2Kaling and Rae are members of a small group of women comedy writers who have created popular television series in which they also star and participate in a decades-long history of women-driven television comedies, such as Lucille Ball’s self-produced I Love Lucy (CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System], 1951–1957), The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–1977) starring Mary Tyler Moore, and Roseanne Barr’s eponymous sitcom Roseanne (ABC [American Broadcasting Company], 1988–1997). Like their predecessors, Kaling and Rae serve multiple roles on their respective series as creator, writer, executive producer, and star. Scholarly treatment of gender in comedy has tended to focus on women’s use of comedy to “act out,” in Mary Russo’s words, the “dilemmas of femininity” through spectacular representations of the female form in popular culture (in Rowe Karlyn, 1995: 11). Such representations include Roseanne Barr’s excessive and “unruly woman,” and others such as the kid, the reporter, the bitch, and the whiner (Rowe Karlyn, 1995; Gilbert, 1994). These roles continue to be performed by contemporary comedians on television, for instance, Abbi Jacobsen and Ilana Glazer of Broad City (Comedy Central, 2014–2019), as well as Samantha Bee and Amy Schumer in their self-titled series. Joanne Gilbert (2017: 204) describes performances such as these as a reinvention of female power through the “unique performance of marginality, critiquing hegemonic structures through strategies of confrontation and celebration.”

3As the transition into the post-network television era has demonstrated, however, not all comedians brought their bawdy humor from the stage to the screen. Even as the number and diversity of television series expanded during the 2010s, the usefulness of “unruliness” as a feminist strategy was limited for some. For example, fewer people of color and queer people had a platform to showcase their unruly, alternative or feminist comedy on television. Bambi Haggins (2007) explains how Black comic personae and characters, for example, those of Whoopi Goldberg and Chris Rock, have been reframed or muted for mainstream media consumption. The crossover success of these comics comes with new pressures; in addition to juggling expectations about their own edgy humor and television network expectations, they are also responsible for constructing Blackness for a wide audience. Those pressures continue to evolve in the era of the “black comedic A-list actor with crossover appeal” (Haggins, 2007: 4). Post-network comedy television provides an opportunity to further explore how questions of race and identity have been addressed in mainstream media during this historical moment of cultural reckoning in the US.

4This study focuses on the transition between the largely white space of television to the televisual spaces of today that offer relatively more opportunities for women and people of color. While Kaling and Rae have each expanded on the kinds of stories told through their popular series, they have also encountered limitations, as they operate within a prescriptive American television industry with roots in legacies of racism and whiteness. Tensions between racial difference and cultural assimilation have existed since the early years of the industry, with the tendency for programs to either stereotype or to assimilate non-white characters. This context created unique challenges for Kaling and Rae as women of color which the unruly comedians mentioned earlier did not face, as their whiteness exempts them from carrying the same burden of representation.

5This project separately explores the visibility of Kaling and Rae, as both showrunners and performers, within the 2010s post-network cultural and industrial contexts. A comparison of the careful management of on-and-off screen images and exploitation of popular comedy genre conventions in each of their respective series reveals some of the ways in which Kaling and Rae have negotiated the US media industry’s white-centered and market-driven notions of diversity. By analyzing the showrunners’ celebrity images, the early development of each series, and visibility of the series’ characters, this paper further highlights how stardom, the industrial development of a series, and on-screen representation have become increasingly interlinked.

Overview: The Politics of On-Screen Representation

6Racial assimilation has tended to involve themes of exceptionalism, in which characters demonstrate the ability to fit within the boundaries of what is considered culturally normative by network audiences. In his analysis of The Cosby Show (NBC [National Broadcasting Company],1984–1992), Herman Gray (1995) demonstrates how the series expanded on Black American experience though multicultural narratives, as well as incorporated elements of assimilationist programming. In particular, Black characters in the series operate in a world based on principles of mobility and individualism that paralleled that of middle-class white audiences at the time. According to Gray, assimilationist television worlds are distinguished by the “elimination or, at best, marginalization of social and cultural difference in the interest of shared and universal similarity” (295). This kind of visual diversity can also lead to what Kristen Warner (2017: 36) describes as a superficial or “plastic” form of representation of people of color that “ultimately produces normatively white characters who happen to be of color.” This paper explores some of the differences between the types of representation witnessed in the romcom series, The Mindy Project, and the romantic comedy-drama Insecure, which foregrounds—as Rae says—more “regular” stories for the show’s Black characters within more multicultural narratives (Framke, 2016).

