Stuck In The Middle With You
This is a rather long essay that will contain spoilers for Carole & Tuesday (2019 anime), and while it is a show that I can't confidently recommend, I would prefer that you watch it for yourself and form your own opinion on it rather than be influenced by my own. That being said, prepare for some... less than ideal LGBTQ+ representation.
Finally, I will be discussing politics from a pretty far-left wing perspective. If that bothers you, I ask that you leave now.
It's... difficult, to see flaws in something that you once loved. Especially when it's a piece of media that got you into anime as a whole. But no matter how much you love something, acknowledging its flaws is essential. But at surface level, Carole & Tuesday is... fine. It's a cute show about two girls who want to be the best in the music industry, not truly understanding the horror that lies within it. They are artists who are feeling the thrill of having created something for essentially the first time, and hoping to be able to profit from it. With this relatively simple premise, it may be hard to understand how in the world Carole & Tuesday managed to carry on for a full two seasons for 24 total episodes. The answer becomes obvious when you factor in a political subplot that becomes relevant in Season 2, along with the fact that Carole and Tuesday aren't actually the protagonists of the show. More on that later.
The most evident flaw that I first noticed when watching the show the first time was the LGBTQ+ representation. Across the entire show, there are six characters that fall under the LGBTQ+ umbrella (nine if you count all of the mermaid sisters as separate characters), and only a total of two are given any real care. These characters are two lesbians who show up for a grand total of one episode (sans the curtain call at the end of the show) and I think the number of lines of dialogue they have combined can be counted on two hands. This one smarts even more for me personally because the episode in question is otherwise kinda pointless in the grand scheme of the plot, and all it really does is some interesting character work for Gus, who I'll touch on more later. But all the other queer characters are all handled rather poorly, I feel. This certainly isn't a new opinion by any means, but it's almost alarming as to the sheer extent of it. I'll touch on Dahlia last because she's the most present of all of these characters, but after the lesbians, we meet Cybelle. It is never stated outright that she is gay, but the way she acts around Tuesday, and her general actions definitely make the intention clear. But she's presented as this crazy fan of Tuesday who, as soon as she gets even the slightest rejection from her crush, immediately does things to harm Tuesday. This isn't necessarily homophobic on its own, this is just a parasocial relationship gone too far, but Cybelle (along with Dahlia before her) is the start of a very worrying pattern in the show that, on an individual level, don't feel like anything major. But combined together, they form into something... less than ideal. Right before Cybelle goes crazy from Tuesday's slight refusal, we meet the Mermaid Sisters, four characters with pretty much the exact same design who are explicitly stated outright to be non-binary. They provide one of many instances of musical comedic relief in this show, with their song being entirely curse words over a very fun bouncy melody. Chances are if you didn't watch the show before reading this essay, you've probably seen the clip of that song going around on social media. It's a silly song, but they're taking part in a music competition on live TV, and their song quickly gets cut, and they get waved off the stage. And, in what is the second worst joke of the entire show, the four sisters get incredibly angry and violent at the decision, causing the staff to cut to commercial (would now be a good time to mention they are all also black? Cause yeah, REALLY bad look). Again, on its own, there's nothing inherently queerphobic about this moment. The decision wasn't made based on their identity, but the content of their song. And there's nothing explicitly about their identity that made the Mermaid Sisters fly into a fit, it can be read as simple anger at a decision that seems wrong (and honestly, the Mermaid Sisters were right, they got fucking snubbed and I will not stay silent about it). But unlike Cybelle, who has something of a mirror in a fucked up cishet guy, who's in a parasocial and stalking relationship with Angela, no other character ever acts like the Mermaid Sisters, with sole exception to one I'll talk about in a moment.
