Who's That Girl? (She's "The Stranger") [Revised]

Who's That Girl? She's the Stranger

"'New Girl' Menzies (TV Episode 2012), Unknown Creator" September 20, 2011. From Pinterest. Retrieved       January 31, 2023 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1941258/)

Georg Simmel describes the role of "The Stranger" in society as, "the man who comes today and stays tomorrow--the potential wanderer, " (Simmel et al., 2021 311).  What Simmel didn't know is that emulating this dynamic in the form of a sitcom, had the potential to create many comedic scenarios. 

New Girl is a sitcom that began airing in 2011, starring Zooey Deschanel as Jessica Day, who decides to move into an apartment with three strangers, Nick, Coach, and Schmidt (and eventually Winston). However, by applying Simmelian theory, Jess herself is the stranger in this scenario. The image above depicts a series of screencaps from season 2, episode 7 titled "Menzies," which chronicles Jess having her period and the comedic scenarios surrounding her, specifically regarding her all-male roommates. 

Simmel further explains the stranger's situation: "he does not belong in it initially and that he brings qualities into it that are not, and cannot be, indigenous to it," (Simmel et al., 2021 312). "Menzies" is one episode that highlights Jess's traits that aren't indigenous to the straight, cisgender men in the apartment for Jess as a straight cisgender woman. Throughout this episode, Jess is particularly emotional and challenging to deal with for the men in the apartment, as she is hormonal from having her period. The elements of her personhood that are not indigenous to the rest of the group in Loft 4D create a comedic dynamic between Jess and her male counterparts. In this episode in particular, Jess having her period alienates from her roommates, as they all deal with, and interpret this scenario differently. One character, Nick, is frustrated with Jess, saying that women shouldn't have an excuse to be angry and irrational every month just because she is on their period. Winston takes a particularly comedic approach as he reacts to Jess being on her period, developing a "sympathy period," wherein he claims to experience period symptoms, aligning with Jess's cycle. 

Interestingly enough, although new, these reactions make more evident the traits and normative behavior of the group. In response to Nick's comment about Jess's irrationality, the rest of the group retort that Nick is always irrational and angry. As for Winston, the behavior that Winston displays is typical of him, as he is known to be quirky yet caring and sympathetic to the rest of the group members. The environment and variance in behavior for Jess as the stranger remains, but the behavior of Nick and Winston can more readily be observed and analyzed for comedic effect. 

Simmel argues that understanding the Stranger's perspective, as an outsider, who is intertwined with a group, is essential to understanding a group itself. The Stranger is a source of objectivity, or a distinction of conditions for the Stranger that, "signifies the full activity of a mind working according to its own laws, under condition that exclude accidental distortions and emphases whose individual and subjective differences would produce quite different pictures of the same object," (Simmel et al., 2021 313). In other words, Jess's character, as the Stranger, provides the audience with something to latch onto to understand the new world that both the audience and Jess are thrown into. Furthermore, Jess's objectivity, emphasized by her contrasting qualities with the men in the loft as a woman, allows the men of this scenario to better realize their flaws in relationships in particular and grow and change for the better. Her objectivity transfers to the audience, as something that might seem normal to the weird men that live in this loft seems abnormal, and therefore humorous, to both the audience and Jess because of this objectivity.

Essentially, New Girl displays a scenario in which the Simmelian concept of "The Stranger" is applied for comedic effect and creating more complex relationships between the characters. 

Sources: 

Simmel, Georg, Laura Desfor Edles, and Scott Appelrouth. 2021. “The Stranger.” Pp. 311–14 in Sociological Theory in the Classical Era. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.