7This project concerns the politics of the on-screen representation in each of these series, as well as the ways in which these textual outcomes are intertwined with the development of the series within the post-network or post-broadcast era of the 2010s. Due to various industrial, cultural, technological, and regulatory factors, television networks have targeted increasingly narrow niche audiences over the years. In the late 1990s, media companies began to pursue decentralized approaches, employing flexible production and distribution practices to attract these audiences. As Amanda Lotz (2007; 2017) notes, the shifting conditions, including a variety of new financing models as well as a more diverse set of creative practices, led to an expansion in textual possibilities. Television corporations began to support a wider variety of niche programming that appealed to distinct subsets of viewers; this niche-oriented approach has often involved courting “narrowly defined and underserved markets,” including those marked by racial and gender difference (Curtin, 1996: 189–190). Thus, this moment in the television industry appears to provide increasing opportunities for new and diverse voices and their comedies of distinction. However, as Madhavi Mallapragada (2020) emphasizes, it remains critical to examine the ways in which race functions in media beyond what we see on screen, particularly in the context of the self-serving narratives of diversity and multiculturalism perpetuated by the media industries.

8One consequence of the more varied production and distribution practices of the post-network era has been the growth of small-scale, crowdfunded projects. Expanding on Bourdieu’s distinction between small- and large-scale networks, Aymar Jean Christian (2017) argues that smaller networks of media production and labor lead to greater representation and diversity than larger-scale networks, such as those found in legacy or broadcast settings. Christian emphasizes the importance of autonomy in small-scale and, more specifically, web-based productions. The Internet allows for wider network connections and more access points than legacy media, and this “open TV” network leads to experimentation resulting in, for example, greater opportunities for character-driven plots and representation of local or cultural experiences (Christian, 2018: 94). Thus, smaller-scale developmental processes in web-based productions, such as The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl (YouTube, 2011–2013), the precursor to Insecure, allow innovation and originality to emerge outside established industry values and institutions.

9The addition of cable and digital distribution platforms has also expanded networks’ attempts to attract niche audiences through branding. Spigel and Olsson (2004: 5) describe branding as “the increasing attempt of networks, program producers, and advertisers to stamp their corporate image across a related group of media products, thereby creating a ‘franchise.’” The two television series studied here have been produced by and distributed on different networks—The Mindy Project initially on the broadcast Fox network (and later Hulu) and Insecure on the premium cable HBO network. Discourse about these networks and their taste cultures reflects how branding is linked to the textual outcomes in each of the two series. Notions of quality TV, which have a long history beginning with the quality dramas or anthologies of the 1950s, also come into play here. According to Jane Feuer (2007: 149), characteristics of quality dramas in broadcast television included serialization, a large ensemble cast, a hybrid of serious and comedic content, conventions that The Mindy Project, for example, builds upon. Feuer also outlines the changing notions of quality in the advent of cable television which may help to explain the connections between HBO’s “not TV” branding and on-screen narratives in Insecure, as discussed further below.

10Finally, social context and histories are closely tied to contemporary stardom and celebrity; as Joshua Gamson (1994) asserts, celebrities can be symbolic of important discursive structures in popular culture. The celebrity texts of Kaling and Rae, as women of color in the media industry and public eye, reveal the ways in which a culture negotiates changing gender and racial norms. Richard Dyer (1998) describes a star’s image as a construction of various materials, including her filmography and roles, unique qualities (a particular look, voice, or certain skill), and the social and political context in which her image is formed. This image is facilitated through the extra textual and paratextual materials that accompany entertainment media, including television and print interviews with stars, articles in trade journals, trailers, merchandising, and, increasingly, social media presence (Gray, 2010). The public images of Kaling and Rae, like those of any celebrity, are carefully curated commodities that are intertwined with each of their bodies of work. As I explore further below, some of the early downplaying of gender and race in Kaling’s star text, for example, is reflected in certain post-feminist and assimilationist narratives found in The Mindy Project. Likewise, Rae’s early celebrity image as a rising Black creative talent in the industry aligns with the programming in Insecure that centers narratives about the series’s Black women characters.

