If it’s not already painfully clear from the previous pages, this is a world and experience I’m largely unfamiliar with. So this unfamiliarity is naturally fascinating. When there are so many other shows about people trying to solve problems that could affect scores of other people, political or medical dramas and such, it’s easy to forget that this is such a small, specific section of the population. There are far more other people who have to deal with mundane stuff every day that threatens their livelihood. They don’t have time to be concerned with politics or questions of science or philosophy, even though it’s equally unfair to assume their lives are divorced from these things.
It’s similar to the Beasts of the Southern Wild dilemma in which poverty is depicted without real judgment, supposedly from a perspective closer to the people in the poor conditions rather than an outside patriarchal view. There’s also a perception that this romanticizes or makes light of poverty, a kind of poverty tourism, where middle class folks can observe poverty like George Bush observed Hurricane Katrina, from a safe flyover distance. I think there’s more to it than this. I think one way to expose and educate on matters of a place like south Chicago is through documentary work like Bill James does, but also through telling stories that capture all sides of the experience, not only the tragic side, because that’s not all there is to this environment. Shameless deserves enormous credit for accomplishing something few other shows are able to do, let alone do this well.
Have you been keeping up with Shameless? Have your say on the show in the comments section below.