Gilmore Girls: The Most Successful Feminist Comedy of My Generation

I am extremely grateful that Netflix has a sense of nostalgia. Having brought back Arrested Development and (perhaps more questionably) Full House, it has now revived one of the most iconic shows of the turn of the century, Gilmore Girls. This piece is an homage to that show, in high anticipation of that offering.

There’s long been a feminist fantasy, from Virginia Woolf to Helene Cixous, of a female writing (more “jargonically”, ecriture feminine), a style of writing distinctly by women, for women, about women, the literary equivalent of the suffrage movement. I cannot think of a better torch-bearer for that movement than the Gilmore Girls’ creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino. This is a show that lasted eight seasons with no male protagonist, a show with a relentless focus on everything we associate with the feminine, from the superficial manicures and make-up sessions to the deep domestic commitments few male writers are comfortable with.

Perhaps the best way to see the show’s “feminine” style is through a contrast with the show it parodies, The West Wing. You may not know that this is part of this show’s story of origins, and it may well be because the connection only exists in my mind, but hear me out. The Gilmore Girls’ pilot episode opens with a close parallel to The West Wing, the main character Lorelai walking around her office (like Leo in WW’s pilot) working through a myriad of professional problems in the Sorkin-stamped “walk-and-talk” style. The show’s iconic Town-Hall meetings are an incredible parody on national politics, which at the time had only one dramatic show representing it.

Sherman-Palladino’s style, too, is eerily similar to Sorkin’s, at least on a surface level. Both have extremely intelligent characters speaking supernaturally fast in a witty-bantering style that you imagine takes an hour to write a single minute of. Both love dipping heavily into their mailbag of cultural references, both like overlapping dialogues with a crescendo of repetitions and writing about teams, both have a deep sentimentalism easily picked up from their choice of sound-tracks alone.

With such similar styles, I think it is fair to argue Sherman-Palladino’s writing directly opposes Sorkin’s, and particularly in its gendered focus. Sorkin was made famous through a movie about a few good men, Sherman-Palladino through a show about Gilmore girls. Sorkin characters consistently berate each other to be manly (“you’re the man of the house, Leo – fix it.” “Can we be men, Toby?” “Let’s talk as men do, Sam”), take victory laps to the chorus of “who da man” and are generally obsessed with the professional realm least penetrated by women, politics. Nearly every personal plot in the West Wing at some point or another has to converge with a Law or, at its most microscopic, an election or supreme-court nominee. The first marital conflict, in fact, is when the white house Chief of staff tells his wife point-blank that his work is more important than his marriage. She leaves, and with her most hopes of a lingering love-story, the presidential couple excepted.

The Gilmore Girls could not be more opposite in scope, in focus, in the use of writerly virtuosity. The show is centered on a mother-daughter team whose business is (almost) literally keeping a house (an Inn, that is), whose conversations are almost exclusively about mundane, small things. The first things Rory asks about are her lip-gloss and missing CD, and the show never walks away from its love-affair with the objects we most commonly talk about , and most rarely see in dramatic dialogue. Food, gifts, clothes, make-up, small-town gossip, house-design, etc.. –these are at the heart of every episode, even ones where the main love-stories are hitting a rare point of friction. When Rory has her heart broken, her reaction is to make a to-do list. When Lorelai decides to break off her wedding at the last minute, the conversation quickly turns to a road-trip and the kinds of clothes they should pack. The first season ends on the song “Our Little Corner of the World,” and no show is more devoted to the small and the cornery (the forgotten, the pushed-aside) than Gilmore Girls. This is the secret to that show’s incredible power.

One anecdote should demonstrate how the show uses the everyday to perfectly counter the usual priorities of love-obsessed dramas. Again, whereas The West Wing made national and international politics a constant obstacle to romance (between Leo and his wife, Josh and Amy, even the President and his wife), Gilmore Girls builds neighborly camaraderie as an obstacle to romance: Max does not believe Lorelai has forgotten about their date, much as West Wing characters cannot believe they’ve been neglected by their would-be lovers, but she hasn’t forgotten about it because of a professional disaster or international intrigue. No, she forgot because her neighbor’s cat died. In Sherman-Palladino’s feminine writing, every person cares about their small community so much that romance can wait. A cat dies, Rory doesn’t show up at home without telling her mom, the town re-enacts an unmemorable historical moment, or celebrates Christmas early – and everybody mobilizes. All for one and one for all may have had a very heroic meaning in its Dumas masculine version, but it is a much more moving and daily sentiment in the little corner of Stars Hollow.

