{"id":21165,"date":"2016-04-21T10:49:08","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T14:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=21165"},"modified":"2016-04-21T10:49:08","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T14:49:08","slug":"the-art-of-fuller-house-a-piece-out-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2016\/04\/21\/the-art-of-fuller-house-a-piece-out-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Fuller House: A Piece out of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"18-fuller-house.w529.h352\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBasic,\u201d \u201cpainful,\u201d \u201cembarrassing,\u201d and comparable to necrophilia<\/a>: a small sampling from the reviews of Fuller House<\/a> over the last couple of months. The Netflix original, a remake of the classic 1980s\/90s sitcom Full House, may become a lasting icon of terrible, terrible, really quite bad moments in television history. The kindest sentiment I came across was expressed by Maureen Ryan in Variety<\/a>, who generously conceded that \u201c[t]hose who enjoyed the original\u2026and don\u2019t mind its patented blend of cloying sentiment, cutesy mugging and predictable humor might find enjoyment in this unspectacular retread.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Naturally, I binge watched. Of course, it was as awful as expected. Maybe worse. The remake is\u00a0identical to the original in both form and feel. The characters are\u00a0unidimensional, the story is\u00a0episodic and shallow, the catch-phrases are\u00a0somehow even less catchy, and oh the racism. Kimmy Gibbler\u2019s ex-husband is\u00a0a cringe-worthy Latino caricature whose lustful propensities can\u00a0hardly be contained and the 11th<\/sup> episode centers around an Indian themed party which acts as the foil for copious jokes, includes an almost entirely white cast dressed in saris and jamas, and culminates with the party attendees spontaneously breaking into a choreographed dance<\/a> for which mysteriously, they each know\u00a0all of the moves. That last part may or may not be racist, but as a storytelling decision, asks the audience to suspend an unfair amount of belief.<\/p>\n

Fuller House could not have been worse if it tried. Which is why I reinterpreted the season as though it did try. And then, Fuller House was\u00a0very good.<\/p>\n

I watched the Fuller House season as though it was not just bad, but actively <\/em>bad. From this angle, the decision to make a new show that is entirely unchanged from 30 years ago is a smart and creative vehicle for powerful social commentary. For the creators to leave this fact unmentioned is a piece of artistic genius.<\/p>\n

That social commentary was the creators\u2019 and actors\u2019 intent is by no means a solid fact, nor even a well supported one. On the contrary, there is little reason to believe that the show is anything more than it appears at face value. But this is irrelevant. Media consumption is always participatory and audiences play a creative role. How a show is written matters, as does how the show is read. My reading of Fuller House\u2014as a show out of time\u2014 transformed what was vapid, vacuous, and appallingly offensive, into a compelling piece of television programming.<\/p>\n

Watching a show retrospectively is distinct from remaking the show in a new historical moment. The failings of the latter are decidedly more jarring and less forgivable. New cultural products are responsible for the advances in technology, storytelling, and identity politics of their time. For instance, Archie Bunker\u2019s racial epithets\u00a0and Ralph Kranden\u2019s continued threats to send his wife \u201cstraight to the moon<\/a>\u201d would never fly today. Similarly, Saved by the Bell would only ever get picked up if Jessie Spanno\u2019s caffeine-pill problem was a cocaine problem, intersected with storylines that wouldn\u2019t pay off for several more seasons, and excluded any and all scenes that transitioned from dancing to crying<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Viewers may look back upon older media products with a combination of nostalgia and embarrassment, but also an implicit acceptance about the way things used to be. In contrast, an anachronistic production demonstrates how \u201cthe way things used to be\u201d both reflected and informed normative logic. What was once popular was popular for a reason, and most certainly shaped how viewers understood themselves and others. That is, media products are formative, and the kind of culture that media products form becomes starkly clear when viewed from the future.<\/p>\n

An anachronistic cultural product shows us to ourselves through our own nostalgia\u2014and in the case of Fuller House, it is unflattering. It not only reveals the viewers\u2019 formative past, but also pushes viewers to face the ways in which contemporary media products are of this\u00a0<\/em>particular\u00a0time. In doing so it\u00a0facilitates the uncomfortable question: will the media of\u00a0\u00a0today\u00a0be acceptable in the near and distant future?\u00a0This \u00a0question applies to both broadcast and social media, and in many cases, the answer is\u00a0no, this will\u00a0not be acceptable. For instance, Facebook’s “real name” policy, Twilight’s implicit romanticization of abuse<\/a>,\u00a0and Snapchat’s Bob Marley filter\u00a0<\/a>will be\u00a0recalled as emblems of antiquated values. Today, they are the subject of debate. 30\u00a0Years from now, if presented unchanged, they may well be shocking affronts–and yet these are all formative media. They reflect us, shape us, and are part of us. To re-present them out of time,\u00a0in the manner of Fuller House, insists that the cultural milieu address what it made, what it enjoyed, and what that says about who they were and how they are now.<\/p>\n

As a show out of time, Fuller House blares its inadequacy. It’s really just the worst.\u00a0Luckily, media\u00a0consumption is always active. So fuck it, I\u2019m reading Fuller House as social commentary and\u00a0basking in its brilliance. I highly recommend this tactic\u00a0because next on deck:<\/p>\n

\"fuller-house-season-two\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jenny Davis is on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBasic,\u201d \u201cpainful,\u201d \u201cembarrassing,\u201d and comparable to necrophilia: a small sampling from the reviews of Fuller House over the last couple of months. The Netflix original, a remake of the classic 1980s\/90s sitcom Full House, may become a lasting icon of terrible, terrible, really quite bad moments in television history. The kindest sentiment I came across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1753,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[36476,671,36475,129,36474,3156,3331,19828,94],"class_list":["post-21165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-bob-marley","tag-entertainment","tag-fuller-house","tag-media","tag-media-consumption","tag-netflix","tag-prosumption","tag-snapchat","tag-television"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21165"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21195,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21165\/revisions\/21195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}