The clip “Neutral Man’s Burden” from The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 2005-2014) can be used to explicate the concepts of neutrality and Otherness in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.
On The Colbert Report, comedian Stephen Colbert plays a fictional anchorman covering real current events. For those who may be unfamiliar with the show, it is important to emphasize that the performance is intended to satirize pundit-driven political television; Colbert is caricaturing, not endorsing, the views he expresses.
In the introduction to The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argues that man is considered neutral while woman is considered Other. When I teach this text, I try to get students to see the concepts of neutrality and Otherness as applicable to many other contexts besides gender. In our discussion of the text, I first ask students to come up with other examples where we see something that exists in both a marked and unmarked form. Common responses include: the NBA (National Basketball Association) and the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association), comedian/female comedian, food/ethnic food, and history/Black history. After they generate a number of examples, I play Colbert’s clip.
In the clip, Colbert covers the controversy surrounding the 2011 nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The controversy centered on earlier statements by Sotomayor that her identity as a “wise Latina” may affect her judicial decisions, especially concerning her ability to understand instances of discrimination. In response, largely conservative commentators (including Republican senators) stated that she was incapable of fulfilling the neutrality required of Supreme Court justices. Colbert situates the critique of Sotomayor’s comments alongside the (largely unremarked upon) comments by another Supreme Court justice, Samuel Alito, about how his background influences his views, as well as a long list of Supreme Court justices whose identities have historically not been topics of discussion. The reason for the different treatment, Colbert satirically poses, is that “in America, white is neutral.”
The clip therefore raises questions about the meaning of neutrality (who or what is perceived as neutral, and why?) and the relationship between identity and judgment more broadly.
We first analyze the segment by making sure we all understand the basic contours of the controversy. Next, we move to explain Colbert’s coverage: What is Colbert trying to get us to see about this controversy? How exactly does he do it (what steps does he follow, what examples does he point to)? Which parts of the clip did you laugh at and can you explain what you found funny?
I then ask them to identify and explain any connections they see between the clip and Beauvoir’s argument in The Second Sex. We place these two texts into conversation in order to understand the larger concepts of neutrality and Otherness. Usually, we talk about how Beauvoir can help us analyze the controversy by getting us to think about how it is only against the backdrop of a long line of Supreme Court Justices who have simply been considered “neutral,” by way of unmarked identities, that Sonia Sotomayor appears, being referred to as the “first Latina” Supreme Court Justice—marked, in Beauvoir’s words, as Other.
We then work to see Beauvoir and Colbert as agreeing on the need to think about how that which appears as neutral also emerges from a particular position, albeit one that tends to not be considered as such.
To make this final connection, we return to Colbert’s example of Band-Aids. He argues that the only solution to the controversy around Sotomayor’s nomination is clearly that she should make her experiences “invisible,” much like Band-Aids did when they responded to critiques that the Band-Aid color labeled “flesh” was actually a particular color of flesh, not a universal color of flesh, by introducing an “invisible” Band-Aid. With this example in mind, I ask students to then re-read a passage from Beauvoir’s introduction: “I used to get annoyed in abstract discussions to hear men tell me: ‘You think such and such a thing because you’re a woman.’ But I know my only defense is to answer, ‘I think it because it is true,’ thereby eliminating my subjectivity; it was out of the question to answer, ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man, because it is understood that being a man is not a particularity.”
Although the Band-Aids example is meant to be humorous, and usually gets a laugh from students, it does provide another way to think about Beauvoir’s point here: she feels her only option, when accused of speaking from a particular perspective, is to eliminate (make invisible) her own position, much like the response of an “invisible Band-Aid” (as Colbert says: the problem is solved! Or at least Band-Aided.) We are then in a position to discuss why that response is a problem for Beauvoir, as well as larger questions about how we can acknowledge the influence of identity on our judgments without being either fully reduced to our identity or fully free of it. There are of course many other philosophical conversations that could emerge at this point: for example, what is an understanding of neutrality that does not fall into the traps identified by Colbert of Beauvoir? Is neutrality a concept worth holding onto?
The main point I hope students take away from our discussion, however, is a deeper understanding of Beauvoir’s analysis of neutrality and Otherness and the applicability of these concepts to a wide range of phenomena, including—but not limited to— a Comedy Central segment on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
Possible readings: Beauvoir, Simone de. 2011 [1949]. “Introduction,” The Second Sex. New York: Vintage.
Marie Draz
Marie Draz is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at San Diego State University.
