Science fiction and comedy are often used for social commentary and animated sf/fantasy sitcom Futurama (Fox 1999-2003, Comedy Central 2008-2013, Netflix 2023-) is no exception. For those unfamiliar with the series, it is an animated workplace sitcom with science fiction elements (cf Geraghty, 2009). It follows twentieth century delivery boy Phillip J Fry (Billy West) who is cryogenically frozen until the thirty-first century. He goes to work for his descendant (and mad scientist) Professor Hubert Farnsworth (West) who runs a package delivery company. His coworkers and friends include Leela (Katey Sagal) a mutant who is initially believed to be an alien, criminal robot Bender (John DiMaggio), company physician Dr John Zoidberg (West), company bureaucrat Hermes Conrad (Phil Lamarr) and, the focus of this week’s blog, Farnsworth’s wealthy postgraduate student turned colleague (she gets her PhD in 7.8) Amy Wong (Lauren Tom).
As a character, Amy is shown to be outside of the model minority stereotype (Ho, 2003; Zhang, 2010). Though she is intelligent and a scientist she is not shown to be brilliant, nor is she either submissive or the sexually rapacious ‘Dragon Lady’ stereotype. She is clumsy, somewhat promiscuous until she begins a relationship with Kif Kroker (Maurice LaMarche) and she can be fairly condescending to other characters on occasion because they are poor or otherwise outside norms. She tends to align more with Fry in that she is of a similar age, and she also is contextualised regarding her socioeconomic status. The Wong family (王, ‘king’) are wealthy landowners whose ancestor Reginald Wong originally bought the land from the ‘Native Martians’ for what is initially described as a ‘bead.’ Americans in the audience (and those with an applicable level of cultural competency) will recognise this as a reference to the purchase of Manhattan by Dutch colonialist Peter Minuit for sixty guilders worth of trade goods. This trade becomes more complicated, however, when viewed in context:
To Europeans, land was a commodity, an item which could be bought and sold and assigned to an individual owner. Native Americans, did not appreciate the notion of land as a commodity, especially not in terms of individual ownership. As a result, Indian groups would sell land, but in their minds had only sold the rights to use the lands. It seems, in fact, that when they sold land to the Dutch they did not give up their right to occupy it either. The famous purchase of Manhattan Island for sixty guilders loses some of its impact as a great real estate deal when one considers that the Indians probably never intended to give it up, but rather to “lease” it for Dutch use while they continued to occupy it… (Otto, 2013: 46).
While this should not be read as an attempt to justify the terms of the agreement or Minuit’s actions (or the actions of subsequent settlers) it does work into the analogy in Futurama. The first episode in which the Martians appear, 4.6, is a pastiche of Western (i.e., cowboy) films in which Amy, as the daughter of wealthy settlers, is kidnapped by Native Martians to exchange her for their land. They are mollified, however, when they (and we, the audience) find out that the ‘bead’ the land was sold for was, in fact, a large diamond. Rather than trading back as Amy suggests, this group of Martians choose to leave Mars with their newfound wealth as they, unlike their ancestors, ‘do have concept of ownership’ and plan to buy a new land that they will pretend is sacred instead of trying to reclaim Mars.[i] Though early in the episode Leela castigates the Wongs, Fry and the Professor for calling the Martians stupid and laughing at them (yet she also believes selling the planet for a bead believed worthless is funny), the episode is primarily about Kif wanting to prove his masculinity and suitability as a boyfriend for Amy, however, rather than a deep critique of American/settler history or exploration of the Martians beyond their being used as a clear stand-in.
While the Martians appear briefly in 9.2, in which Mars is temporarily moved from its orbit due to a solar flare that ancient Martians had predicted on a Maya-esque calendar, the other main episode in which they appear is 9.11 in which it is revealed that the Wongs own a casino which is Martian-themed and employs Martians in low-paying jobs. While Futurama is not the first to engage with the Indigenously-owned casinos common in the US, the episode consciously engages with (and, unfortunately, sometimes unintentionally supports) many of the tropes of what Tahmahkera (2014) terms ‘the filter of “rich Indian racism”—following the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988 (which paternalistically permitted tribes to conduct gaming on their own lands)’ (Tahmahkera, 2014: n.p., italics in the original). When the characters first arrive at the casino, Amy says that it was built because the Martians were not making ‘good use’ of the land, another settler-colonialist trope. Over the course of the episode, the Robot Mafia somehow take over the Wongs’ casino (it occurs off-screen) and Amy and her parents move into a caravan park which is in poor condition and which the Wongs had built to house their Martian workers. Amy, suddenly having become poor, in the space of a scene recognises that anyone can become poor, that she was wrong to be condescending to poor people and she also designs a heist à la the Ocean’s films to steal the casino’s earnings and an important strongbox containing a family secret which would return the casino to its ‘rightful owners’. When the group are nearly caught by the Robot Mafia, Amy reveals the contents of the strongbox is the original contract between Reginald Wong and the Martians. The contract was for Reginald to lease the land for a century and then ownership would revert to the Native Martians.
