendering activities. The precinct is
presented as a fairly egalitarian workspace which provides all the lead
characters with equal opportunities to thrive, irrespective of gender. While
the structural hierarchy of police titles is honoured, gender-based hierarchies
are eliminated. Nevertheless, elimination of gendered hierarchies does not
essentially mean that the sitcom completely denies the existence of gender
discrimination altogether and presents a utopian world. This implies that Brooklyn
Nine-Nine puts forward an egalitarian outlook and approach through its
situational humour and character arcs all the while acknowledging the existence
of sexism and systemic discrimination in the real-world.
With regard to 2 Broke Girls, centering around two
women employed in the service industry, the sitcom had the scope to adopt a
progressive or at least an empathetic approach to the plight of the women. But,
on the contrary, the writers chose to make use of the unfair working conditions
and struggles of the lead characters to comic advantage. This sitcom depicts
female labour with ridicule thereby undermining their efforts and the hurdles
they cross on a daily basis. One gets to witness the title characters Max
Black and Caroline Channing striving towards their dream of launching a cupcake
shop. Ostensibly, the sitcom presents two empowered, independent women
navigating the struggles of the modern world and working hard to achieve their
goal but it ultimately is just an illusion of empowerment that disguises
numerous regressive gendered notions. While the struggles the two women
go through are visible, the show’s writers failed to question or even
acknowledge the existence of an unfair work environment.
In a profession that has been historically dominated by
men, Brooklyn Nine-Nine includes three female leads — Amy Santiago, Rosa
Diaz and Gina Linetti— who perform exceptionally well at their jobs. Though the
gender ratio is skewed in favour of male characters, the female characters are
strong, diverse and not at all tokenistic. Amy Santiago has the most
screen space among the three female leads. Amy’s character is based on
the “front-row student” trope. She is an ambitious, staunchly rule-following
and high-achieving woman who exhibits great leadership skills. Her desire to
succeed and gain professional recognition makes up a defining part of her
personality. She is enthusiastic to take up tasks and impress her superiors.
She performs a lot of typically male-coded jobs but the humour around her character
does not stem from this fact. Jokes involving Amy is focused more on her
personality quirks. That being said, her character quirks like her obsession
with stationary, compulsive organisation tendencies and her extreme enthusiasm
to do paperwork is not seen as a weakness but as a personal strength that is
appreciated in her workplace.
Detective Rosa Diaz is a character who shatters all
typical workplace gender roles. Her character involves a lot of physical action
and intimidation, both of which are usually associated with male characters.
She performs a lot of masculinized tasks that subverts traditional expectations
of masculinity and femininity. Rosa’s humour relies on deadpan tactics and her
refusal to display any emotional expression except anger. The juxtaposition of
Rosa’s character with the milder personalities around her and Rosa’s inability
to understand that her level of toughness is not that common, like when she
says “What kind of a woman doesn’t have an axe?” invites laughs all along the sitcom
seasons (Brooklyn Nine Nine, “The Ebony Falcon”). Midway through the
seasons, Rosa comes out as bisexual but her sexuality does not, at any point in
the sitcom, engulf her character.
Gina Linetti is the Precinct Captain’s personal assistant
who offers a skill set different from that of all the detectives in the
Nine-Nine precinct. Gina performs a different version of feminized labour
characterised by soft skills like conflict-resolution, morale-boosting and
creative problem solving. Her emotional labour may not be hyper-visible but is
effective. Gina becomes the spokesperson of the people (the civilians, in
police terms), who helps the detectives understand and solve the issues of the
city all the while being sensitive to the condition of the civilians. For
instance, after Holt and Amy receives backlash for their Police promotional
campaign, it is Gina who ultimately helps themrealize what the city and the
civilians expect from Police (Brooklyn Nine Nine, “Boyle’s Hunch”). Gina
is the quintessential “cool kid” of the show’s ensemble but she fits in
seamlessly contributing to a well-rounded cast of characters. Though there are
a few humour sequences that focus on her unproductivity, the show validates the
atypical labour she performs.
Coming to 2 Broke Girls, the major comedic thread
is the unlikely combo of the two women stuck in the menial job of waitressing
at a local diner and their efforts to come out of the cycle of poverty through
their dream of entrepreneurship. Max and Caroline are exposed to ridicule and
humiliation on a daily basis. The labour they perform is trivialised and is
denied any kind of visibility. Apart from this, these women are subjected to
constant sexual abuses that are mostly verbal, but at times physical too.
Max is the tough, quick-witted waitress who is also the
head (and only) baker and part-owner of ‘Max’s Homemade Cupcakes’. She is a
resilient, hard-working woman but her resilience and street smarts are
juxtaposed against the typically feminized genre of work she is employed in.
Here, the humour is drawn from the contrast of the image of a typically
feminine care-giver serving tasty treats with the snarky, far-from
traditionally feminine Max, baking, decorating and serving pretty
cupcakes. Max’s sharp comebacks to Oleg’s sexual innuendos, though
disguised as empowerment of modern-day women, is basically workplace sexual
harassment turned into comedic fodder.