The fifth character who is explicitly queer is Desmond, who is not only non-binary, but had a husband until he died. Desmond is exclusively referred to as they/them, and they're relatively fine compared to the rest of the characters. Not only do they deliver the core philosophy of the anime, but they also have this mystical quality to them that gives them an otherworldly beauty. As a matter of fact, the biggest problem I had with them on my first watch of Carole & Tuesday is the fact that Desmond dies in the same episode that they are introduced in (this is the 'bury your gays' trope, which I really wish we had escaped back in the year of our lord 2019). But, as I watched this show again and again (because, I liked it), I came to the realization that Desmond is... too perfect. Both in a 'they have no noticeable flaws' kind of way, and in a 'their gender is perfect.' What I mean is that, Desmond's appearance, voice, and even mannerisms all exist at perfect androgyny. They are the 'perfect' non-binary, neither being too masculine nor too feminine. And while there are a select few of us that can appear this way, this is by and large not the reality for most genderqueer folk. I don't really want to get into queer theory because that's not what this essay is about, but the point of this all is that, where Cybelle and the Mermaid Sisters fall at an extreme of representation that is somewhat hateful (even if not intentional, the actions taken represent negative stereotypes), Desmond represents the opposite extreme of representation, where they are this absolutely flawless angel of a person that imparts wisdom on Carole and Tuesday before dying. And for those of you who argue that they return in the final episode, I would contest that a character who disappears and doesn't come back again until the final episode isn't actually that much of a character. They have no personal investment in the overall story of Carole & Tuesday, and less so in the political subplot that actually becomes relevant in the episode they star in.
And last is Dahlia. Oh boy, oh boy, oh fucking BOY. It's easy to say that Dahlia is problematic just like the other characters I just went over, but there's a part of me that sees the attempt at complexity with her, and really wishes it was written better. Dahlia is, effectively, the antagonist for Angela. And yes, not Carole and Tuesday, but Angela, the rival for the main duo. Dahlia is explicitly stated to be a transgender woman, a fact that is relevant to Angela's past. Before her transition, it is heavily implied that Dahlia was abusive to Angela, and now is trying to get Angela to achieve the dreams she had when she was younger. It's very clear emotional manipulation, but Dahlia isn't evil. I can't stress this enough, but she does genuinely care for and love Angela, but the thing about emotional manipulation is that you can do it without even realizing it, which is why I find some sympathy in Dahlia's character. But everything surrounding her queer identity is an amalgamation of everything wrong with the previous characters' queerness ALONG with re-contextualizing all of them to be worse than they already are. Dahlia is trans for a Reason, and that's because there's some radiation on Mars (which I guess I haven't brought up yet, but you should've watched the series before reading this anyways) that I guess transes your gender. Dahlia made the executive decision to take HRT in order to fully become a woman, but the pills... made her more violent. This is pretty bad on its own, but only gets worse when you realize that Desmond was ALSO affected by Mars' transgender beam, which is why they are slowly being forcefemmed. Now would be a good time to bring up the fact that this anime was directed by the beloved Shinchiro Watanabe, of Cowboy Bebop fame. In said anime, there is a hermaphrodite that becomes such because of space radiation or some shit, decides to roll with it, and then proceeds to die after two episodes. In the context of Cowboy Bebop, and only Cowboy Bebop, this is Fine, honestly. It fits with the theming of the show, especially since that character is far from the only one who ever dies, and they last far longer than most other characters that bite the dust. But with this context, it kinda shows just how this doesn't feel like a random coincidence, especially with the fact that Dahlia ALSO fucking dies in the second to last episode of Carole & Tuesday (she is not brought back for the curtain call). As much as I do sympathize with Dahlia as a character, she is a mess as representation goes. But again, I do feel like all of this is beating a dead horse. I definitely think others have expressed this exact opinion much more eloquently than I have. But it's honestly almost a minor complaint compared to my thoughts on the political subplot of Carole & Tuesday.
