Stars Hollow in Trump’s America
Stars Hollow doesn’t change much. Patty’s is always filled with ballerinas. Taylor is always griping about traffic lights, or something similarly banal. Sure, that old hardware store on the corner became a diner at some point, but it still looks pretty much the same as it did decades ago. The world of Gilmore Girls is a consistent one. I’ve been rewatching the original series with my boyfriend, and when I watched the revival series over Thanksgiving, I was struck by just how stagnant Stars Hollow and all the people who live in it are. Even ten years later Rory and Lorelai are just as kooky and chatty and immature as ever. Their world doesn’t change.
We need a world that changes. The election of Donald Trump illuminated the dark side of the country for many people. There is a lot of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, queerphobia, and other forms of hatred in this country. It’s been there for a long time, but we can work to undo it. The Stars Hollow-esque coziness is wonderful, and we’d be lost if we didn’t relax and enjoy that some of the time, but we also can’t live all the time like the Gilmore girls in the sort of consistency that breeds complacency. Come on, we don’t want to be as spoiled as revival Rory.
There are steps we can take, on small scales and on large ones. I’m working on a pen pal project that connects students from different socio-economic and political areas of the country in order to foster empathy. If you’d like to get involved, please reach out! I’m also editing non-fiction pieces for Us for President, a project that publishes art against Trump. Oh, and I’m continuing to snuggle up with my boyfriend with Stars Hollow in the background, because we can enjoy coziness and the good while we also work to make the world better. There’s a balance between the fairy tale of Stars Hollow and the apocalypse that many believe Trump’s America will be, and we can live somewhere in there.
This originally appeared in Pop Warrior, Issue №13 on December 7, 2016.
Pop Warrior is Sarah Halle Corey’s bi-weekly email newsletter about feminism, feelings, pop culture, and everything in between. Subscribe here.
