Dissecting The Vince Staples Show
5 Minutes With: Blaire Bercy | Dissecting The Vince Staples Show
For this week’s newsletter, we’re introducing a sometimes format called 5 Minutes With. The Vince Staples Show premiered this month as a Netflix Top 10. It’s different, creative, cool, and for the pop culturally curious, worthy of a moment to dissect why it’s so refreshing. So, we sat with friend of the company Blaire Bercy to share perspective on the success story of this show. Blaire is a podcast producer and host (Makeover Montage, She Kills, The Suga), pop culture fanatic, and a touchstone in our collective especially around diversity in entertainment.
Q. In what ways does The Vince Staples Show illuminate the Black experience?
BB: The Vince Staples Show feels authentic without trying to make everything this big, huge teachable moment. Sometimes diverse entertainment is forced to lay everything out to make it digestible for broad audiences. Toni Morrison, for example, was known to write for "us" without the "white gaze" - and that is what this show did. They didn't explain the complexities of the family cookout and what it means to make the mac and cheese, as well as relationships with law enforcement and our community. It's written from a perspective that you already get these things and what they mean culturally and geographically.
Q. How, in your opinion, does this project balance cultural authenticity with broad, commercial appeal?
BB: The protagonist has complex, problematic friendships and relationships, and keeps it real with himself and where he fits in his culture - but the show does not spoon feed audiences with what these dynamics mean. It’s clear that with this project Vince Staples was able to do what he wanted without having to fill in the blanks for audiences not from this culture. It's authentic to its culture by speaking to a group, making them feel seen and heard while intriguing a broader group that might not know. In every episode, there are cultural pulls and references that if you know, you know - like Soak City, or paying homage to Dead Presidents. However, even if you don’t connect with its specific references, the show is thoroughly entertaining and approachable for broad audiences.
Q. How does The Vince Staples Show impact the industry conversation around diversity in Entertainment?
BB: The success of a show like this impacts the industry because it makes people more likely to trust looking outside of the bubble, validating the opportunity in listening more closely to culture. This show feels like it presents the project exactly the way its diverse creator wanted to, without filling in the blanks. They twisted the format and it worked. And that is another opportunity for the industry to see the value in things outside the bubble, and not just say...well we have Steven Spielberg, so whatever he wants to do that's what we're gonna do. **
About The Vince Staples Show: a comedic series; kind of famous and sort of rich, rapper-actor Vince Staples navigates the challenges of everyday life in his hometown of The Beach. "Tonally and otherwise, The Vince Staples Show is reminiscent of other auteurist comedies like Atlanta & Curb Your Enthusiasm" - NY Times.