36 High Maintenance and the Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl Indie TV

36 High Maintenance and The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl Indie TV

Aymar Jean Christian

Abstract: How has web and mobile (networked) distribution changed television production, narrative, and marketing? Te infux of indie producers making television for sites like YouTube has expanded the art of television beyond a show’s storytelling and visual style to include its overall development— fnancing, production, and marketing. Aymar Jean Christian contrasts two indie series with short episodes, distributed independently but later picked up by HBO, to demonstrate the changing art of TV.

Trough the rise of online distribution, we can now access television series any- time, anywhere, from any producer, large or small, with episodes of any length. Distribution can be many- to- many and peer- to- peer, not just Hollywood- to- everyone. Te infux of indie producers into television has expanded the art of television beyond a show’s storytelling and visual style to include its overall development— fnancing, production, and marketing. So multiplicitous are the models for developing TV afer the Internet that this essay uses not one but two indie series with short episodes (most well under twenty minutes), distributed independently on Vimeo and YouTube and later picked up by HBO, to demonstrate the changing art of TV. Created by Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair in 2012, High Maintenance follows an unnamed cannabis dealer as he delivers product to stressed-o ut New Yorkers. Each episode focuses on a diferent customer and how weed fgures into their life. Told in three-ep isode “cycles” instead of seasons, the low-b udget anthology series appealed to online users because of its decentered, spreadable narrative, sincere

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acting and writing, and creative social media engagement. Te Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, by contrast, focuses on one character’s struggle to maintain social relations amidst race- and gender- based expectations. Released by writer- star Issa Rae in 2011, Awkward Black Girl’s sensitivity to the complexities of black women’s experiences and politics eventually earned Rae a large base of fans. Yet her show’s less fexible serial narrative increased production costs, and Rae soon sought development from legacy television networks. Rae’s earliest eforts faltered as she lacked the clout to insist on her vision, so to maintain her fan base while in development, Rae released flms and web series by other producers, developing a network (Color Creative TV) and production company (Issa Rae Productions) for minority and women writers. Both High Maintenance and Awkward Black Girl demonstrate the art of short-f orm storytelling and its value to producers, fans, small web TV distributors (Vimeo and YouTube’s iamOTHER), and legacy TV channels (HBO). Indie producers grow their series not only through compelling narratives but also by adapting norms of production and distribution to extract the most value out of fewer resources and promoting spreadability in networked contexts where fans have more control. By developing series as new intellectual properties without fnancing from cor- porate distributors, indie TV producers transform the market for “pilots”— the frst episode of a series traditionally produced long before the rest of the season. In the indie space, an entire season of short-f orm episodes serves to “pilot” the show, introducing characters and, in an improvement on the legacy model, building fan bases. Indie TV producers reinvented piloting as building a community of producers and fans. Traditionally, television comedies and dramas have one or two creators who produce a pilot based on a successful pitch. Afer a network orders more episodes, creators establish a “show bible” with characters and plots to be executed by a writing team led by a showrunner. Tis hierarchical structure ensures continuity in broadcast and cable shows whose narratives run for hours each season. With fewer resources and shorter run times, many indie TV creators fnd tight control over the story a luxury they cannot aford, so they incorporate actors into the production process and design series to maximize fan engagement with characters. High Maintenance best exemplifes a collaborative and fexible approach to production. Among the most critically acclaimed independent web series, the anthology series achieved notoriety frst by cultivating meaningful, if undercom- pensated, work for above- and below- the- line producers in New York, with Bli- chfeld and Sinclair developing the program’s tone and voice along with their col- laborators. Teir “series of shorts” functioned as an extended pilot with a diverse array of characters, contexts, and plots.1 Tere is no overarching plot, just a series of vignettes where weed and its dealer play central roles.

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Figure 36.1. Tis High Maintenance episode shot in a cramped apartment typifes the series’ deliberate lack of plot in favor of vignettes in which weed and its dealer play central roles.