Tuesday is introduced as the daughter of a politician, Valerie Simmons, who is very evidently running for the Mars presidential election in the equivalent of the Republican Party. For most of the first season, the only thing that Valerie is relevant for in any relation to her campaign is trying to get Tuesday back after she ran away from home. After all, a runaway child is a very bad look for a politician on the campaign trail. But her presence increases tenfold in Season 2, where the political intrigue hits its peak, and the story becomes incredibly relevant to current day politics. Valerie's campaign is based primarily in anti-immigration policy, where she spreads the idea that people from Earth are savages who want to take over Mars. A very nitpicky problem that I have with this campaign is that Mars was only colonized 50 years prior to these events, and it can be assumed that everyone currently living on Mars could easily trace their lineage to Earth. The reason Trump can get away with declaring all immigrants bad is because the colonization of America was so long ago (there's the addition of targeting a specific group of people that can be recognized by skin color, but that's besides the point). I don't think you could find many Americans who could trace their ancestry back to before England crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, let alone Columbus. Therefore, the parallel of 'we're all immigrants' falls flat when so many of us are far removed from the reality of our ancestors, whereas the Martians in Carole in Tuesday probably have living parents or grandparents who were from Earth. But the point is that it's supposed to be an exaggeration of Trump's policies, so it's fine. I'm also of the opinion that respecting a statue of the God of War (Mars) is not as fittingly ironic as respecting the Statue of Liberty which... y'know. But the point is that this is a Republican policy, and it's definitely meant to be seen as bad. While Valerie's campaign is going on (before the election happens, and there's currently a Democrat President), this policy supposedly spirals from spoken discrimination to all-out deportation. I'm tempted to say that the depiction of police brutality against black people is perhaps unnecessary, but it's not my place to say that as a white person. It just feels like trauma for the sake of it, but I would also say there is also a solid depiction of a lot of Black Joy, at least from what I can tell. But what bothers me about the political subplot is that the solution seems to be... 'just vote blue.' It's this very middling, easy answer that pretty much any Liberal will tell you if you complain about Trump.
But the problem is, MICE raids are happening even with the Democrat President in the office. This kinda reveals the fault with 'just vote blue,' because Democrats aren't doing shit about deportation, possibly even supporting it themselves. Even after Valerie drops out of the race (I'll get back to that later, I promise), MICE still show up to arrest the singers in the final episode. It proves that this isn't a Republican v. Democrat thing, it's both of them. This political subplot bothers me because it wants to do a good guy and bad guy thing, but it doesn't want to fully commit to the bad guy having power, which retroactively makes the good guy look bad. And this is ALL super irrelevant because this is not how the American political system works whatsoever, but because Carole & Tuesday doesn't have the time to properly dive into it, it turns grossly oversimplified to 'whoever wants something to be done gets it,' I guess.
The other big problem with the political subplot is that it doesn't really explore how Valerie's policies actually effect Carole or Tuesday. Carole is an immigrant from Earth, and Tuesday is not only Carole's best friend, but also Valerie's daughter. The things that Valerie is saying should be a very real problem for the both of them. Yet the only time that the two address it in any capacity is a vague wave in the direction of Valerie's policies when they are creating their final three songs. The politics only have an impact on characters we barely know, so the conflict feels weak, and allows neither Carole or Tuesday to really be all that invested in them, despite one of them being related to the person who has these policies. But don't worry, in case you were thinking that wasn't bad enough, it does get worse! Most of the reason that Carole and Tuesday don't really have anything to do with the political subplot is because they Are Not characters.
Carole & Tuesday, despite primarily following two female characters and shining a spotlight on a third woman, is not feminist in any way whatsoever. I'm hesitant to say that it's misogynist because I do believe that Carole and Tuesday are treated as human beings and not objects for men, but it does come startlingly close to that. Earlier, I said that Carole and Tuesday are not the actual protagonists of the show which is named after them. They are, at best, deuteragonists, but considering their absolute lack of any real character whatsoever (genuinely after Episode 1 they act the Exact Same as each other), it is hard to even call them that. One would suspect that their rival, Angela, is more of the protagonist instead. True, she does get more of a deep character and a full arc, but everything in her story is exclusively at the mercy of the real main characters of Carole & Tuesday: the men in each of the girls' lives. More specifically Gus and Roddy for Carole and Tuesday, and Tao for Angela. They are the protagonists because they actually move the plot along and get things for the main characters to do. This is moreso evident for Angela than Carole and Tuesday, but it becomes increasingly evident for the main duo when you remember that their dreams revolve around becoming well-known musicians. And the way that Carole & Tuesday get away with having men find all of their musical opportunities for them is by making Gus their manager, with a lot of help from Roddy. But more than that is how Gus tends to take over decisions for the two without really asking them first, and employs another man to be their producer that is initially presented to be incredibly unlikable. And more than that is how each and every single man in this show has a unique personality and character, along with having their flaws somewhat explored (or in Tao's case, conveniently ignored).