Caroline’s fall down the socio-economic ladder, post her
father’s financial fraud scandal and her constant attempt at trying to cope
with poverty serves as the main premise of humour involving her character. The
show’s intended humour in the rich girl trying to survive a ‘low-status’ job is
latently classist. Caroline is an elite business school graduate with
sufficient skill sets to categorise her as a smart and hard-working
entrepreneur. However, she is often portrayed as a mostly incompetent and
unskilled employee. Except at her own entrepreneurial venture, she is treated
as nothing more than a pretty face everywhere she works. The show upholds
traditional divisions of labour with Max doing the physical and muscular tasks
and Caroline doing the ‘pretty’ and polished tasks. Apart from this, the
emotional labour performed by Max and Caroline is acknowledged nowhere in 2
Broke Girls. Caroline constantly performs the task of hyping Max up and
motivating her to work harder. She is also the brain behind all initiatives
associated with ‘Max’s Homemade Cupcakes’. Max, on the other hand, despite her
rough covert personality, is the most empathetic character in the sitcom. She
took in Caroline when the latter was homeless, took care of Earl when he fell
ill and reassured Sophie when she was depressed all the while juggling multiple
jobs and responsibilities.
Humour in the two selected sitcoms are quite different in
approaches and strategies. As John Morreall observes, “Humor’s play frame
allows prejudicial ideas to be slipped into people’s heads without being
evaluated”(107). The humour in Brooklyn Nine-Nine does not stem from gender-based
jokes or marginalizing punchlines. The sitcom relies on character quirks of
individuals without resorting to humiliation. For instance, Amy’s obsession
with binders and Rosa storing multiple weapons on her body are recurring jokes
throughout the sitcom. However, it is noteworthy that nobody ridicules them for
their quirky traits. In the case of 2 Broke Girls, it is evidently the
opposite. The labour, working conditions and the overall plight of Max and
Caroline is a major source of humour in the sitcom. When Billig said “Those who
are motivated to believe in the goodness and creativity of laughter’s
rebelliousness turn their heads from the more problematic aspects of ridicule”,
he tried to point out that not every humour aimed at societal inequalities are
rebellious or corrective (2). The sitcom constantly undermines the efforts of
these women and their work becomes a target for ridicule or embarrassment.
Indisputably, most of the jokes and punchlines from 2 Broke Girls rely
on humiliation and ridicule. The formerly rich Caroline performing menial jobs
and living in unsanitary conditions is a running joke in the series and a lot
of these jokes point at the embarrassing aspects of her life. To over dramatize this, Caroline is
constantly given plotlines involving a lot of degrading slapstick humour. For
instance, the scene in which the shower in their apartment breaks, Caroline is
doused in dirty water (2 Broke Girls, “And the Gym and Juice”). The
intended comedic effect would not have been as intense if Max had been in
Caroline’s place since she (Max) is, to some extent, unfazed by such
situations. In reference to Max, a lot of humour, especially at the diner, is
targeted at her body and appearance. Max is subjected to sexualizing and
slut-shaming throughout the series. Another favourite comedic-attribute of the
writers is Max’s “unfeminine” demeanour and conduct like the way she walks or
the way she talks. Interestingly enough, Caroline, who is a diametric opposite
of Max’s, is also subjected to humiliation for being “too feminine” and not
having the idealized curvy body.
While discussing humour and gendering in the workplace,
two important questions need to be asked: Who makes the joke? and Who becomes
the joke? In the context of Brooklyn Nine Nine, all the lead characters,
irrespective of gender, have well-developed narratives and comedic spaces.
Everyone gets to be funny in the egalitarian workplace. Their humour is never
based on degradation and humiliation of individuals. However, in the case of 2
Broke Girls, the male characters exercise a lot of subtle power through
humour. Though Max and Caroline do make jokes, those jokes are mostly either at
their own expense or to downplay offensive dialogues or advances from male
characters. In attempting to answer the second question, it is evident from the
earlier discussions that Brooklyn Nine Nine does not resort to humour
that sidelines or demeans the females or any other characters whereas 2
Broke Girls gets its laughs almost entirely from doing so. This clearly
demonstrates the hierarchies that operate under the narrative structure of the
latter.
This paper examined how gendered systems manifest in
workplaces majorly focusing on the nature, value and visibility of female
labour in the selected sitcoms. In these sitcom spaces, humour, rather than
merely functioning as a neutral narrative device, becomes a tool that subverts
or reinforces gender hierarchies. Being workplace sitcoms, the role of humour
is closely interwoven with how labour is perceived. As discussed, Brooklyn
Nine Nine’s narrative values and provides visibility to female labour while
using humour to support, not suppress it. On the contrary, 2 Broke Girls trivializes
female labour to a target of mockery and nothing more. The analysis of these
two sitcoms reveals two dissonant effects of humour: questioning oppressive
systemic hierarchies and discretely reinforcing the said hierarchies.
Works Cited
2 Broke Girls.
Created by Whitney Cummings and Michael Patrick King, CBS, 2011–2017.
Billig, Michael. Laughter and Ridicule:
Towards a Social Critique of Laughter. Sage, 2005.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Created by Michael Schur and Dan Goor, performances by Andy Samberg, Melissa
Fumero, Stephanie Beatriz, Chelsea Peretti, Fox/NBC, 2013–2021.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2006.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed
Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. 20th anniversary ed, University
of California Press, 2003.
Morreall, John. Comic
Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.