Stalking is Hilarious on Parks and Recreation

One of many qualities I love about Parks and Recreation is its complete lack of rape jokes. It's a safe space from the kinds of quips about sexual assault that pepper other favorites of mine, 30 Rock and The Office. Though Aziz Ansari has been known to tell a rape joke or two in his solo act, Tom Haverford's sleaziness is mostly benign. Sex is not made into a big production, and consensuality is an assumed responsibility of all the characters.

But not all of performances of romance on Parks and Rec are consensual; a major second-season plotline showed Andy Dwyer intruding on Ann Perkins in deeply personal and problematic ways. Andy's stalking, harassment, and unwelcome attention directed at an ex are not taken seriously, as a thing that hurts people, particularly women. After Ann dumped him and kicked him out of her house for taking advantage of her, he did not find another place to live and respect her distance. No, he persisted in bugging and (by some definitions) stalking her: living outside her house in a pit, showing up naked at her house, and harassing her and her new boyfriend.

I hate to write this, because I love Andy. I think that Chris Pratt may actually be the funniest person on the show; his line readings and facial expressions never fail to crack me up. He is generally a very sweet and well-meaning character, and I like that someone who is explicitly not traditionally smart is shown to be of great value. I love the growth of consideration in his character. I love him and April. I just love him.*
*I did not love the cissexist gag with him in the first episode of this season, but I will talk about that a little later.
But I do not love the way that he treats Ann and her new boyfriend Mark after she dumps him, nor do I love the way that the show frames his actions as cute, affectionate, and distinctly nonthreatening. Andy's continued harassment and monitoring of Ann is not violent, but a big man following someone around and refusing to leave a former partner in peace carries the baggage of domestic violence; just because Andy is a "nice guy" does not mean that he cannot be violent. This refusal to take Andy's creepy and unwanted attention as a seriously flawed pattern of entitled behavior that goes beyond his goofy, ditzy personality reflects a cultural desire to re-frame a scary and dangerous pattern of behavior disproportionately targeted at women as an affectionate and romantic way of showing concern.

Stalking and other harassment through unwanted contact is not a joke only in Parks and Rec; indeed, stalking is rarely taken as seriously as it actually is. Stalking is actually a criminal offense that describes a campaign of fear, of forced unwanted contact or constant watching of someone's activities. It is a very real violation of a person's sense of safety and privacy, and it happens to at least eight percent of all women in the US - but it's vastly underreported. It is not a cute thing to do, and it is not something that everyone participates in, but you wouldn't know that from stalking behavior's defanging in online culture and romanticizing in popular media from Say Anything to Twilight. This form of abuse is, like many other, framed as either anonymous online attention or uptight bitches rejecting the honest appreciation of men.

Ann's concerns about Andy are frequently delegitimized. In the episode "Beauty Pageant", where Ann discovers Andy's home in the pit right outside her house* with her new boyfriend Mark Brandanowitz, he not only laughs it off, he informs her that he invaded her privacy by peeking in her medicine cabinet, and then pressures her to invite Andy into her home to share dinner. This is framed as Mark showing compassion for Andy rather than completely disregarding Ann's feelings, and it's typical of the tone of that arc; another episode, Kaboom, features Andy misunderstanding a text from Ann and showing up naked at her house - because flashing unfriendly ex-girlfriends is totally charming and harmless.
*This storyline also has some classism issues, given that homelessness is treated as a joke.
Andy's harassment of Ann continues after he moves out of the pit and gets a job at City Hall, and coincides with Tom Haverford's ongoing and frequently rejected advances. Andy begins to pester not just Ann but her new boyfriend Mark in an obnoxious fashion; trying to "trick" her into dating him by winning a game of pool against Mark or to humiliate him by mentioning STI medication that he pretends Mark requested from the shoeshine stand (absurd but also ableist). Eventually, after a few talking-tos from Mark, he desists and refocuses his attention on April, whom he has treated with a great deal of respect and deference. Only when a man becomes involved in and begins protesting this unwanted attention does Andy stop; he sees no reason to desist in harassing Ann before Mark steps in. Ann, the target of this unwanted attention, goes completely unheard by her friends unless she is backed up by a man. She even responds to his advances belatedly, kissing him at the end of the season. In this way, Parks and Rec validates his unwanted attention and makes it seem like it was actually wanted after all.

