Maybe
it was only a matter of time.
On
Thursday, August 4th, FX will premiere a sitcom about eating
disorders. The series is called Starved and it follows
the lives of four New Yorkers--one of them a bisexual woman
recovering from anorexia and bulimia--who are friends and fellow
members of a support group.
The
foursome hangs out at a local diner, where they chat and nosh
after carefully weighing their food or at least the consequences
of eating it. They attend meetings for Belt Tighteners, a satirical
version of a 12-step program. When each person introduces themselves
and specifies the nature of their addiction (anorexia, overeating,
etc.), the rest of the group trades in the traditional “Hi,
so-and-so” greeting for the less supportive chorus “It’s
not OK!”
Starved
boldly depicts its characters’ variously disordered eating,
eking out wincing humor in unfunny contexts. One man digs chocolate
cake out of the garbage and eats around the Ajax he sprinkled
on it as a deterrent when he first threw it away. A cop jams
his nightstick into his belly to make himself throw up the Chinese
takeout confiscated from a delivery man he stopped on a trumped-up
moving violations charge. One of the funnier scenes takes place
when one of the characters makes the mistake of insulting his
colonics technician before she’s completely finished with
his procedure.
While
it takes guts to stomach parts of the show, not all of the humor
is scatological. Much of the laughs come from the characters’
bungled relations with dates, spouses and relatives. But the
first three episodes also feature gay jokes that teeter along
the wispy line between in-joke and subtle slur. They’re
funny at first, as long as everyone’s laughing, but they’ll
leave some viewers wondering whether it was really necessary
to go there...again.
In
each instance, the male characters’ heterosexuality is
reconfirmed by jokingly calling it into question. Despite this
misguided effort to establish these guys as straight, it’s
significant that three of the show’s four main characters
with eating disorders are male.
The
silence surrounding men with eating disorders means less targeted
support for them and an even bigger helping of the usual shame.
Showing them seek help upends the popular myth that eating disorders
are for girls. The fact that they’re straight men challenges
the slightly more enlightened belief that eating disorders are
only for girls and gay boys.
For
better or worse, straight men may be the audience best served
by a show like Starved. It will be interesting to see
whether making the only woman in the foursome bisexual is throwing
a bone to that demographic. Much will depend on how her character
develops in later episodes.
Billie
(Laura Benanti) is described as a recovering anorexic/bulimic
who is an up-and-coming singer/songwriter, and her attraction
to women surfaces in the pilot episode. When one of the guys
gives her a hard time for always chatting girls up on her cell
phone while she’s hanging out with the gang, she explains
that she loves women--the more, the better. In a later episode,
the camera catches a glimpse of a woman putting her watch back
on and gathering her things as she leaves Billie lying in bed,
looking seemingly lonely and sad after another meaningless encounter.
In
the first several episodes Billie’s love interests are
only present in the periphery, on the other end of her phone
calls or just out of view. It remains to be seen whether she
dates a woman on camera and how that gets depicted.
At
one point Billie makes an ambiguous comment, “My fans
like me better gay,” then refuses to elaborate. Her gay
father even asks her when she’s going to “give up
the gay charade.” But he’s clearly hypercritical,
going so far as to call his formerly anorexic daughter "plump"
when she arrives for a visit.
The
two comments might indicate that she’s only playing bi,
but another possibility is that she is simply dealing with genuine
bi-phobia, in addition to taking on externally imposed body
image issues. An unconfirmed rumor has it that Billie settles
down with a man towards the end of the season, which, if true,
would make a controversial show even more controversial.
The
tagline for Starved is “a shamefully
funny new comedy.” The show plays for laughs (some of
them tinged with guilt), which is one way to draw viewers in
and get them thinking about a serious subject. There are very
humorous moments and many well-turned, well-delivered lines.
There is also a sad undercurrent throughout the show. These
people are in pain and are often painful to watch. Humor is
one of the tools they use to get through it, and the show tries
to follow suit without belying the tragic element.
Some
people will be outraged by the mere premise of the show while
others will celebrate it as a public service. Either way, it
raises awareness of a rampant disease as well as the unhealthy
obsession with food and body image that’s even more widespread.
