What California?

I’m almost done with my collegiate victory lap (LOL) and essays like this still make the grade. I took a course on California Culture and a big topic was ‘what represents California?’, etc. Obviously, I wrote about THE OC and its representation of the real life counterpart. Whatever!

Typically written off as a prime-time soap opera, Josh Schwartz’s The O.C. has become a defining document of our generation and a widely accepted representation of life in the palm-lined and idolized region of southern California. Using the county of Orange as it’s picture perfect backdrop The O.C. is a show about being an outsider. Each member of the fictional Cohen family must cope with certain differences realized in the sun drenched beach town of Newport.  Many Orange county natives balk at the idea of the show being in any way authentic. However, from the view of an outsider, The O.C. is a generally accurate representation of a certain, distinct California lifestyle.

The core members of the Cohen family each represent a specifically removed point of view of Newport Beach. The father, Sandy, is not only an outsider in his way of life, but quite literally. He’s a New York transplant, married into the upper class elite, a bleeding-heart liberal, and perpetual crusader against all capitalistic evils of ‘the O.C.’. According to the California Secretary of State, in October of 2008, 72 percent of Newport Beach’s voting population was Republican. To an Orange county native it may be easy to find leagues of Democrats, or any other varied political views over the landscape, but to a transplant like Sandy the political make-up is daunting. It’s no surprise that young adults across the county (those who so often criticize the show for it’s lack of ‘realness’) were shocked to see the area pass the controversial Proposition 8 a year ago. Sandy again helps us realize the actuality of the show’s backdrop by bringing in the Jewish perspective. The religion of the Cohens (half Jewish, half Protestant) comes into play often and contrasts with the stereotype of western Orange county being a nest of WASPs.

His wife, Kirsten, daughter of a housing mogul and overall ‘well-to-do’ family, manages to still feel left out in the community punctuating by upper class pleasures such as daily pilates and Botox. While being privileged and representing the 92 percent white population of Newport, Kirsten manages to stand in a different category. She is uncharacteristically smart, practically runs her father’s business, and is infinitely more hands on in the rearing of her children and day to day doings than her velour-clad counterparts. While there are probably plenty of mothers just like this in the area, to Kirsten, it feels as if she is the one square meter of sod in a field of astro-turf.

The Cohen’s biological son, Seth, a neurotic Woody Allen-ish comic book nerd, views the town from a cynical distance. Perpetually outcasted in high school, Seth finds the generally Republican and white make-up of Newport suffocating. He is artistic, literary, and heartfelt. Something one may not find in at water-polo practice. But we know that there are probably plenty of poets and dreamers speckling the beaches of Orange county (the closest we get to this side of Newport is a brief foray into smoking marijuana, quickly smoothed over by the censors). Though it’s all too familiar, especially as a teenager, to feel isolated in one’s own emotion, to feel  so foreign to your own environment that you might one day have to charter your own boat to Tahiti (and what a distinctly Newport way of escape).

The premise of the show is that the Cohens, breaking stereotype as always, adopt a kid from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’. Arguably the main character of the show, Ryan Atwood lands on their doorstep fresh from the tough streets of Chino (one of the largest television exaggerations in history, coupled with the episode in which they must drive a day, through the desert, just to reach Brea). Ryan represents every almost the exact opposite of a Newport native. He is unrefined, comes from a broken home, and has no money. Counter-arguments to the notion that the show depicts anything similar to a real existence in Orange county are quick to mention that not everyone in Newport is as rich as they are portrayed on the show. Of course that’s true. But moving from the Inland Empire to a city ranked by a Coldwell survey in 2009 as the 8th highest for housing prices (in America) wouldn’t seem that way.

It should probably be mentioned that the entire count of Orange itself is vastly different. One can drive ten miles and experience three different cities, all drastically different in culture. Maybe the show should have been called Newport rather than The O.C. But we must view it in the terms the show was presented and with that it takes place primarily in the coastal region of the area.

So what do we gain from characters that contrast so starkly with the statistics of the show’s setting? We get that what every native has been saying, “Orange county isn’t really like that!”. When they’re referring to the stereotypes of the background characters and landscape, they are right. Exactly. There are exceptions to every rule, minorities to every majority. And from the point of view of an outsider? An outsider in many different ways? Then the stereotypes ring true, are amplified even, and completely accurate.  For a show so often mocked and maligned, compared to day-time TV trash, and peppered with fleeting pop-culture anachronisms and cheesy dialogue, it really does an amazing job of portraying a very specific, albeit small, California lifestyle. The show is wholly Californian. Whether we like it or not.