In its “Helen” episode, we see a woman coughing as she lies next to her son in a cramped bedroom. She wants him to shave his beard, but he says he won’t for another two to three weeks because his oatmeal-b ased shaving cream is on back order. In a montage, we see how consumption shapes the man’s life. We see pho- tos and drawings of Helen Hunt on the walls (hence the episode title). Te man orders all types of goods online, and we see some delivered from delivery work- ers who clearly know him as a regular client. Suddenly, we see the man’s next delivery worker, and he’s delivering weed. At the man’s apartment, he puts on a new shirt, and they engage in idle chatter before the man asks for Pink Kush for his mother. When the delivery guy leaves, the man puts the Pink Kush in a box full of unsmoked weed: He needs the company more than the weed. Te episode ends, doing little to advance the plot of the series, nor does it do much to develop the central character, the weed Guy, played by Sinclair. Originally conceived as a vehicle for Sinclair with then partner and Emmy Award– winning casting director Katja Blichfeld, High Maintenance started production when the creators reconceived it as a more open, fexible character study: “We just want to get inside the apartment and meet these characters. And that was it,” Blichfeld told me. “It’s more intriguing, I think, to just speculate what’s this guy’s backstory than seeing it.” Vimeo eventually picked up the show for six episodes for its On Demand platform, but soon afer Blichfeld and Sinclair secured a six- episode series order from HBO, rare for the premium network ac- customed to producing pilots before ordering a full season. Te HBO deal was concrete evidence that indie TV series can function as pilots. Blichfeld and Sinclair’s approach to episodic storytelling defes legacy TV’s approach to story development, where pilots clearly introduce and explain central characters, settings, and plots. Te f exibility of their production and storytelling practices allowed the High Maintenance creators to develop a devoted fan base via Vimeo, not because they aggressively pursued fans but because their show ofered multiple points of entry beyond plot, be it identifcation with the

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characters, the city, or weed culture. Episodes can be watched in any order. As New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum writes in her review of the web series, “Be- cause High Maintenance has no obligation to follow any one character, or make a season- long arc pay of, it can take diferent risks. Gradually, the episodes build up a detailed and empathetic image of a specifc demographic slice of New York, one cramped apartment at a time.”2 Rejecting the pilot requirement of introducing the characters and plot, the creative team cultivated a realistic world based on their location, the actor, and identity. Te production team went of-s cript depending on who and what was on set. For “Helen” they shot in the apartment of one of their producers, Russell Gregory, a talent manager whose clients are in the series. Gregory’s apartment was small, traditionally considered a production constraint— legacy shows seek large apartments or studio sets for added production value. But Blichfeld and Sinclair, serving as their own art directors, stufed the space with more furniture to give it a cramped feel. “I think really that’s where the idea came from, was having the space frst,” Blichfeld told Fresh Air’s Ann Marie Baldonado.3 Serendipitously, the day of shooting, a street festival was re- routed to outside the apartment. Initially viewing this as a problem, they realized it provided a cinematic contrast to the hermetic protagonist, as well as a sense of unpredictability and spontaneity characteristic of living in New York. Independent web series producers are more reliant on actors than legacy stu- dios are, as actors’ depth of participation greatly afects how the story proceeds. An actor dropping out can halt a production without a casting budget. Because they are essential on set and very ofen (but depending on scale, not always) needed for large blocks of shooting, indie series creators ask more of their actors’ time but ofen compensate by giving them more control over their characters and the story. For High Maintenance, even though Blichfeld and Sinclair wrote all episodes of the show other than “Helen,” they continually redistributed creative ownership over the narrative. As a casting director who eventually secured an Emmy Award for casting 30 Rock, Blichfeld said they were “super fortunate that we’ve all been in that community for as long as we have”:

We’re really performance- oriented. Like more than anything. So, we’re just inter- ested in what’s going to get the best performance from our actors. Which really informs our whole process. It’s why we keep our sets to a very minimal group of people. It’s why we tell actors, “Ok. Here’s the script. Ultimately make sure you hit that and hit that. But if this doesn’t sound right coming out of your mouth, just say it in your own words.” We like really try to make them feel like . . . they have some ownership over their character. And we’re asking them to do very little, usually. We’re usually asking them to just kind of be themselves. Because we’re usually writing for actors and hoping they’re going to bring themselves to the character.4

