"Schitt's Creek" & Local Economic Power
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on the author’s Substack newsletter, Poetic Fitness. It’s republished here with permission.
Spoiler alert: Mild spoilers ahead, but probably won’t ruin the show for you or anything.
Pop TV.
When I first began watching Schitt’s Creek, I made it no further than one episode in before giving up, despite the fact that I’ve been a fan of Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara for decades now. My first impression of the show, however, was that it intended to be nothing more than a rehashing of our country’s storied prejudice against the people who happen to live in small towns. In the first episode, we see the formerly well-off Rose family—brought down by an accountant who embezzled their fortune out from under them—crash into the rural town that Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy) literally, and inexplicably, bought years prior as a joke. Our first impressions of the town and the people who live there are filtered through the elite snobbery of the Rose family.
The first episode is also just not very funny. The characters are not quite fully developed, there’s lots of yelling and confusion. And also, I misread entirely what the show was about. In fact, it’s about many things, but a consistent theme throughout is that the joke isn’t on the townspeople’s presumed ignorance and bigotry, but rather on the out-of-touch, previously pampered Rose family, and their well-to-do former friends who very occasionally pass through town. Instead of being shown how superior these well-educated “urban elites” (for lack of a better phrase) are, we witness instead how superficial, vain, and self-absorbed they are. The townspeople, on the other hand, while certainly not polished, metropolitan, or particularly well educated, are instead shown to be community-minded, empathetic, simple (meaning they care about things that actually matter, like other people’s well-being), and surprisingly sharp.
Much of the show’s thematic arc follows the Rose family as they slowly loosen their grip on the superficial beliefs and identities they previously held and come to embrace the community—ultimately becoming far warmer, more compassionate citizens in the process. One of the real victories in storytelling throughout the show’s arc is the absence of heavy-handed moralizing or preaching. Rather, the town and its people simply exist as they are, and themes are explored through a matter-of-fact demonstration of how things could be. This is true in the refreshing, straightforward way that David and Patrick’s openly gay relationship plays out, as well as the theme I’d like to discuss here, which is the lack of corporate control over the small town’s economy.
This is never really discussed by any of the characters, but it’s a crucial axis around which the show is organized, and ultimately the foundation from which the Rose family is able to reverse their misfortune. Right from the start, the Rose family, finding themselves penniless, end up living rent-free because the mayor of the town connects them with a sole proprietor-run motel. Though initially aghast at the motel’s state, this motel forms the basis around which they become connected to the community, and from which they’re able to plug into and contribute to the local economy. Including, of course, becoming partners, literally invested, in the motel itself, despite a complete lack of assets. Were this motel a corporate chain, obviously, this would simply be impossible.
Even more significant, if there wasn’t already a functioning local economic ecosystem in the town, they would most likely be resigned to minimum- or low-wage employment within a bureaucratic corporate structure at one of the chains that almost entirely dominate small towns across the country at this point. It goes without saying that this would be a very different show. If they were forced into working for Walmart, say, or the Dollar Store, or McDonald’s—or perhaps a job folding clothes at the GAP in a nearby mall—this story would be far more bitter and dark, even hopeless.
Advancing economically would be impossible, at least within the town itself, and they’d instead have no real choice but to find some way to (re)join the legions of people, especially those with college educations, who discovered over the last three decades that their best, maybe only, shot at meaningful employment would be to move away from home and pour into one of the handful of crowded, rapidly-gentrifying urban centers across the country.
To the contrary, we discover that Schitt’s Creek has a functioning, person-driven, locally-based economy. To me, this is very far from an incidental point. Economic liberty in Schitt’s Creek is depicted, consciously or not, as straightforward entrepreneurship (and not the “high growth” Elon Musk kind), which operates largely unimpeded by the corporate powers that have, in real life, taken control over vast amounts of the economic activity once reserved for citizens.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s surely not hard for me to imagine the opposite of Schitt’s Creek, because I only need to think back on my childhood growing up in suburban Ohio. Café Tropical, which functions as a daily meeting place for the Rose family and other community members, would most likely be a Denny’s or a McDonald’s, maybe a Bob Evans or Big Boy. Bob’s Garage would be a Midas or Jiffy Lube or Grease Monkey. Rose Apothecary (a store nearly precluded from existing when the corporate chain “Christmas World” makes a play for the storefront) would be a CVS or Walgreens or, even more likely, a Dollar Store. And the Rosebud motel would likely be a Best Western or Motel 6 or EconoLodge.
