I think you’ve misunderstood me, but I apologize if I’ve come across as insensitive. And let me say that I do also know women who are conventionally beautiful but do not feel at all comfortable with the normative expectations that are imposed on them, and suffer great anxiety as a result of the constant unwanted attention, harassment, stereotypes, and the specific forms of misogyny that apply to ‘beautiful’ women. And I’m not trying to express my approval of the aribtrary and elitist patriarchal norms that divide ‘beautiful’ women from supposedly ‘average’ women. I’m very much opposed to that. But I am trying to describe it.

If you go to most mainstream dance clubs, for instance, there are plenty of people there who just want to dance and have a good time, and there are some people who are very consciously oriented to a particular social hierarchy based on looks, dress, and comportment. It’s very ruthless and very matter-of-fact for the people who participate in it. And the women who embrace and let themselves be defined by that hierarchy know that they can trade on their looks and their sexuality for money, gifts, jobs, and other perks. I have one friend who has travelled around the world – India, Africa, China, Dubai, all kinds of places – by hooking up with “ordinary-looking” but wealthy men, in relationships that have strong overtones of a business transaction (she will say things like, “he knows he has to take me to Paris if he’s going to get any action”). She has breast implants and other surgery and is quite open and determined about trading her “looks” (and other aspects of her sexuality) for non-sexual goods, and she has a network of friends who do similar things, if in less marked ways.

(It’s not too surprising to me; in my Mom’s generation, it was pretty common for (non-feminist) women to rate a man’s attractiveness in terms of the money he could provide. To this day she finds it very strange to be dating a man who makes less money than her; we’ve had long conversations about how it’s really OK to date a man who doesn’t have any money if he makes her happy. Needless to say, my mom is pretty conservative.)

I’m saying that the character of Cerie makes sense in terms of what Pierre Bourdieu might call “sexual capital”, a performance of sexuality that is so thoroughly objectified that if operates very much like a material commodity, and can be exchanged for material commodities.

Many women find the very existence of an economy of sexual capital to be oppressive (and, thankfully, so do at least a few men). Others resent that economy but also wish they could join it on more favourable terms than are available to them (just as some people resent the rich while wishing they could themselves be rich). Others embrace it and play by its rules wholeheartedly.

In the show, Liz’s complaints about the commodification of beauty are often shallow and obviously tinged with resentment. In some of the interviews I’ve read, Tina Fey takes a position that is more mature but not much more sophisticated (e.g. some of her comments on sex workers).

I think the show touches a nerve of deep ambivalence than many people feel about the inequalities of social class and status in contemporary American society.

Sady, in your earlier post on this show you commented that the jokes about Cerie are all about how sexy and/or stupid she is, but I see it a little differently. I think that the jokes are about differing normative worlds. Like, as in the jokes that revolve around the difference between Liz’s middle-class ethical expectations and Jack’s upper-class ethics.

Let me build a somewhat elaborate analogy. Jack isn’t simply unethical; he has a different ethics because he lives in a different world, one closer to the top of the economic hierarchy, and so he isn’t subject to the same sociopolitical constraints that middle-class people are and which they rationalize as ethical (making virtue out of necessity).

In a similar way, because Cerie can perform “sexy” in such a superlative way, she plays by different rules than people of more average sexiness. In essence, she belongs to an elite subculture that has different social norms than the rest of us live by. So the jokes about Cerie tend to revolve around Liz expecting Cerie to behave one way and being confounded because she behaves another way – and vice versa! Cerie isn’t stupid, she is oblivious to the norms of Liz’s world, in just the same way that Liz is oblivious to the norms of her world.

It seems to me that 30 Rock often revolves around the ambivalence of a nominally progressive middle-class person who both resents and desires the privileges of the super-elite, and hence is torn between the strategy of moralizing about the evils of privilege and trying to “beat them at their own game” – and on rare occasions, joining them (as when Liz briefly became an executive and dumped all her old progressive airs).

The show is about someone who isn’t willing to take a genuinely oppositional stance but also isn’t willing or able to simply conform to hegemonic values. It’s a very tense, ambivalent situation, which is fertile ground for humour, and it’s also a very relatable one for many people.

But it’s not a very progressive show. For one thing, there are many bad jokes about class, in which poverty (especially rural poverty) is just supposed to be funny and risible.

And remember the episode with Carrie Fisher as the old feminist TV writer from the 70s, who becomes simply a crazy lady and figure of fun? Painful. Also 30 Rock doesn’t push the envelope in the way that shows like Soap and Golden Girls and Designing Women did back in their day, alas.

Ack. Sorry for the long post. I had many thoughts.

Elaine always seemed alot more confident and together then Liz. Partly, I think, to balance out George and Kramer’s general loserness/weirdness.

Yeah. Dot Com.