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Blichfeld’s description of their development process makes perfect sense for a series in which every episode rests on a small number of performances and whose producers all work with actors on a daily basis. With each episode consisting of just two or three scenes, actors drive the story and creators shape production to best utilize talent, which is common in other web series as well. Blichfeld and Sinclair wrote for specifc actors, revealing how indie production reshapes the legacy casting process. Rather than auditioning, the creators focused on getting to know the talent and building rapport to support sincere performances and ensure a smooth flming process. “We don’t have a traditional audition process. But the thing that could be equated with that is just us hanging out with the person that we’d like to write for,” said Sinclair, who cited the casting of Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) in “Rachel,” the episode that won them a Writers Guild Award. “We basically hung out with him a half dozen times before we realized what character would ft best for him.” Te frst episode, “Stevie,” has Bridget Moloney, Sinclair’s sister- in- law, as the lead (Blichfeld met Sinclair through Moloney). “Olivia,” the most popular episode on Vimeo according to view counts, features Heléne Yorke, Gregory’s client, and Max Jenkins, a friend of Sinclair and Blichfeld and star of Bobby Hodgson and Karina Mangu-W ard’s web series Gay’s Anatomy. Blichfeld cast both Yorke and Jenkins in very small parts on 30 Rock. Yet casting for 30 Rock was a challenge because Blichfeld needed strong actors who could keep up with career comedians Tracy Morgan, Tina Fey, and Alec Baldwin, and also deliver laughs with just a couple of lines: “I started fantasizing— and strategizing— about ways that I could somehow . . . put a spot- light on some of these actors who I am obsessed with,” she said. Indie TV narratives spread on social media when characters and narratives appeal to specifc types of fans, so marketing and plot are deeply intertwined. In Issa Rae’s third and most popular web series, Te Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, the frst episode is a delicate balancing act between universal and specifc black women’s experiences, clearly designed for spreadability, a theory of media distribution centering fans’ afective connections in “going viral.”5 Te show opens with the protagonist in her car in Los Angeles. “Am I the only who pretends I’m in a music video when I’m by myself?” narrates J, played by Rae. J, a twentysome- thing, dark- skinned black woman with shaved hair, is alone rapping loudly to an original song written for the show: “My booty shawts, booty shawts . . . Niggas wanna fuck me from behind . . . niggas wanna feel up on this booty, they ain’t got a chance.” Suddenly a coworker drives up next to her car, waving profusely. She waves back, as if to dismiss him politely, but they keep meeting at succes- sive stop signs. It is a common and relatable “awkward moment,” J says. In the next scene, J introduces herself: “My name is J and I’m awkward . . . and black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be.” In the

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Figure 36.2. From the four- minute pilot episode of Te Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl to her series Insecure on HBO, Issa Rae has expanded the art and production of TV.

four- minute episode we learn that J has recently been dumped by her boyfriend, D, twice: frst for vague reasons, then, afer a one- week reconciliation, because her shaved natural hair freaked him out, triggering homophobia. Despondent, J copes by crying in the mirror, getting drunk at the ofce holiday party, and sleeping with a coworker, A. Her secret coping mechanism, though, is writing violent rap lyrics: “I’m a bad bitch. You’re a pussy nigga,” she says on screen. “What the fuck rhymes with ‘pussy nigga’? . . . Burn in hell, nigga! Burn in hell, nigga!” Te pilot episode, which a year later had been viewed one million times, is masterful in its ability to signify black youth culture and awkward-co medy tropes of misrecognition and misinterpretation, breaking the rules of both the web and TV.6 Rae bookends the episode with excerpts from comically ofensive rap songs, a nod to the dominant, marketable black television form since the 1990s. But those lyrics are fltered through J, her individual awkwardness and her post- breakup anxieties: Te rap is divorced from its masculine and corpo- rate media context. Instead, J signals blackness by referencing its position in culture and the market (it’s one of the “worst things anyone could be”). Rae in- tegrates experiences specifc to black women— most importantly, the politics of natural hair— with familiar plot devices from women’s sitcoms and rom-co ms such as getting dumped, crying in the mirror, cutting one’s hair, and sleeping with a loser. I recount the frst episode of Awkward Black Girl not only because it is the series’ most- watched episode— as is the case with most TV series— but also because its explicit appeal to black women worked: Awkward Black Girl retained over half its large opening audience. Within a year, Rae had been profled by a diverse group of media outlets, from mainstream outlets like CNN and the Associated Press to black media like Essence and Te Root. Media mogul Arianna Hufngton asked her to write an inaugural post for the Hufngton Post’s new site targeting black Americans.7 When Rae started a $30,000 crowdfunding campaign to com- plete her frst season, she raised $56,000. Afer pitching the show to networks,

