Modern Family - Adopting a Vietnamese Baby

After hearing all of my friends telling me "you need to watch Modern Family!" or making me feel left out when they would make inside jokes about it, I finally decided that I would watch it. I convinced my boyfriend to watch it with me after many grunts and groans. We watched Modern Family and omg, it's amazing! Modern Family is a comedic mockumentary that "documents" the lives of 3 related families. It goes through the lives of the first family, which consists of a uptight mother, a horny and ridiculously dumb dad that tries to be "down" with his kids, a spoiled teenage daughter, a identity-seeking middle child, and a normal troublesome younger son. The humor really comes from the dad, who goes through outrageous lengths to not appear stupid..but he does. He even shoots his own son and his daughter's boyfriend with a bebe gun at one point.

Secondly, we have a homosexual couple, one who is more uptight and afraid of being openly gay and another who is extremely dramatic and flamboyant. What's really interesting is that they adopt a Vietnamese baby in the movie. In a time when everyone thinks adopting 3rd world babies is "liberal" and "morally good", this show is really making fun of these "neo-liberals" by making comments about how they are consciously aware that they are tearing the baby away from her country. You really fall in love with this couple as well because of the interesting dynamics between a more conservative boyfriend and the more outrageous one. Although they face problems with raising their child (as any other parents would), they challenge the notion that queer couples cannot raise a family.

Lastly, we get a grandfather with a hard shell and a soft exterior. He marries a young Colombian wife who also has an extremely mature son. There are a lot of jokes made in this movie about the Colombian wife because of her accent and her constant references to her "country". For me, she is extremely hilarious but I wonder if this show just perpetuates stereotypes about Latina women marrying white American men for their money. As I continued watching the show, though, I realized that they she carried strong family values and how much she actually cares about the family. Whether this solidifies gender binaries, we will have to see.

Also, they make some really racist comments. In one instance, the queer couple introduce their newly adopted daughter to the family. One of them ask, "what's her name?" and when they say "Lily", they ask "isn't that going to be hard for her to say?". Being Vietnamese myself, I didn't really understand that comment because I know for a fact, that we can say our "L"'s. Comments like this in the show made me wonder if they were trying to MAKE FUN of racism or not. Because it is in a mockumentary style, it tries to give viewers a glimpse of how families interact on a daily basis and in turn, how they view race, gender, etc. Therefore, it is possible that they are trying to show us how we talk about race regularly.

But we are just going to have to see. So far, this show is amazing. I'm definitely going to stay up to date.