Diegetically, the consequences of this reveal are that the Martians take over the casino, evict the Robot Mafia (off-camera) and, for her ‘kindness’ (the exact term used in the episode) Amy’s family are given their home, wealth and title to their other casino.[ii] This can be read in multiple ways. First, it seems to allay the fallacious and often-used discourse that, if Indigenous peoples were to be given back ownership of their land (and/or reparations and/or full human rights) then they would evict settlers. Secondly, it clearly positions Amy as having done the morally correct thing by returning self-determination to the Martians with the implication that experiencing the disenfranchisement that the Martians had (for a limited time) has caused her choice. Thirdly, it shows that, though Amy bears no direct personal responsibility for the Wongs retaining unjust ownership (it occurred long before she was born) she does bear responsibility for her own complacency and her part in keeping that history concealed. This all implies that the production team are trying to support Indigenous rights through metaphor and support the awareness of settler colonial history in the US, something which is a laudable goal.
The problems with the way in which the Native Martians are treated throughout the series are similar to those in other series (Tahmahkera, 2014): they tend to be based on the fact that the Martians are coded as a white/settler interpretation of Indigenous peoples. When we see the Martians for the first time their dwellings look like those of the Ancient Puebloans (also sometimes termed Anasazi). While this can be an homage to the association between the Ancient Puebloans and aliens that fringe settler theorists sometimes make (as seen in The X-Files) it is still a trope based upon what the presumed white/settler audience would recognise as Indigenous. They follow a vaguely animist religion, there is an homage to the famous (in the US) television advert featuring an Indigenous person crying because someone littered (though this Martian weeps remembering a lost love), and they use a broken English which mimics the broken English of Indigenous people in Western (cowboy) films. They also have no real depth of character, unlike the many regular, recurring and even one-off characters on Futurama. Finally, they have limited agency. While some of the Martians choose to leave Mars after realising they have a massive, valuable diamond, others apparently remain to work in the casino (exactly who or why is not stated). But it is Amy who chooses to return the Martians’ land rights, something apparently done on her own rather than through increased cultural competency or direct interaction with the Martians. While I would speculate that some of this seems to have been due to having to cut a great deal of material to fit in twenty-two minutes, Amy, coming to her decision through on-screen interactions, allowing her and us to get to know the Martians as people, not just as reductive stand-ins for Indigenous peoples, might have helped ameliorate some of these issues in what is clearly a well-intentioned critique.
Dr Melissa Beattie is a recovering Classicist who was awarded a PhD in Theatre, Film and TV Studies from Aberystwyth University where she studied Torchwood and national identity through fan/audience research as well as textual analysis. She has published and presented several papers relating to transnational television, audience research and/or national identity. She is currently an assistant professor of liberal arts at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. She is under contract with Lexington for an academic book on fictitious countries and Palgrave for a book on Canadian crime dramas. She has previously worked at universities in the US, Korea, Pakistan, Armenia, Ethiopia and for a brief time in Cambodia. She can be contacted at tritogeneia@aol.com.
Footnotes
[i] The series’ overall critique of the hypocrisies inherent in any religion and its frequent critiques of wealth, including that of the Wongs, can ameliorate potential offence of this choice (i.e., the choice coupled with the obvious analogy can be read as implying Indigenous peoples’ belief systems are not as strongly held as anyone else’s belief systems).
[ii] Though the current, frequent Republican attempts to suppress the history of rights violations in the US tends to focus on suppression of the systemic and institutionalised oppression of Black people, the systemic and institutionalised oppression of Indigenous people has also long been elided at best from the American history most primary and secondary students are taught.
References
Geraghty L (2009) ‘Welcome to the world of tomorrow!’: Animating science fictions of the past and present in Futurama. In Geraghty L (ed). Channeling the Future Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy Television. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, pp. 149-166.
Ho P (2003) Performing the ‘Oriental’: Professionals and the Asian model minority myth. Journal of Asian American Studies 6(2): 149-175.
Otto P (2013) Common practices and mutual misunderstandings: Henry Hudson, Native Americans, and the birth of New Netherland. In Lacy M (ed). A Beautiful and Fruitful Place: Selected Rensselaerswijck Papers, vol. 3. Albany: New Netherland Institute, pp. 41-48.
Tahmahkera D (2014) Tribal television: Viewing Native people in sitcoms. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press.
Zhang Q (2010) Asian Americans beyond the model minority stereotype: The nerdy and the left out. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 3(1): 20-37.
