I know basically nothing about 30 rock, so I am I guess naively impressed that they had not just one, but like 5 episodes with blackface?
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Replying to @nberlat
Kimmy Schmidt has Jenna Mulroney, a very pale blonde woman, as a native American woman who's undergone extensive procedures to look white
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Replying to @popeguilty @nberlat
I’m a huge 30 Rock fan; Kimmy Schmidt is funny, but generally lacks a lot of the skill and subtlety 30 Rock had, especially dealing with race. I suspect there were writers on 30 Rock who guided that and didn’t make it to Kimmy Schmidt.
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TBH I was assuming the common factor was Tina Fey
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Replying to @popeguilty @nberlat
The driving force between the two shows is Fey and her writing partner Robert Carlock, but I think the difference in how they handle nuance—and also how 30 Rock feels dense but well-paced and Schmidt often feels outright chaotic—reveals their shortcomings.
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One can point to practically every joke in 30 Rock that deals with race and show how it commented on the reality of race in the US. Kimmy Schmidt’s Native American woman pretending to be white—and all the scenes with her parents—rooted the humor in Native American stereotypes.
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Also Fey, who is one of the smartest and funniest people working in comedy, unfortunately also strikes me as a typical liberal white lady who thinks she’s got everything down. I suspect being a writer of color and working with her would be EXHAUSTING.
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But I also strongly suspect it was writers of color in the 30 Rock room who shaped gags and stories she suggested around race and racism into something more skillful. I have no inside information to prove that, it’s just a gut feeling.
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Tina Fey gave a ton of credit to Donald Glover for helping set 30 Rock's tone when it came to race and writing a lot of their best early episodes on the subject while also openly admitting she only hired him because he "came for free" as a "diversity hire"
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It's literally the thing they wrote into the show about Toofer, they had separate funding through a diversity initiative for one more staff member who was a PoC and if they hadn't then Glover would never have gotten hired
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