Community and the Culture of Cool

As a TV addict, one of the most frustrating things for me to see is all of the uproar over the NBC series Community. There are several very vocal communities of other TV addicts, including a TV critic for the AV Club, who think Community is the greatest, funniest, most innovative series on television. While I enjoy the series, I don’t think it’s anything too special—it’s funny, but it’s not mind-blowing. In the comments section of the AV Club website, people regularly break into fights over the series, attacking anyone who is not totally enamored of it. However, the big problem with being a Community fan is that the show is incredibly low-rated. Its last three episodes in May only reached 2.6 million people, so the series is on hiatus until February. The show is constantly on the verge of cancellation, which I think is part of its appeal for its diehard fans. They love to brag about how enlightened they are and how refined their taste in television is, which is in line with Malcolm Gladwell’s article on the Coolhunt. The article argues that the only thing that’s real is the desire to be cool; however, part of what makes something cool is that it is not mainstream. Gladwell writes, “The act of discovering what’s cool is what causes cool to move on.” Community is certainly a unique show—it has had episodes dedicated to elaborate action movie parodies, a claymation Christmas special, and a “flashback” episode entirely consisting of clips the audience had never seen. The show is innovative because its low ratings allow the network to ignore it. The show can do whatever it wants because the network knows only 2.6 million people watch it. So while fans want the show to become more popular so that it can survive several more seasons, it would almost certainly lose its creative edge. As the Gladwell article argues, the show would lose its appeal if it ever became cool.