The show is not exactly endorsing Andy's actions; by my standards of critical humor, some instances of this pass. Mark occasionally recognizes his actions as bad, but they are only bad insofar as they are an annoyance to him. Ann's reactions to Andy, though, are never validated; they are framed as unreasonable or ignored by characters who are not Andy. Occasionally Leslie expresses shock or mild concern, but being a rather self-centered character, Ms. Knope usually then turns the conversation back to herself - she doesn't really hear Ann's concerns when she hires Andy for a dinner party. Other jokes make it clear that Andy is being a doofus, thought they do not meet my critical standards linked above; in "Beauty Pageant", he says that "there's all kind of creepy people in this neighborhood"; though his action is not reinforced by others as uncool, it's still a tacit recognition of his unsavory behavior.

However, I don't find mild and barely-expressed disapproval to be quite enough in this case. This joke runs throughout most of the (stellar) second season, and it is almost never taken seriously. When Leslie Knope engages in her own creepy and intrusive behavior by photographing and surveilling Mark and Ann on a date, she comes close to facing criminal charges, and she never does it again. But unlike Leslie, Andy never faces any kind of real critique or danger because of his actions. No one calls him out other than Ann, and no one backs her up when she calls him out.

No, Andy's entitled attitude towards Ann is worse than Parks and Rec wants it to be. His pattern of behavior reaffirms the often-romanticized image of a nice guy as one who doesn't respect clearly set boundaries; Andy's stalking is seen as affection rather than menace, as stupidity rather than disrespect. It's shown as annoying and silly and goofy, and that does not reflect Andy's serious violations against a woman he professes to care about. It's not rape, but it's part of the conditioning that creates rape culture - it suggests that women should see continued harassment and monitoring from ex-lovers as romantic rather than threatening, and that these actions are nothing to get really concerned about.

One or two of these jokes would not have phased me much, particularly given my liking for Andy. I would take it as more reflective of his benign and adolescent inconsideration than a reflection of how society frames unwanted contact from former romantic partners. As individual jokes, they suggest the growth of a stunted man stumbling on his way to some form of maturity. But taken as a pattern of unwelcome behavior that strongly resembles stalking, it looks like a man threatening his ex-lover to achieve that growth. Andy's behavior is not precisely evil, but the show's affectionate attitude towards the unwanted contact he forces on Ann and its framing of his behavior as endearing seems entirely too light an approach to a subject as fearsome, cruel and misogynist in practice as stalking.

I am thankful that Parks and Recreation has left this story behind in its third season, and I hope that this framing does not return. But this will always be a stain on Andy's character for me: a reminder that the nicest of guys can turn menacing on a dime, and a sign that even my favorite shows will trivialize serious issues and participate in a culture that denies women agency and privacy.

Hermione Granger and the Failures of Feminism

Hermione Granger is JK Rowling's feminist presence in the Harry Potter series, and she is a triumph. Hermione is a wonderful feminist character: smarter than anyone, brave and shrewd and assertive and just. As a Muggle-born witch, Hermione faces marginalization because of her birth and sex, but her concern about oppression extends beyond her own experience. Chally Kacelnik at Bitch wrote that Hermione "cares about social justice, as particularly embodied in her commitment to house elf rights where most of the wizarding world wouldn’t think twice about their status".

But Hermione is not just a reflection of the wonderful things about feminism. In her work on behalf of the equality of magical people, Hermione often flaunts her human privilege and unintentionally enforces the oppression of the house-elves, giants, goblins, trolls, and centaurs she claims to support.  In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in particular, Hermione ignores or minimizes house-elf and non-human magical beings' opinions and autonomy, though she claims to have their best interest at heart. With SPEW, Hermione participates in the grand feminist tradition of devaluing, disregarding and silencing oppressed classes while centering herself and her opinions on their marginalization.