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Awkward Black Girl landed on a premium YouTube channel, iamOTHER, headed by Pharrell Williams. Two years later, afer the Shonda Rhimes–p roduced I Hate L.A. Dudes faltered in development at ABC, Rae secured an HBO development deal for a series about a young black woman, Insecure, premiering fall 2016, with Larry Wilmore attached as a producer. Rae’s success hinged on her sincere use and innovation of black culture and sitcom genre conventions, all fltered through black female cultural politics. She created an original representation and then experimented with distribution in ways that deviated from and continued a tradition beginning with BET. Awkward Black Girl proposes to represent its community of fans—p rimarily but not exclusively black women—in a way unseen on legacy television and does so convincingly. Awkward Black Girl’s concept and story resonated with black women, who evangelized the show online and in their communities. Rae, reading user com- ments and emails, sensed the fervor she created and built campaigns to keep viewers engaged, most of it channeled through Rae herself. She was active on Facebook, with pages for the show and herself: Rae could count fve thousand friends and three thousand subscribers by early 2012 on Facebook, while the show’s Facebook group had nearly sixty thousand fans at the same time.8 By 2016, Awkward Black Girl’s Facebook page had more than 180,000 fans. A simi- lar dynamic— accounts for both Rae and the show—co uld be seen on Twitter.9 Facebook and Twitter pages, by 2010, were common components of most web series’ social media marketing campaigns. Rae went beyond that with a personal Tumblr blog, on which she directly promoted both her show and related projects. Rae’s ability to use her identity as a member of the community she represents greatly enhanced the show’s marketability. Rae’s blog provides an interesting glimpse into how she promoted Awkward Black Girl as a community- and market- oriented project. Te blog highlighted the show’s merchandise, including T-s hirts stating “I’m Awkward . . . And Black” or “I’m Awkward . . . And Mixed.” Rae also posted artistic and cultural recom- mendations and contributions from fans.10 Much of the blog’s space went to support projects that shared Awkward Black Girl’s mission of reforming Hollywood, including, for instance, the Black Girl Project celebrating classic black TV pro- grams along with clips and media by and about Hollywood producers combating the system.11 Outside her blog Rae positioned herself as a thought leader on race in Hollywood by penning a number of opinion pieces on black representational politics and embarking on a nationwide college screening tour. Consistent with the show’s simultaneous commitment to humor, many of Rae’s publications and blog posts had no obvious connection to race or gender politics.12 In the years following Awkward Black Girl’s fnale in 2013, Rae escalated her distribution eforts by releasing series from other writers, mostly in Hollywood.

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As she worked with HBO on her series, in 2014 she launched an initiative to allow fans to support programming through the Color Creative initiative, sup- ported by Patreon, a start- up that manages regular contributions. Color Creative extends Rae’s practice of releasing romantic comedies from other producers on her YouTube channel. Rae started Color Creative as a pilot incubator, starting with a slate of three half-hour comedies in 2014. “It came from my place of frus- tration having gone through the pilot process with ABC and then currently with HBO,” Rae said. “Te process just felt really, really outdated to me, and really inefcient for writers.” Yet by releasing pilots in a format that only legacy television development can support, Rae and producing partner Deniese Davis fnd themselves reliant on the old system. Says Rae, “To legitimize the program, we have to sell something. . . . We’re still depending on these old television networks who are still using this old pilot system to say ‘we’ll buy it from you’ when that would be admitting that this pilot system is stupid, and that’s kind of weird. We want to be able to have a relationship with internet networks or work within the system to be able to say this is a new model.”13 Rae expresses disenchantment with legacy television development and hope for new networks like Netfix and Hulu. Selling a pilot to a legacy TV network would “validate us as an incubator, as a program,” Davis said. Indeed, HBO eventually signed a deal with Rae to bring two series to the network, which they purchased in 2017, and Color Creative received a grant from the Pop Culture Collaborative to sustain Rae’s development initiatives.14 Indie TV series like High Maintenance and Awkward Black Girl changed the art of TV, not only the stories told but also their production and release. In their search of creative freedom from the industry’s cold marketing calculus and unin- spiring labor conditions, independent television producers like Blichfeld, Sinclair, Gregory, and Rae leveraged creative autonomy to seamlessly connect production with fan desires. Indie producers show how television can harness the afordances of a networked distribution to expand production and engagement: specifc stories, greater responsiveness to fan demands, and greater openness to the politics of cultural representation.