Angela is perhaps the clearest example of something amiss with the writing of women in this show, only slightly disguised by the fact that she does have something of a character, unlike Carole and Tuesday. But she is just a victim, and nothing else. She is a victim of someone who is currently a woman, though she was formerly a man (the only reason I bring this up is to highlight this show's transmisogyny), then in Season 2 she gets harassed by a male stalker and a manager who sees her as a prize to be won rather than a person, and she is saved from both by other men. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that Tao, who saves her from the stalker, ALSO contributes to Angela's trauma, but it's fine, he gets to be a good guy who's just looking out for Angela's best interest, doing a bunch of behind the scene things that are tangentially related to the political subplot. I would say Angela is at least slightly misogynistic, as something of a damsel in distress whose entire story is controlled by men, something that she only escapes in the final episode thanks to, you guessed it, Tao telling her to. Remember, women can be strong and independent, but only if men want them to be.
The issues of women not having control of their own story even applies to the political subplot (yes, it's WORSE than everything I already laid out about it), because Valerie is not the person who decided to make the anti-immigration policy. It was a snake of a man named Jerry, who was secretly controlling everything behind the scenes. We as the audience are supposed to hate Jerry for manipulating Valerie in a very obvious way, but I actually hate Jerry for existing to begin with. Please understand an important concept about feminism: yes, a lot of women are at the mercy of men in our patriarchal society, but that doesn't mean that women can not do horrible things, and it definitely doesn't mean that women do not uphold the patriarchy themselves by virtue of existing as women. Look at the way that Carole & Tuesday lets men be properly explored: there are some deeply flawed characters and complicated men that may be doing the wrong things, but have interesting reasons for doing them. Writing good women should at least extend that same olive branch of complexity to them. The only woman in the show who is complicated in any interesting way is Dahlia, and I feel like I've already given ample reasons why I'm not that fond of her writing either.
But more than just Valerie being controlled by men to back a policy that she says she doesn't like, the political subplot ends up getting resolved thanks to the efforts of two men: a journalist named Kyle, and Valerie's own son Spencer. With just a handful of research, Valerie is convinced of Kyle's accusations of Jerry, and she decides to fire him along with dropping out of the presidential race. Valerie shows a few signs of suspicion towards Jerry beforehand, but she is by and large just a puppet of a lot of other men in this election and in the plot of the story. It's almost poetic with how Angela started her music career with Tao telling her that she would be a 'marionette.' The women of Carole & Tuesday aren't characters that have interesting flaws or stories outside of a few small things, these are puppets to be controlled, to move to the exact motions that the puppeteers want them to, and they can not exist outside that.
...It should be stated that I do not hate Carole & Tuesday. Even with all of its flaws that I've slowly recognized over the years mounting up and how extensively I just tore it apart over the previous paragraphs, I do still have something to hold onto in the show that I do still love, and it is the art. Both the actual artistic style of the show, being a constantly gorgeous and radiant world that shines in each and every passing moment, and the music. Yes, this music show has good music; surprising for a show where the two titular women are not the main characters. The primary genre of the show is R&B, though there it does dip its toes into pop, jazz, and even rap at some points, and every song is very good. But more than just being solid songs that I love to listen to, there are a lot of nuances about the songs that I've slowly come to notice more of on repeat rewatches. Each song is related to the characters' stories as it progresses in at least a small way. Again, since Carole and Tuesday are overwhelmingly cardboard cutouts as opposed to actual characters, a vast majority of their songs boil down to the fact that they were missing each other, and now that they're together they can do things that neither could've dreamed of alone. I do actually really like "Lost My Way," a purposefully simple song that reflects that they're not quite on the same rhythm that they had been in other songs. The point of it is defeated when you realize again that Carole and Tuesday are never on separate wavelengths, but I still like the song has something of a character arc for them, even if the resolution immediately afterwards is 'we need to go back to our roots.' Angela, being a much more complicated character, has so many different songs that emphasize her feelings and her struggles. It still smarts that a lot of her story is controlled by men, but I do think her songs still shine in spite of it.
