Ethnic Representation on Television (week #8)

Remember last week when we were talking about Scrubs well this week we will still be looking into the show, but at a different character Carla, Turk’s wife. Last week we mainly focused on racial representation in television, but for this week let’s focus on ethnic representation. It is different because it is not as easy to look at someone and know their ethnicity, like it is for race. In this show there seems to be more of a lack of ethnic representation for the series as a whole. Although there are a few episodes, in later seasons, where Carla speaks about her heritage. 

For the majority of Scrubs, Carla does not engage in her Dominican culture, mostly because she lives in a place where majority of her friends and family speak English. (SPOILER ALERT) Even her own husband does not learn Spanish until later on until he secretly learns it to 'give' to Carla as a gift. But there are a few times where she does get to speak Spanish like when she talks to her mother on the phone or when her brother come to visit. Now her brother only speaking Spanish is another thing you will have to watch to know (SPOILER ALERT: he really knows English but he keeps speaking Spanish to please Carla) Also, after she gives birth to her daughter Izzie, there is a time when she struggles with what it means to incorporate her heritage into her daughters life. Making sure her daughter knows her Dominican heritage is very important to Carla, so she engages in Spanish with hopes that her daughter will pick up on it.  This is called acculturation where attitudes or beliefs are being modified as a result of contact with a different culture.

Check out this episode of Scrubs feel free to watch the whole thing, but if you want to jump to the part I’m talking about that is fine too. There’s a lot of jumping to clips here, but stay with me, first start from the beginning and watch up until 1:23 then jump to 7:33, 16:39 and 20:52

It’s clear from this episode that Carla is concerned with passing her culture down to her daughter. Integration is the synthesis of two cultures, which is not always half and half (Berry). So in Carla’s case, she wants to make sure that she is able to share her culture with her daughter so people do not just see her as African.  It is also evident to me as someone who has watched Scrubs too many times to count that ethnic representation in television is difficult. The clip above is from the seventh season of the show and it is the first time where being aware of your culture really pops up. Even though they are sending a good message in the episode about being aware of your culture and integrating it into the life you live, it still would be more impact-full if it was talked about sooner and more often.