“Mindy Lahiri is a white man”: Mindy Kaling’s Star Text & The Mindy Project

11South Asian representation in US media has overwhelmingly included negative stereotypes, such as that epitomized in the animated character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon on the Fox animated sitcom The Simpson’s (Fox, 1989–), voiced by white actor-comedian Hank Azaria. Shilpa Davé (2013: 48) identifies this performance as a racialized and classed brown voice descended from the ethnic vaudeville practice of blackface minstrelsy that reinforced the racial hierarchies of the early twentieth century. Only recently have South Asian American performers been cast in roles that are not racial or ethnic stereotypes in comedy sitcoms. Bhoomi Thakore (2016: 40–46) describes the changing representation of South Asians in popular media over time from “forever foreigner” to “model minority” and finally to “average American.” This kind of representation marks an improvement over previous more negative stereotypes; for example, these characters represent a greater range and more positive portrayal of South Asian Americans. However, characters represented as average Americans typically acknowledge and demonstrate little knowledge of their ethnic culture. Their ethnicity is de-emphasized, and the characters themselves are frequently tokenized or secondary to the main narratives. Ultimately, as Thakore (2016: 48) asserts, these representations “perpetuat[e] the notion that white values and white identity are the normative culture in the United States.”

12Here I explore how these notions apply to the early construction of Mindy Kaling’s celebrity image along with the development of The Mindy Project under the Fox network and resulting on-screen representations of race and gender in the series. In the half-hour, single-camera comedy series, writer and actor Kaling performs a “Bridget Jones-type” character, Dr. Mindy Lahiri, who “works her way toward both romantic and professional success” (Goldberg, 2012). Universal Television produced the series, which aired on the Fox broadcast network for its first three seasons. The series was originally green-lit under the network’s niche comedy brand until executive turnover led it to be cancelled in 2015 in the risk-averse pursuit of more sitcoms with broader appeal; the series was subsequently picked up by the Fox co-owned streaming service Hulu. Fox has begun to rely more on tune-in from its older and more politically conservative viewers, pursuing a “broad appeal” strategy that can be seen in the earlier seasons of The Mindy Project (Goldberg, 2015). As compared with Hulu, the series under Fox tended to follow a traditional romantic comedy formula, including sustaining the fated happily-ever-after return to equilibrium between the protagonist, Mindy Lahiri, and her on-again-off-again love interest.

13Kaling already had a strong built-in appeal through her exposure as Kelly Kapoor on The Office (NBC, 2005–2013), a comedy series that attracted a youth audience. Part of the appeal of The Mindy Project to Fox’s older audience may have been the choice of the popular romantic comedy genre for the series, what Celestino Deleyto (2009: 18) describes as the “comic, protective, erotically-charged […] space of romantic comedy.” Kaling (2011) herself demonstrates her awareness of this generic space in a New Yorker article in which she describes the romcom genre as analogous to “sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world.”

14In her memoir, Kaling (2011) corroborates her public image as a go-getter, detailing her accomplishments at Dartmouth College as a playwright, actor, singer, and cartoonist for a student newspaper. Her witty writing and comical stage performances caught the attention of television comedy producer Greg Daniels, who hired Kaling in 2004 as a writer on NBC’s The Office, a series for which she went on to produce, direct, and perform in the role of Kelly Kapoor. She likely had the opportunity to play Kelly, the kind of role typically cast with white actors at the time, because of her executive position on the series (Thakore, 2016). Early interviews with Kaling focused on her writing success, for example, discussing which episodes of The Office she penned, her friendship and competitiveness with fellow writers Michael Schur and B. J. Novak, and her amusing, writerly tweets (for example, Sittenfeld, 2011; Sepinwall, 2012).

