‘Work In Progress’ Season 1 Episode 3 addresses offensive representations in 80s and 90s pop culture
The very core objective of pop culture is to present relevant social and cultural scenarios in a fun and entertaining way. But that’s where it also goes wrong at times, especially a few decades ago. Let’s admit it. Society wasn’t as opinionated or even aware of the matter at hand at that time. In the 80s and the 90s, for instance, we have seen some of the quirkiest works of art on television, movies, music, and more.
And it wasn't a big deal if they hurt the sentiments of any particular group of people. We took them as sheer entertainment and moved on. It sure did affect people but not many stepped forward to talk about them as we do today.
In ‘Work In Progress’, some of these points of discussion are being brought to light. Take the character of Pat for instance. As we have established before, SNL’s famous 90s character was nothing but derogatory for the LGBT community. Abby brings this up when she starts dating a trans-man and in the same evening bumps into Julia Sweeney, Pat’s creator.
Julia (who also enacted the character on SNL) even apologizes to Abby and tries to make up for her decades old creation by inviting Abby and Chris to dinner. But there’s more surprise in store when the couple meets Julia’s husband. Remember Weird Al Yankovic, the king of parody? It turns out that Julia and Al have been married for years and have a daughter.
While Abby and Chris both have a fan moment with Al, they soon engage in conversations on strange topics. Over dinner, Abby brings back the topic of Pat again in front of the whole family and Al feels embarrassed.
Though Abby likes Al and his music, she thinks that his hit single ‘Fat’, which was essentially a spoof of Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’, was disparaging of overweight people.
Here’s something we need to understand: Abby has always considered herself to be ‘fat’.
So, in a way, the song kind of was a dig at her, and people like her. Whether she has been bullied for her body image or not, is something we will never know, or not so soon. But we do know that body shaming obese or fat people is something that has been happening for generations and it is only in the recent times that we as a society have become conscious about not offending people.
Characters like Pat or Al in ‘Fat’ might have been fun to watch or thrived as creative entertainment, but we cannot ignore the fact that they were also hurtful and offensive to people like gays, lesbians, queers, transgenders, fat, or people with different abilities, who were already struggling to make themselves heard and create a place for themselves in society.
So, while the 80s and 90s might have paved the way for modern-day pop culture and we cannot deny that we did a whole lot of unique creations, but they also ended up treading on the foot of some social segments. With a show like ‘Work In Progress’, these little but significant issues have a chance to come to light.
‘Work In Progress’ Season 1 airs every Sunday, 11 pm, only on Showtime.