I repeat, little. I am not confident that femininity has to be small by any means (though men do seem rather preoccupied with things being bigger than they might otherwise be), but Sherman-Palladino’s feminine style is a style of smallness. By episode two, the Gilmores are confronted with the sheer size of Rory’s new building, and are adorably scared: “oh, great – more big stuff!” A consistent insult throughout the show is being called a “big head,” Luke’s mythological ex doesn’t want to be with him because he is too “small” for her, and generally speaking, everything big that happens is just a little bit disastrous. Dean builds Rory a car – they break up. Luke builds Lorelai an alter for her marriage – the marriage is called off. Lorelai’s inn prepares for a huge renaissance feast – the visitors are snowed in, and the event is converted into a small-town gathering. The political sphere only comes into a conversation (and there are endless conversations about everything other than politics) as a mocking distraction: “I hate President Bush,” Lorelai screams at a dinner to annoy her offensive would-be in-laws, and explains herself with a sentence that encapsulates the show’s attitude towards the grandiose:

“I hate president Bush. He’s stupid, and his face is too tiny for his head, and I just wanna toss him out.”

As you can see, this love of all things small, this passion to belittle anything pretending to magnitude, creates some pretty hilarious writing. I especially love the show’s glorious bickering over things that most shows would deem too petty: Lorelai trying to dress Luke, who himself is trying desperately to get her off coffee. Battling over belt-buckles, over broken porches – you could hardly imagine the emotional intensity and acting savvy that goes into such trivial things, but it’s an hilarious staple of every Stars Hollow episode. People love each other, practically love everyone in one way or another in this show, and they show it in the smallest ways possible. It’s a radically different vision of love from the grandiose Masculine style of slaying dragons and retrieving damsels in distress. And it’s so pretty.

My favorite example of this is the battle of the blueberries. The two characters, Sookie and Michel, fight, as every character will at one point or another in the show, over food. The scene is a monument to the joys of small, tiny conflicts:

Sookie: Okay here are your low fat whole wheat blueberry pancakes
Michel: Are there twelve?
Sookie: Twelve what?
Michel: Blueberries! I can only have twelve blueberries for breakfast.
Sookie: Or what?
Michel: What do you mean or what?!
Sookie: What happens if you eat thirteen blueberries?
Michel: This is a silly conversation.
Sookie: Would you DIE?
Michel: Just hand me the plate..
Sookie: Only if you don’t count.
Michel: I won’t count.
Sookie: Swear. Raise your hand and say, “May Destiny’s Child break up if I count these blueberries.”
Michel: Pick another group!!
Sookie: Nope.
Michel: …I HATE YOU!

If you watch this show, there are literally hundreds of scenes like this; delightful nuggets of lovingly petty debates about things as small as blueberries, if not smaller. Since Alexander Pope we haven’t had so great a genius of the Mock-Epic.

You will – money back guaranteed – enjoy this show and its profound love of all things human, its extraordinary female style. Does all this so-called femininity equate to a feminism, though? If there is one social issue in this show, it is about what it means to be a woman, whether Rory would pick her Mom’s independent style of living or her gremma’s extremely traditional DAR party-planning lifestyle. The show constantly places Rory between the two, with Rory’s feminism rubbing against her grandmother’s traditionalism while her love for family peace forces her to acquiesce, and often enjoy, those very traditional roles and events. Thus, Rory always ends up an object for a painting, a debutante, even a DAR event planner, while the show always reminds you of how problematic and regressive such female roles are.

But there is something more deeply feminist about the show’s choice of characters and general focus, despite its many romances, away from pure love-interest. I started by saying there are no male protagonists, and as a male secondary character Luke Danes shows us the most feminist “stand-by-your-woman” version of a man t.v. will ever have. He is a vision of a man living to help the woman he loves not to conquer her, but simply because helping her is when he is at his best, and his happiest. While a female Luke Danes would be both trite and ideologically irritating, the male version is thoroughly original, refreshing, and even socially radical. To give us such a man, to give us such women, is a deeply feminist statement.