15Kaling’s star text as a driven wunderkind writer contrasts with her portrayal as the flighty Mindy Lahiri, suggesting that her performance on the series is at least in some ways calibrated to fit the post-feminist expectations of the romcom. In The Mindy Project, Kaling’s character fits many post-feminist romantic comedy tropes and character traits associated with this genre. Linda Mizejewski (2014: 23) explains that in romantic comedies, the “women are pretty, heterosexual, and eventually positioned in stable, conventional relationships” and until recently, these women also tended to be white. Kaling’s character exhibits several of the characteristics of the post-feminist cliché found in romcoms, including excessive materiality and an appearance that is quirky at times, though ultimately conveys mainstream heteronormative prettiness through her feminized wardrobe, including stylish dresses and styling. The series tends to overlook gender and racial bias in favor of celebrating Mindy’s individual successes such as the awarding of her medical fellowship and the launch of her fertility clinic in the third season. In these ways, Mindy Lahiri embodies the post-feminist appeal of Bridget Jones described by Angela McRobbie; post-feminist consumers want to enjoy female success, individualization, and traditional feminine pleasures with little desire for this narrative to contribute to or acknowledge the feminist movement (McRobbie, 2004: 257-262). Kaling’s costume and performance as Mindy, part of this distinctly gendered post-feminist romcom aesthetic, center her as the lead in this romantic comedy series.

16Critics noted the minimal racial diversity in The Mindy Project; for example, Lavanya Ramanathan (2017) described the series as “an old head in television’s newly diverse landscape.” The decision to write Xosha Roquemore’s character, Tamra, to fit into the stereotype of a “sassy black woman” was scrutinized (Sahim, 2015), as was the casting of Mindy’s love interests, the majority of whom are played by white men. In more than twenty love interests cast in the series, only two, played by Ne-Yo and Kristian Kordula, are not white (Braxton, 2014). Notably, interracial and interethnic relationships such as the ones in The Mindy Project are a common and effective assimilation strategy in television settings (Avila-Saavedra, 2011: 271–276). On a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) in 2015, Kaling deflects criticism about the lack of diversity in her co-leads in this response to a fan: “I always think it’s funny that I’m the only [one] asked about this when sitcoms I love with female leads rarely date men of color. I guess white women are expected to date white men. I’m expected to ‘stick to my own’” (Sahim, 2015). It is indeed unfair to hold Kaling to a different standard because of her race, though this framing of diversity in media discourse fails to address the underlying industrial biases that influence these kinds of casting decisions.

17Kaling’s ethno-racial status complicates mainstream notions of dominant racial identities which perhaps contribute to her first series’ tendency toward these types of assimilationist narratives. For example, episodes minimize Mindy’s South Asian heritage and Indian American culture, utilizing Mindy’s Hindu upbringing mainly as a foil to her love interest’s strongly represented Italian American and Catholic background and family. Kaling herself identifies as “culturally Indian,” and has spoken about her experiences as a child attending Diwali festivals, going to temple, and celebrating Indian holidays (Kaling, 2015), though this is not emphasized in the televisual space of the series. Early the construction of her star text, Kaling shortened her last name Chokalingam and adopted her middle name as her first into the reassuringly Americanized version by which she is now known. In a rare personal interview with Kaling before her work on The Office, Kaling responded to the question of whether she would take a credit with her surname, Chokalingam: “If they hire me to be the singing heroine of a Bollywood movie, sure” (LiveJournal Blog). In this response, Kaling recognizes the Anglocentric industry culture which undoubtedly influenced the crafting of her star text, as well as the portrayal of race and ethnicity in The Mindy Project. Writer Samhita Mukhopadhyay (2015) describes the pressure of South Asian Americans to distance themselves from discussions of race in the US, particularly after the events of 9/11, though simultaneously addresses Kaling’s refusal to address race in the series “mak[ing her] wonder if the next generation is expected to assimilate completely.” The way in which the comedian described herself back in 2014 seems to confirm this: “I sort of refuse to be an outsider, even though I know that I very much look like one to a lot of people, and I refuse to view myself in such terms” (Kaling, 2014). Now as an established producer in the industry, however, Kaling has begun to strategically address her status as a racial minority within US media industries. For example, instead of downplaying her minority status, she wears her history as a beneficiary of the diversity program at NBC “proudly,” using her cultural capital to point out the underlying racist structures that make such a program necessary in the first place (Kaling and Thompson, 2019).

