Donald Glover's fall new hit, "Atlanta," is a comedic masterpiece that's been highly received by critics, receiving a 100% by Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.8 out of 10 by IMDB. The show focuses on an up and coming rapper, Alfred Miles, his cousin, Earn, who’s the main character of the show, and Alfred’s eccentric best friend, Darius.. The three of them together try to survive the everyday life of Atlanta while also trying to reach hip-hop stardom. Being the odd group that they are and dealing with the idiosyncrasy of Atlanta, of course the show will deliver a few laughs, but not without dealing a little dose of discrete reality.
Amongst it’s hilarious content and irregular plot is commentary on topics that don't seem to come up in everyday conversation; Episode 2, titled "Streets Locked", focuses on transphobia and mental illness but what makes it different is how it's approached. There have been plenty of pieces of literature, TV shows, and movies that have engaged in talking about about these topics, but with Atlanta they approach it in a way of criticism. In this episode, Earn is in jail after being involved in a crime with his cousin, Alfred. There he sits in between two people, who use to be a couple, catching up with each other. The audience realizes that the girl of the couple is actually a transgendered woman, but even so, the man doesn't realize it.
Amidst conversation the man yells at Earn who’s visibly uncomfortable, explaining he's just trying to talk to his girl. The other men who are also locked-up in the police department called him out and tells the man that the person he is talking to is a male. This scene is where the man finds out that the person he fell in love with and had sexual relations with was actually born a male. He tries to explain it but the other men just begin to ridicule him. The man then loses it and starts threatening everyone in the jail heatedly saying how he's not gay.
This scene is different than other scenes in movies/tv shows that take on this topic because it shows the audience how a critical society can force someone to live a certain way just to avoid judgment in an analogical way. The man wasn't hiding his feelings about this woman he fell in love with being that he was openly talking to her and "owning her" in real life; he fell in love with her looks and who she was but once he was told this one simple thing, he fell out of love with her; fell out of love with her not because of something she did, but because of what society believed.
In the same episode, "Atlanta" takes a swing at mental illness by introducing a character named Lee. The viewers are informed by the characters in the scene that Lee has been in and out of the "system" and has been in jail every week. During this time, the audience and characters watched Lee walk around the jail showing obvious signs of mental illness; talking to himself, pacing around slowly while making irregular gestures. No one shows any concern, except Earn, who asks the police officers and everyone else if anyone was going to do anything. All he got back from one of the officers was a "shut up" as they continued to basically make a spectacle out of Lee. A few moments later, Lee "assaults" an officer by spitting the water he got from a toilet bowl at an officer. Within a few seconds, his insanity wasn't a joke anymore. The police tackled him and beat him for being mentally unsound.
What we can take from this: In poverty stricken areas, mostly, mental illness is treated as crime rather a problem. It is used as entertainment amongst the community until that person gets out of line. And instead of fixing the issue, the judicial system simply treats that person as a criminal rather a victim. The cops knew Lee was crazy, everyone in the police department knew he was crazy, but no one actually tried to help him. They accepted him for what he was and decided to use him as a source of entertainment because there's nothing anyone can do, meaning it's not their business to care. They treated him like a joke until he did something they got personally offended by; I say this because what Lee did was barely assault. Lee just spit water on a police officer which everyone found to be crossing the line; Lee was basically an animal to these officers, an animal that was mistreated and mishandled. Once Lee gave a little bite, the officers beat on him as if it was his fault for being who he was.
Honestly, analyzing every single aspect of this episode, let alone the other five episodes, would take quite some time because there's so much to talk about. However, one thing that needs to be taken away from this article is that Atlanta is on a mission to open the eyes of its viewers by shining some lights on things we overlook. This show criticizes hood culture, the black community, how society deals with mental illness, and even how some celebrities are perceived to society (one of the episodes feature an African-American playing as Justin Bieber....yeah it's pretty weird.) With all these themes being revealed, Atlanta plans on changing the world until it's final episode
