Shameless
December 7, 2013 § Leave a comment
We’ve been watching the American version of Shameless off and on for the past year. The American version is based on the British show, but is set in the South Side of Chicago. It is centred around the big and cacophonous Gallagher clan. The patriarch is Frank, played by William H. Macy. Frank is a drunk asshole. There’s no other way to put it. His wife, the children’s mother, has up and left. The family is held together by the eldest daughter, Fiona. There are 5 more children, the youngest of which is 2 (and somehow African American in a family of white Irish Americans; this is never explained). Fiona scrounges and scrimps and saves to keep food on the table and the roof over the heads of the other Gallagher kids. The house is possessed by the Gallaghers through dubious means, involving some welfare scam on the part of Frank. Fiona is left to scam to keep the family together and to keep the rest of the kids from ending in foster care.
I have to say, I enjoy the TV show, though occasionally it hits kind of close to home, in that I grew up mostly poor with an alcoholic and abusive step-father. But, this show is a rather complicated look at poverty, particularly white poverty in America. It also dovetails nicely with Michael Patrick MacDonald’s points about South Boston. The show is set in Canaryville, the historically Irish section of Chicago’s South Side. Canaryville, like Southie or Griff, is rather legendary for being both Irish and hostile to outsiders.
As I watch the show, I can’t help but wonder if Shameless romanticises poverty, portrays it accurately, or stereotypes poor people as scammers. I find myself torn every time I watch it.
On the one hand, the Gallagher clan and their friends struggle everyday trying to make ends meet, but it seems they’re always able to put aside their money worries to have fun. No, they don’t get drunk (except for Frank) and they don’t do drugs. But they do have a lot of fun, there’s a lot of wisecracking, and teasing. There’s also a lot of scamming of pretty much anything that can be scammed, from welfare officers to schools, to businesses and anyone else stupid enough to get involved.
When I was growing up, my life wasn’t exactly as glamourous as the Gallaghers, but it’s not like we spent our entire lives miserable because we were poor. And the “system,” such as it were, was there to be scammed. To a degree. It was not like anyone I knew scammed welfare or Unemployment Insurance (as Employment Insurance was once called in Canada), and so on. Scams tended to be smaller scale. Like scamming free rides on the bus or the Skytrain. Life wasn’t one thing or the other, it wasn’t black and white. It was complicated.
And this is where I think Shameless is a brilliant show. Obviously there is some mugging for the cameras and the creation of some dramatic storylines for entertainment purposes. But it represents the life of these poor white trash Irish Americans in Canaryvlle, South Side Chicago, as complicated. Their lives aren’t all of one or the other. They live lives as complicated as the middle-classes. Perhaps more so, because they’re always worried about having something to eat and having gas to heat the house. In the end, Shameless represents the poor as multi-faceted, complicated people, who are pulled in various different directions according to their conflicting and various roles (as breadwinner, daughter, son, friend, lover, etc.). In short, at the core, their lives are no different than ours. They are, essentially, fully human.
Too often, when I see representations of the working-classes and the poor in pop culture, whether fiction or non-fiction, these representations are nothing more than stereotypes. Poor people are lazy. Poor people are scammers. Poor people are dishonest. Poor people are victims. Poor people need help. And so on and so on. In reality poor people are none of these things and all of these things and more. In fact, the poor are just like you and me. And, at least in my experience, essentialising the working classes does them a disservice.
And this is where works like Shameless or All Souls come in. MacDonald complicates our stereotypes of Southie. He shows us the complications of the impoverished Irish of South Boston, and he makes it impossible for us to stereotype. In the end, Shameless does the exact same thing.
Matthew Barlow 
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