18Despite these industrial television logics, The Mindy Project nonetheless expands on representations of South Asian women in US television during the 2010s. Particularly after the transition to Hulu, the show was praised for its evolution “in an impressive way, deepening from a romcom into a thoughtful, bittersweet exploration of the push-pull nature of relationships,” an exploration that fits Kaling’s brand of humor (Pai, 2015). As the series began to include more depth and complexity in its characters, one episode, entitled “Mindy Lahiri Is a White Man,” examined the negative professional ramifications of being an Asian American woman in the medical field. Though noted by critics for its awkwardness (Mohdin, 2017), this episode foregrounded gender and race in ways that previous episodes had not. For example, Mindy gains awareness of the advantages associated with being white and male, including professional (blind promotions at the hospital where she works) and personal (her whiteness is a surprising attraction for the opposite sex)—the latter perhaps even self-reflexively calling out the series for its casting of predominantly white male love interests for the series’ protagonist.

“Hella perspective”: Issa Rae’s Star Text & Insecure as “Outsiders”

19Similar to Kaling, Rae serves in multiple roles on the HBO series Insecure, including creator, executive producer, and star. The half-hour comedy drama explores the everyday life of Rae’s character, Issa Dae, in her late twenties as she navigates her career in the non-profit sector and dating in Los Angeles. Its romantic comedy elements were not lost on critics, who have made comparisons between the series and romcom, Bridget Jones’ Diary (Saraiya, 2016). Insecure is a few years more contemporary than Kaling’s show and contrasts significantly with The Mindy Project in its portrayal of women of color, and specifically, Black women. In this section, I examine some of the overlap between Rae’s celebrity image, network branding as it relates to conceptualizations of quality in the 2010s, and portrayal of the gender and race of characters in the series.

20In discussing the representational intersectionality in popular culture, Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) identifies various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the experiences of Black women in her research. Her analysis can be extended to the experiences of other women of color, though she attends to the experiences of Black women who face a specific anti-Black misogyny, one that Moya Bailey (2010) has termed, “misogynoir.” Ralina Joseph (2018, xi) describes how Black women celebrities in the public eye—often seen as “dangerous and illegitimate”—demonstrate resistance to this racialized sexism on- and off-screen through strategic ambiguity. This Black feminist strategy is an attempt to resist racist and sexist ideologies by using the rhetoric of postracial discourse to refute the racism that such rhetoric normally obscures. Examples of strategic ambiguity include using coded language that soothes fears of difference, utilizing crossover appeal, and courting multiple publics. Strategic ambiguity avoids association with the radical, instead offering a way to “chip away at […] hegemony” (Joseph, 15), giving these individuals the opportunity to be included where they have historically been excluded, yet nod to their differential treatment when an opportunity arises.

21Unlike many of the celebrities examined by Joseph (2018), the construction of Rae’s public image began in digital spaces where she developed her web series narratives and Black feminist persona. Upon gaining mainstream popularity, Rae related her frustration with the sudden burden of representation. In an op-ed entitled, “Can We Not Talk About My Race For a Minute?” Rae (2015) addresses expectations on her to write about and construct Blackness for audiences. In this early piece, Rae exemplifies at least some aspects of strategic ambiguity, for example, in the article’s focus on her individual experiences growing up Black in the US, rather than directly naming the systemic racism and misogynoir that underly some of these experiences.

22While Kaling created The Mindy Project as a Hollywood insider following her experience on The Office, Rae’s cable series, Insecure, was adapted from The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl (Mis-Adventures), the independently-produced web series that premiered on Pharrell Williams’ YouTube channel, iamOTHER. Williams, who has “long been invested in narratives of outsiderness”, took a hands-off approach to the web series, giving Rae creative control over its production (Caramanica, 2012). The web series’ large following rapidly propelled Rae into the spotlight, and her work has often been framed as an alternative to the mainstream in industry and entertainment discourse. For example, her brand of comedy was labelled as “small, anecdotal, experiential,” her web series as an “underground sensation,” and she herself as someone who had been “quietly working to change the industry for years” (Caramanica, 2012; Bahler, 2018; Yuan, 2016).