Hermione is not wrong to advocate for the rights of house-elves. Her interest in their oppression was ignited when she saw high-ranking Ministry official Bartholomew Crouch abusing his house-elf, Winky, at the Quidditch World Cup. Hermione identified this particular injustice while she was herself vulnerable to the rioting of the Death Eaters. On page 139 of Goblet of Fire, in response to Barty Crouch's dismissal of Winky, Hermione said: "The way they were treating her!... Mr. Diggory, calling her "elf" all the time … it was like she wasn't even human!" Though her outburst is brave, there is still an exercise of privilege here; she makes humanity the norm and standard for deserving fair treatment. However, Hermione does correctly identify the endorsement of abuse and mistreatment of house elves from magical humans who thought that it was their right to mistreat and neglect elves; she thought outside herself in a situation where she was personally in great danger. This is a just and good impulse delivered, as with many of her well-intentioned acts, without a whole lot of inconsideration and privilege.

Speaking out against her peers' devaluation of house-elves is a brave move befitting the best parts of Hermione's character. Hermione faces a lot of discrimination and danger because of her marginalization as a Muggle-born and a woman (though the latter is played down in the magical world, as I hope to discuss in the future) in the series. But in forming SPEW, she uses her oppression as license to act as an authority, as a leader for folks who experience oppression she did not. This is a grave mistake common to people of privilege in social justice movements: she centers and prioritizes her skewed and unsuitable vision of what house-elf protection means over the concerns of house-elves; in return, the elves reject her leadership and seek their own glory.

The formation of SPEW in Goblet of Fire is rotten at its core because it is led by a witch rather than an elf. A movement for the advancement of an oppressed class must be centered on and led by members of the oppressed class. Supporters can play a helpful and even vital role, but as with Hermione here, they can also be hurtful. Hermione fails to understand that as an ally, she must remain in a supportive role, promoting their protection and welfare without dominating the conversation. Though it is repeatedly demonstrated that house-elves have autonomy to an extent and have powerful magic of their own, Hermione considers them lesser creatures who need protection. When Ron compares the discrimination against trolls to that against elves in book four, she says that “goblins don't need protection”. This is a condescending and presumptuous idea that reflects her own biases and her own assumptions about the powers and possibilities of a race of creatures she doesn't bother to credit.

When Hermione formed SPEW, she crossed a boundary many feminists (including myself) find themselves on the wrong side of. Hermione goes from defending an oppressed class to appropriating their struggle. She goes from promoting the worth of Winky and Dobby to ignoring the wishes of the house-elves at Hogwarts. While trying to advocate for the equal rights and fair treatment of house-elves, she engages in rhetoric and behavior that devalued their autonomy and existence.

Had Dobby started SPEW and Hermione supported it, this would not be a problem - but Dobby's voice and contributions seem to matter little to Hermione except as an example of how some elves do want freedom. She devalues his often-successful support of Harry by saying that “Dobby's plans aren't always that safe” on page 388 of book five, attributing a human error of Lockheart's to Dobby. Her devaluation of Dobby, the only elf who actually wants what she seeks, is reflective of her erasure of the wishes and words of all house-elves.

But SPEW in and of itself is downright harmless when compared with Hermione's malicious actions towards house-elves in the name of their protection in Order of the Phoenix. In this book, Hermione finds that house-elves do not regard her as their glorious liberator witch, better than all the other witches. Dobby and many other house-elves directly tell her in books four and five that they do not want or need her help, saying “they do not care for clothes” on page 385 of book five. They could care less about her vision of their liberation; they are happy where they are, in a place where they feel safe and where their work is appreciated, where they do work they enjoy.