Further Reading Christian, Aymar Jean. Open TV: Innovation beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Televi- sion. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Smith-Shomade, Beretta. Watching while Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013. Wanzo, Rebecca. “Precarious- Girl Comedy: Issa Rae, Lena Dunham, and Abjection Aesthet- ics.” Camera Obscura 31, no. 2 (2010): 27– 59.

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Notes 1. Drew Grant, “‘High Maintenance’ Creators: It’s Not TV, It’s Art!” New York Observer, No- vember 13, 2014, http://observer.com. 2. Emily Nussbaum, “Taster’s Choice: ‘High Maintenance’ and ‘My Mad Fat Diary,’” New Yorker, June 6 and 16, 2014, www.newyorker.com. 3. Ann Marie Baldonado, “Friends And Favors: ‘High Maintenance’ Creators Share Teir Se- cret to Success,” NPR: Fresh Air, March 4, 2015. 4. Katja Blichfeld, personal interview with author, March 30, 2013. 5. Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Mean- ing in a Networked Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2013). 6. Rebecca Wanzo, “Precarious- Girl Comedy: Issa Rae, Lena Dunham, and Abjection Aes- thetics,” Camera Obscura 31, no. 2 (2010): 27– 59. 7. Ariana Hufngton, “Introducing HufPost BlackVoices: Covering Black America’s Split- Screen Reality,” Hufngton Post, August 4, 2011, www.hufngtonpost.com; Matthew Fleischer, “AP Profles Awkward Black Girl Creator Issa Rae,” Adweek, September 9, 2011, www.adweek.com. 8. See Issa Rae, Facebook, www.facebook.com; and Awkward Black Girl, Facebook, www .facebook.com. 9. See Issa Rae, Twitter, http://twitter.com; and Awkward Black Girl, Twitter, http://twitter .com. 10. Issa Rae, “Ridiculously Awesome Awkward Black Girl Fan Art,” Issa Rae (blog), August 22, 2011, http://blog.issarae.com/post/9253469983/ ridiculously- awesome- awkward- black- girl- fan- art. 11. Issa Rae, “What Better Way to Celebrate Black history Month,” Issa Rae (blog), Febru- ary 10, 2012, http://blog.issarae.com/post/17412340526/tbgptumbles- what- better- way- to- celebrate- black. Examples include a Daily Show interview with George Lucas on his big- budget black war movie, Red Tails (Issa Rae, “First Viola, Ten Steve McQueen, Now George Lucas Blasts Hollywood: A Change Gon’ Come? (Tanks, Rob),” Issa Rae (blog), January 15, 2012, http://blog.issarae.com/post/15891230169/frst- viola- then- steve- mcqueen - now- george- lucas); an article on female comic writers (Issa Rae, “Ladies Making Com- ics: How Media Clearly Refects the Sexism and the Racism We Cannot See in . . . ,” Issa Rae (blog), August 24, 2011, http://blog.issarae.com/post/9355654519/ladies- making- comics - how - media- clearly- refects- the); and an excerpt from Indian American writer and actress Mindy Kaling from Te Ofce (Issa Rae, “Just Read: ‘Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me (and Other Concerns)’ by Mindy Kaling,” Issa Rae (blog), January 2, 2012, http://blog. issarae.com/post/15193378046/just- read- is- everyone- hanging- out- without- me). 12. See Issa Rae, “ABG College Tour,” Issa Rae (blog), http://blog.issarae.com/ABGCol- legeTour; Issa Rae, “Nothing Made You Happier than Seeing Tis When Walking into a Classroom as a Kid,” Issa Rae (blog), January 22, 2012, http://blog.issarae.com /post/16296550787/calinative- lol- yuuuup. 13. Aymar Jean Christian, Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Televi- sion (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 130. 14. Jada Yuan, “‘Awkward Black Girl’ Goes to Hollywood,” Vulture, October 2016, www.vul ture.com.

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