23Early online discourse also referred to Rae as “the black Lena Dunham,” a label that the showrunner adamantly rejected (Yuan, 2016). Just as HBO sought to appeal to younger women viewers with Girls, its promotion of Insecure contributed to the network’s attempts to be seen as more racially inclusive in its programming. The network capitalized on the public image of both Dunham and Rae as auteurs. Taylor Nygaard (2013) discusses how Dunham was compared to Larry David and Woody Allen—emphasizing her humor and wit over Girls’ women-centric themes and narratives—to fit the established network brand. As Nygaard (2013: 372) puts it, “although Dunham’s gender was one of the reasons HBO presumably recruited her, the network simultaneously worked to disavow her gendered positioning by comparing her to the masculine auteur tradition that has served them well historically.” Rae has been framed in press as “blazing a path for a new generation of auteurs who want to make shows that don’t cave to network expectations” (Baron, 2018). On her part, the series’ creator identified with comedy writer-performers, such as Tina Fey in 30 Rock, and claimed 30 Rock and Seinfeld as inspiration for Insecure, contributing to her image as following in the footsteps of these established (and white) comedy talents (Rae, 2018). Rae did not, however, have similar industry connections as Dunham, nor had she produced an award-winning film when she wrote Insecure, and thus she retained an outsider status relative to Dunham.

24Rae’s developing celebrity image as a talented, small-time creative aligned with both HBO’s marketing as “not TV” quality and the network’s push for diverse programming at this time. Feuer (2007: 148–151) describes how the prestige network distanced its programming from the quality drama of broadcast TV with its “not TV” brand in the 1990s, opting instead to promote its content as art cinema and postmodernist theater. The merging of serialized television with art cinema resulted in aesthetically cinematic productions and increased narrative complexity, among other markers of this new “quality” programming (Feuer, 2007: 151–157). HBO programming is also associated with high production values and the authorial mark of a series creator or showrunner; its series often blend genres and are known for their “‘edgy’ controversy” (Fuller and Driscoll, 2015: 6). Rae had hoped that Insecure would bring some of the themes of Mis-Adventures to television while aligning with HBO’s branding, describing how this new series would be different from network television programming, and asserting: “cable,” as opposed broadcast networks, “that’s my home” (Burton, 2016). This hope paid off in that several storylines from Rae’s earlier web series that may not have satisfied more risk-averse broadcast conventions were included in the cable network series.

25As mentioned, HBO was pushing diverse programming in an attempt to make its brand more inclusive and court a greater number of niche audiences when the network agreed to produce Insecure. Kristen Warner (2016) explains the cable network’s early 2000s strategy of racially bifurcating programming in order to appeal to both Black and white audiences, though notes that its quality dramas mostly sideline the experiences of Black characters. Seeking a competitive edge with broadcast network programming, the cable network has embraced “diversity” as one of its strategies which helps to account for Insecure’s adherence to more personal and culturally-specific programming based on Rae’s experiences as a Black woman. As Warner (2016) observes, Insecure “manages a mostly deft approach at tackling both sides of the bifurcation” through its moments of cultural specificity and codes of Blackness intended to hail its Black viewers.

26Rae’s initial grassroots efforts to fundraise and engage the fan base of Insecure’s precursor, The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, contrast with the development of The Mindy Project, which was produced for a legacy network and premised on Kaling’s previously established reputation within the industry. As mentioned above, Christian (2018) describes how the “open TV” network of smaller-scale developmental processes in web-based productions, such as Mis-Adventures, allow for innovation and originality to emerge outside of established industry values and institutions. Despite the increased originality that is possible in the open TV setting, producers must accommodate mainstream taste cultures to grow their viewership. Christian interviewed director Heather de Michele of Real Girl’s Guide to Everything Else (2010), a comedy web series in which a Lebanese-American lesbian masquerades as a straight “Sex in the City” type to keep her job as a journalist. de Michele communicated her observations about making culturally significant programming marketable:

It’s definitely a feminist story, and we’re all feminists driving it. But we also recognize that we have to package something so someone will eat it. It’s sort of like this stupid compromise that women have to make just to step ahead, but it just comments on the reality, while being smart within that reality (Christian, 2018: 96).