More than just the songs reflecting pivotal moments in the story, the songs and the characters feel (somewhat) tailor made for the actual singers behind them. Carole & Tuesday has a large amount of vocal talent behind it, and each and every artist brings their all to this show. Nai Br. XX and Celiena Ann make a wonderful duo, their different backgrounds reflecting that of Carole and Tuesday, and their individual styles I feel combine nicely for the anime's songs. Quite a number of artists picked for the characters are incredibly deliberate, having something in common with the character or the style of music they play. One of my favorite parts of my last rewatch of Carole & Tuesday was really delving into these artists' discographies and seeing just how talented they all were.
However, it's hard to really appreciate something when it's stuck in the middle of all of the aforementioned flaws.
"Stuck In the Middle With You" is a 1972 song by the Stealers Wheel, a Scottish band that isn't known for all that much besides that song. Due to the most repeated lyric of the song "Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you," there are more than a few people that have made the bold assumption that this song is political in nature, but it's not intended to be. It's ironic that there are centrists who think that this song is about how right they are, because if you apply that logic to the rest of the song, it's actually becomes about how awkward and uncomfortable it is to be in the center, rather than any assumed superiority to the guests that the main lyric entertains. However, what the song is actually about is how being successful often results in a lot of awkward situations and conversations. It's a vaguely relatable sentiment of 'oh, I see a bunch of people who were just like me before I became successful, and their pleas for help are sympathetic, but I want to hold on to what I feel like I've earned.' It's maybe the most essential song to understanding the mechanism of Capitalism, since it's easy to see those who are less fortunate than you as perhaps pitiable, but definitely not worth helping. All the while being in proximity to them is awkward because you are a representation of what they want, but can not have. So there you are, stuck in the middle. What Carole & Tuesday represents as a whole to me personally, is this same idea of seeing people that are struggling, and looking down on them, even if partly in pity. "Oh you're queer? Well, that's a little unfortunate, you're probably delusional and/or violent. But I respect and love you, don't worry!" "Oh, these are awful policies that someone is implementing that'll make your life a living hell? Well just vote for the other guy, who is doing the same thing but quieter! And also hope that the original politician drops out, I guess." "Oh you're a woman who wants to do something? You know you should probably have a man who supports you, otherwise you're going to struggle."
Episode 7 of Carole & Tuesday starts the music contest arc of the show, where we see a lot of musicians who are all giving their best shot to be proper contestants on the show. All of the performances that we see as the audience are really just played for laughs, but none of the jokes are really all that funny, with a few in particular almost being culturally insensitive (though, like all the other insensitive aspects of this anime, it gets away with it thanks to exaggeration being the joke. Thanks, I guess). But at the tail end of all these performances, before Carole and Tuesday get to perform, there is one joke that I do actually think is very funny. An elderly woman who looks very tired introduces the song that she will sing as 'something her mother sang to her every night.' It's presented as very sympathetic, as can be seen by the judges reactions to that statement. But the song that the woman bursts out in is a bird squawking dubstep that definitely does not sound like any lullaby. I'm sorry, it's hilarious and I think if that was ACTUALLY a song that this woman's mother sang to her, it makes it even funnier. That woman got snubbed, and I refuse to take any arguments on that.
However, like the way the art and songs of Carole & Tuesday are surrounded by aspects which make the show hard to watch, this joke comes at the tail end of a series of completely unfunny jokes, making this one still not land as hard as it could in my opinion. Even the good and great aspects of this show don't feel as strong as they reasonably could with how good they are on their own merits, because of how much else infects the overall quality of the story and characters. So watching this show becomes uncomfortable. It's light misogyny to the left of you, queerphobia to the right, and there you are, Stuck In The Middle With Me.
Thank you very much for reading, especially if you made it through that whole thing.
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