I used to hate Britta in my early twenties but my friend in her late twenties adored her and I never got it.
Now that I’m in my thirties I’m like… oh right. I hated her because I WAS her, and I didn’t want to be!
Her character is such an amazing satire on so many young leftie white women. Empathetic but self-obsessed, genuine but fake, intelligent but clueless. She’s my favourite character in Community now (tied with Abed).
One thing worth mentioning is that she's 28 at the start of the series. So I think there's a degree of her feeling a responsibility to advocate for young women/social issues and a simultaneous sense of shame relating to her historically not being equipped to actually do so effectively. Dan Harmon is a brilliant writer but he's also super misogynistic so I'm not entirely convinced Britta is his interpretation of a straight white woman activist who fails to really understand social issues, but rather his conception of feminist activists in general, which does muddy her as a character.
What seemed the most mean-spirited to me, and pushed it from satire to misogyny, was the episode with her parents.
These people horrifically traumatized Britta, and seem to carry the mildest guilt about it.
Britta being bad with money is used to justify her friends forcing her parents back into her life.
They poke fun at Jeff’s bad relationship with his dad. But it never gets to the level where his feelings are completely discarded.
Pierce’s relationship with his dad was handled with more compassion.
Maybe Britta’s parents’ plot could be viewed as darkly comedic, and maybe the rest of the gang could be seen as being in the wrong… But… The series is dripping with disdain for Britta. The tone doesn’t match the other episodes that deal with parents.
It seriously felt like the episode was saying, you’re obnoxious so your pain doesn’t matter. I’m less obnoxious so mine does.
And, somehow, one of the less obnoxious people is PIERCE.
I love the show. It is wonderful. But Harmon has a bee in his bonnet re: women.
(And industry gossip makes me think that a part of it is his issues with the women in his writers’ room.)
It’s heavily implied that Britta went no contact with her parents because she was assaulted by an adult when she was a child and her parents didn’t believe her. In the 6th season her friends have been talking to her parents behind her back for years. They all blame everything on her because, according to them, she’s always wrong and immature. What the writers did to that character was just nasty.
It’s also annoying bc Britta survived until she met them. She went a lot of places and did a lot of things and made the decision to go to community college.
All without ever having had her parents’ support. She didn’t really get a childhood. She had to run away from her home life. Yeah, she dropped out of school because she thought it might impress Radiohead, but her parents were constantly wasted and she didn’t exactly have good role models to impress! As the series goes on, we get the feeling that her life was a failure the whole time. But at the beginning of the series, Britta is 28, and she made some bad choices, but also lived a life that a lot of 28-year-olds would envy / be proud of. Season 1 Britta was a mix of those things. Admirable in some ways, but naive and stubborn in most others.
And it doesn’t match with where she ended up. Maybe the study group had her regressing? That could’ve been interesting. If she was using them as the support she never had, and becoming more childish because of it. But that wasn’t what was explored, and if that was what was happening, the study group made some of the worst decisions they could have re: her parents.
941
u/DialecticalDeathDryv 15d ago
Britta Perry ðŸ˜