27In the case of Mis-Adventures, making the series more palatable to HBO’s white, male and affluent viewership included removing reference to race in the title, limiting some of the Black vernacular and references to racial stereotypes (Christian, 2018: 117-121), and—as I address in more detail below—conveying Rae’s Black feminist politics within conservative television comedy genre conventions and archetypes.

28Still, Insecure foregrounds the narratives of the show’s Black character. This centering of everyday Black stories is accomplished in part through the use of romantic and situational comedy conventions which have traditionally performed societal norms rather than introduced experimental themes and subject matter. For example, early seasons of the series adhere to the romantic comedy genre’s overwhelmingly heterosexual pairings and standards of middle-class respectability, at times raising the question for whom these “regular” stories have been written. Rae’s character is an awkward, yet charming, romcom protagonist navigating her personal and professional dilemmas. In conventional romcom fashion, Issa and her first season love interest, Lawrence, are a young, likable couple, who are seemingly meant for each other, though face generic obstacles; namely, he has become complacent in the relationship, and a tempting old crush of Issa’s has returned to her life.

29The series, which began within this recognizable romcom storyline, then shifts in subsequent seasons to focus on the experiences of both Issa and her best friend, Molly, a corporate attorney played by actor and comedian, Yvonne Orji. White artists and writers in the US have historically objectified Black women through the creation and reproduction of racist imagery in literature and popular culture with the effect of exploiting and oppressing Black women (Patricia Hill Collins, 2002). One of the most noticeable ways in which the characters in Insecure transcend these images is in their rejection of the domesticity often embodied in the stereotype of the mammy, what Collins describes as the faithful, “obedient servant… [who] has accepted her subordination (73). Issa’s best friend is not sidelined as a supportive confidante in the series; rather, the show explores Molly’s growth alongside Issa’s through narratives about the character’s tokenization as a Black woman at her law firm, as well as her mental health journey through therapy. Assatu N. Wisseh (2019: 393) warns of a contemporary version of the mammy, “mammy 2.0,” which can be seen in some of the behaviors of the character, however. For example, Molly does not resist the white ideals and mannerisms dominant in her work place unlike her colleague, Rasheeda, who is eventually terminated. In a later season, the character leaves the firm that has undervalued her contributions for a position at an all-Black firm where she begins to confront her own internalized racism.

30If Insecure contains a generic “sassy” friend, it would be another of Issa’s friends, Kelli, played by writer and comedian, Natasha Rothwell. The character’s sexual liberation and focus on her own needs and desires above others (demonstrated in a public sex scene in the second season, for example) also buck the mammy stereotype, though unlike more central characters in the series, Kelli’s sex life is portrayed as comedic. The character’s rejection of a maternal role can also be witnessed in her direct, often ruthless, criticism of Issa’s messy romantic life. In “Backwards-Like,” Issa’s friends confront her with the hard truth that she would be better off avoiding her crush, Daniel; in the scene, Rothwell as Kelli concludes with an openly disapproving, albeit affectionate, “ya dumb bitch.” Still, Rae’s nerdy and multi-cultural aesthetic as the lead is distinct from Rothwell’s more outspoken and unruly—or as she describes it herself “give zero F’s” (Rothwell, 2018)—comedy performance in this supporting role. In this way, the casting and performances of the series reveal an adherence to some genre archetype conventions that mainstream audiences have come to expect. Thus, within genre conventions, the characters are cast and written in ways that both disrupt and conform to dominant discourses about Black women in popular culture.

31Additionally, scenes in the first season with Issa and her love interest take place mainly in the couple’s living room with the sofa as the symbolic hearth of their relationship. This setting has become a familiar trope in television, appearing across decades of situational comedies such as Roseanne, The Cosby Show, Will and Grace (NBC, 1998–2004), and, more recently, the reboot of One Day at a Time (Netflix, 2017–2020). In Insecure, several key televisual moments, both comedic and dramatic, in the first two seasons are set on the couple’s sofa: shared meals, make-out sessions, intimate discussions and arguments, flashbacks of moving in together, and ultimately Issa’s imagined marriage proposal from Lawrence in the season two finale. While the sofa is thrown out of the apartment in tandem with the couple’s final break-up, “Hella Perspective,” it serves as a generic anchor for the couple’s relationship up until this point into which the characters’ Black-centered narratives are integrated.

