And recently I started watching Shameless, the US version, which is about an impoverished family of six kids raising themselves -- their father is an addict and their mother is bipolar and mostly absent. The show has eleven seasons, all available on Netflix.
I'm intrigued by this show because it gives a (mostly) realistic picture of poverty in America, at least in northern cities. The six kids have all been in and out of foster care; the oldest daughter , Fiona, has been taking care of her siblings since she was six. She's pretty smart, as is the oldest boy, Lip; but she had to quit school at sixteen when her mother abandoned the family.
One reason I like this show is that most of the main characters are intelligent. They're in poverty not because they're stupid and lazy, but because their parents are broken and no real social safety net exists to help them out of poverty. All the things we're told to do if we want to escape poverty -- work hard, stay in school, live frugally -- don't work in their lives.
The oldest son, Lip, is crazy smart -- smart enough to win a scholarship to MIT. But because his family needs his help so often and so desperately, it is difficult for him to maintain the necessary GPA, or to get to classes. And Fiona works a series of low-paying jobs, unable to get better work because she has no high school degree and because her youngest sibling, a baby when the series starts, needs someone to take care of him. Then, when she finally gets a job that pays a living wage and has benefits, she loses it after the youngest child (a toddler) ingests cocaine left lying around during a party.
Everyone in this show and in the neighborhood smokes, drinks, and does various drugs. This is also realistic. As James McMurtry puts it in "Fire Line Road," when you're that far down, you're just going to get high. "It's like eating or breathing to the rest of us."
When the second son, Ian, enlists in the military, hoping to escape poverty, his mental illness (he's bipolar, like his mother) sabotages that escape route.
The second daughter attempts to inveigle her way into a stable family by getting pregnant by one of their sons -- who promptly flees. The third son gets caught transporting heroin. And so on.
The only "success" any of them ever see comes from dealing drugs, running scams, or stealing.
It's not that there isn't violence in this show. There is violence. There is also drug use, and bigotry, and crime. But there is also a community of equally impoverished people who help one another -- it's made clear, for example, that our main characters know everyone in the neighborhood, and turn to them for help, while helping them as well. It's not big help, mind you. No one is paying their electric bill. But if you need someone to watch your two year old for the morning, one of the neighbors can do it. And if you're briefly homeless, someone will let you sleep on their porch, or in their living room.
The show also makes it clear why foster care doesn't work, and why putting young offenders in jail is a terrible idea. Carl comes out of juvie as a much more successful criminal than he was when he went it, and he brings home a kid who aged out of juvie and has no family or community to return to, and no skills that will get him a job.
I'm only in Season 5, so maybe things improve eventually? But I am dubious. This is the poverty class about a quarter of our country lives in. If anything, the show is a little too optimistic, in that usually some solution shows up -- when the oldest daughter goes to prison for child endangerment, she's released after on a few days, because of overcrowding. When the alcoholic father's liver is failing, a donor liver comes through. And so on.
I also like the attitude the show has toward racism, LGBTQ people, and immigrants. This also is realistic -- the characters aren't all bigots, for example. The community is made up of various races and religions, as well as gay and trans people, and while people make racist and anti-gay jokes, it's clear these are just jokes. One of the characters, Mickey, comes out as gay early on, and the guys at the local bar give him shit, but also -- clearly -- accept him. And when Ian, the second son and Mickey's lover, comes out to his brother Lip and to Fiona, they pretty much shrug and accept it.
This arc, between Ian and Mickey, is a good one. Mickey's father is racist, and is a bigot. The show shows us clearly what that looks like, and how horrific it is.
I understand trans characters show up in later season. So far, we've only had a trans girl, who is about ten, and who some characters do not accept as trans. That's disturbing, but also realistic. "You're not a girl," one character tells her. "You're a boy whose mother raised you as a girl because she's crazy." Other characters, though, are fine with it, and treat the girl as a girl.
The chaotic and precarious existence of those living on the edge of homelessness is really well portrayed, though. You see why the characters smoke and drink and do drugs. You see why they can't climb out of the trap that is structural poverty. Each of the characters tries and tries again to escape through all the means we are told is an escape from poverty -- education, the military, marrying into wealth, own and running your own business -- and each time the chaos of their world slaps them back into poverty. The best job Ian can find, after the military, is dancing at a club called the Fairy Tale, where young gay men give lap dances to rich old men. It's clearly objectification and destructive to the young men, but it pays well enough to keep the family going for a winter.
There is one point where Lip, the kid at MIT, understand that if he is to climb out of poverty through this excellent degree from an excellent university, he will have to abandon his family, his neighborhood, and all the ties he has there. He will have to move into a different culture, with a new ethos. He will have to become someone else.
But that family and that neighborhood have always been the central good in his life, the one thing he and his culture have. As Mickey puts it at one point, "He's family. Family comes first."
Lip can turn his back on that, clearly. He can adopt a new ethos. Where does that leave him, though? Who does he become is he does that? He doesn't have the generational wealth that his fellow students have, or the culture that wealth created for them. He may be able to get a degree from MIT, with all the job prospects that degree will give him, but he will have no family and no culture of his own.
There is a lot of drug use, a lot of sex, a lot of violence, so much chaos. If you can't handle cussing and nudity, this one is not for you. But it's holding my attention.
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