When Hermione realizes that house-elves are not sufficiently appreciating and participating in the movement she so helpfully designed for them*, she decides to remove them from their homes and employment by force. In the HP universe, house-elves are set free when they are given clothes. So, Hermione decides to take up knitting so that house-elves can be freed, by her ignorant definition. Hermione's past-time - her hobby - is trying to eject house-elves from their lives against their consent.The house-elves roundly reject this;  those who find her clothes refuse to accept her direction of their life and simply avoid Gryffindor castle. Once again Dobby proves a knowledgeable and enthusiastic foil to Hermione's plans, even as she's trying to make him her justification. Dobby tells Ron and Harry, “[other house-elves] find them insulting” on page 385 of book five, but he is happy to take the clothes he loves for himself, having already gotten his freedom and needing no help from some human girl. This complete erasure of the explicitly expressed wishes of the house-elves is the most striking and most hateful example of Hermione's bossy nature; the assertiveness that serves her so well throughout the series she uses here to violate the safe space of the creatures who have done nothing but support her.

*Big sarcasm here.

House-elves - who want to work for no pay and at time desire enslavement - are not parallel to actual people who experience real oppression. House-elves are a problematic metaphor for actual oppressed people because the eagerness of the house-elf to be servile robs actual people of their very real agency. Furthermore, the larger spectrum of non-human beings are often used as points at which to explore oppression. Rowling also examines privilege through magical humans, obviously, but her more nuanced exploration of inequality is often focused on non-humans: this is rather dehumanizing to the actual people who experience the exploitation and discrimination she metaphorically describes. While goblins and giants push back actively against human oppression and privilege, Rowling's focus on house-elves creates a straw oppression that adds depth to Hermione without raising too many difficult questions about the many different forms oppression can take.*

*This is a bigger issue than a single paragraph can really acquit, and one I haven't totally grasped yet. Apologies for the lack of nuance.

Hermione did not only exercise her human privilege against house-elves, but also against giants, centaurs, and goblins. When Firenze is hired as a teacher in Order of the Pheonix, Hermione reacts by saying she “never really cared for horses” on page 599 of book five – a serious insult to Firenze, who is frequently called “horse” or “nag” as a slur by those who seek to de-legitimize his authority. She is less obvious about her devaluation of giants: she assumes that Grawp, Hagrid's brother, is unable to learn English, and mocks his attempts along with Ron and Harry.She frequently speaks out against giant and half-giant oppression, which is valuable - but again, that doesn't really make up for anything. She uses another creature's perceived stupidity as a slur, calling Pansy Parkinson “thicker than a concussed troll” in book four. Her transgressions against non-elf non/part-humans are less aggressive and more rhetorical, but they are still there.

To Hermione's credit, she seems to recognize the error of her ways and correct her actions without abandoning her efforts. She never discusses abandoning SPEW, but her mentions of it taper off after Order of the Pheonix. When Kreacher tells her not to touch him while telling of Regulus Black in book seven, she respects his space. Though Kreacher invokes her oppression by calling her “Mudblood”, she does not make it all about her, but instead continues to listen to his story; she recognizes and vocally critiques his mistreatment and devaluation by Voldemort. In her after-Hogwarts life, JK Rowling said that she went into magical law and advocated for laws to protect Muggle-borns and non/part human magical beings. This is an appropriate use of her privilege; she has prioritized non/part human being oppression as she does oppression she experiences firsthand, making a difference through existing power structures without invading spaces and conversations that are not hers to inhabit.

Hermione's exercise of oppression is not immediately apparent. She herself is the most major character who experiences the focal point of oppression in the books: as a  Muggle-born, she is in constant danger because of her birth. She is also a woman, and though sexism seems to be a less-than-significant problem in the magic world, as a girl raised partially in the Muggle world she is acutely aware of sexism, and she frequently counters Ron and Harry's sexism. But she confuses the authority with which she speaks on these experiences with authority on all oppression, and uses that confidence to silence house-elves. Like many of us who experience and fight both sides of inequality, she uses her privilege to enforce another form of the system of oppression that implicates us all, kyriarchy.