32Black women writers have shunned the controlling images that Collins (2002: 94–95) describes, bestowing greater power and heroism to their characters who exemplify a “version of emergent Black women carving out new definitions of Black womanhood.” Rae’s construction of her own public image and that of the character, Issa, as an “awkward Black girl” is a noteworthy expansion on previous on-screen depictions. Rebecca Wanzo (2016: 29) points to the unruly woman antecedents of what she terms “precarious-girl” comedies such as Rae’s web series in their “embracing [of] otherness found in abjection as a desired end and expression of an authentic self.” Significantly, the series portrays Black abjection beyond that which is produced by white supremacy and “resists the excessive abjection of blackness in favor of an avowedly awkward abject subjectivity that positions J [the main character in Mis-Adventures] in the tradition of mainstream US sitcoms” (Wanzo, 2016: 50). Regina Bradley (2015, 148) specifically differentiates between the “quirk[iness]” associated with white women comedians and the adoption of awkwardness by Rae which is “racialized and political, a tool for black women to both identify and work through the social-cultural discomfort surrounding their bodies.” The awkward identity adopted by Rae acknowledges the history of stigma of being both awkward and Black, and through humor she expands on previous images of Black women on television by “signify[ing] the possibility of black women’s normalcy and humanity by showcasing her social ineptitudes in common situations” (148).

In Summary

34The era of the comedian-auteur on television has seen an increase in the number of women comedy showrunners creating television sitcoms, romantic comedies, and dramedies. Feminist media studies are expanding and diversifying in number and depth to examine these oft-neglected issues and topics related to intersections of race and gender on television. The current project has considered ways in which two contemporary comedians have expanded mainstream depictions of women of color on television within the restrictive logics of the US television industry. An analysis of Kaling and Rae’s 2010s celebrity images, the industrial development of their respective series, and on-screen visibility of each of the series’ characters also present compelling examples of the ways in which external pressures have shaped the content they created in this specific historical moment. These two cases further demonstrate how stardom, series development, and on-screen representation are increasingly intertwined.

35In the cases of Kaling and Rae, each comedian’s public image was distinctly crafted to create the image of a talented auteur with control over many aspects of their television series alongside their distinct gender and racial identities, for example, Kaling’s early post-feminist, post-racial image and Rae’s image as an “outsider” talent and her Black feminist politics. These images have also been reflected in the on-screen characters and narratives in the respective shows they have created. It is impossible to know exactly how much agency each of them had in the creation of these series, though similarities between how each celebrity has been depicted in the press and the textual outcomes of their respective series are evident. The management of the showrunners’ public images also aligns with network goals—whether broad appeal programming or diversification—and network conventions influence decisions about television genre and the portrayal of characters. Trends in Kaling’s early star text such as the downplaying of her gender and race, for example, are discernible in some of the assimilationist narratives of The Mindy Project that conform with the “broad appeal” initiative of the Fox network that distributed the first three seasons of the series. These strategies differ, for example, from the later writing and casting of the coming-of-age comedy, Never Have I Ever (Netflix, 2020–), on the streaming platform, Netflix.

36Rae’s early celebrity image as a rising Black creative talent, on the other hand, aligned with HBO’s quality branding and strategic diversification, contributing to the opportunity to depict characters in Insecure within original Black-centered narratives. Four years after The Mindy Project premiered, Rae’s web series was picked up by HBO—after #OscarsSoWhite and a wave of broadcast series premieres that centered the narratives of their Black and brown characters, including Black-ish (ABC, 2014–) and Fresh Off the Boat (ABC, 2015–), Empire (Fox, 2015–), and Jane the Virgin (The CW [The CW Television Network], 2014–2019). This cultural moment may have contributed to the growing opportunity to center Black women as protagonists in Insecure, as well as in other series such as Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum (E4, 2015–2017) on the British free-to-air channel E4, and the more recent comedy television show, A Black Lady Sketch Show (HBO, 2019–) which is executive produced by Rae. The actor, writer, and producer was appointed to the executive committee of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which governs the Emmy Awards (THR Staff, 2021), and hosts a MasterClass focused on “creating outside the lines,” (Spangler, 2021), demonstrating the growing possibilities for at least some Black celebrities in Hollywood.