But the locally-based economic independence doesn’t stop with just those businesses. There’s also the multi-talented Ray, who operates as a catch-all entrepreneur, juggling realtor duties with professional photography, among other responsibilities. Bob’s friend Ivan, the quarry worker, also moonlights as a baker, and becomes an important supplier to Café Tropical and the Rosebud motel—both vital economic links for him that would be impossible in a corporatized landscape. (When’s the last time you bought locally-made cinnamon buns at a Denny’s?) Jake and Mutt both build furniture. Alexis founds her own PR agency. And let us not forget the Blouse Barn, run by the comically tragic Wendy, who ultimately avoids getting railroaded by a corporate chain on account of David’s sharp business sense.
Speaking of David, the business that he creates, Rose Apothecary, operates not just as an independent business, but also as a critical outlet for an array of local makers working in the area’s land-use economy (farmers), who would otherwise have extremely limited options for selling their handcrafted lotions, soaps, candles, and lip balms. (When’s the last time you bought locally-made hand cream at a Dollar Store?)
That the products stocked at Rose Apothecary are more expensive than Dollar Store fare is obvious, and celebrated. The price tag is shown to simply be an accurate indicator of the quality and care that goes into them, as well as a reflection of the fact that adequate compensation to community-rooted makers has the blindingly obvious effect of improving the quality of that community.
Rose Apothecary actually generates wealth and stability in the community it operates within. This is in stark contrast to the extractive business model of a corporate entity like the Dollar Store or Walmart, which are staffed by underpaid employees with zero autonomy, whose job is to robotically sell extremely low-quality items produced in distant lands where quite often the workers aren’t getting paid at all.
What our present retail discount mania fails to get around to discovering is quite simply that the discount on any product is stripped directly from the quality of the product itself, as well as the labor of those who create it, ship it, and sell it. This relentless price arbitrage amounts to a strip mining of those of us who have to work for a living, as there is simply no way to establish an extractive economy based on maximizing short-term profits for the benefit of shareholders—the world’s ultimate absentee landlords—that doesn’t by necessity degrade and destroy the very labor it relies on for those profits over the long term. It’s especially difficult to fight against this now on account of the extreme concentration of market share, hence political power, we’ve allowed a handful of these companies to acquire over the last four decades.
A community-based economy like the kind we see in Schitt’s Creek, on the other hand, widely distributes economic power, requiring as it does a “swarm” of small-scale producers serving each town. In addition, as this swarm is composed of individuals with direct knowledge of the community it operates within, it’s far more responsive to the community’s needs, and actually far better suited to innovating and adapting.
Pop TV
By contrast, a multinational corporation like Walmart functions quite literally by displacing a community-based economy. Through its centralized, bureaucratic governance it determines what products, at what price, will be available to any town they’ve captured—with the stated goal being to maximize profits, thereby maximizing shareholder value. To that end, they must by necessity squeeze their suppliers and distributors—who then have no choice but to do the same to their suppliers and distributors downstream—in order to produce “everyday low, low prices.”
While a multinational corporation like Walmart may capably deliver “low” prices, that should never be seen as a good in itself. The tradeoff for low prices, of course, necessitates the destruction of wages, while disrupting and commonly displacing the thriving, locally-based ecosystems that previously offered many (not all) citizens a direct path to economic independence—as community-based bakers, dairy farmers, hardware store owners, and so forth. When we speak with pride about “the American Dream,” this is really what we’re talking about, despite the fact that government policy has over the last four decades very nearly destroyed it, goaded on by free market fundamentalists on both sides of the aisle.
While it might seem as though we “need” discount chains like Walmart, keep in mind that their low prices are only “needed” on account of the fact that they and other multinational corporations have actually destroyed the incomes of millions of Americans by usurping the roles that were previously carried out by local makers, store owners, and distributors.
What Schitt’s Creek shows us, in a straightforward, simple way, is how critical it is to preserve ready access to the “plumbing” of economic power for local citizens. This is what we once mandated on a policy level via the New Deal framework, and for a time it allowed individual citizens and makers to innovate and thrive in interdependent communities across the country.
The story we’ve been told over the last forty years is that the corporate takeover of our towns and the displacement of local economic power via outsourcing was simply inevitable. Indeed, tragically (to me at least), towards the end of show even Johnny Rose is on the precipice of fulfilling his ultimate dream of rolling up independently-owned motel businesses across the country with the backing of New York-based financiers.
At this point, it’s becoming pretty clear that the corporate takeover was never the inevitable result of “the market at work.” Rather, it was the result of decades of conscious policy decisions made at the federal level, the benefits of which have swelled the balance sheets of corporations, as well as the executives who run them and the financiers who fund them. Perhaps these policies and this rigid ideology at one point seemed viable, and those who promoted it really did believe it would create broad prosperity. That’s a charitable interpretation, but regardless, the evidence is in, and at this point the disastrous results are hard to deny.
Schitt’s Creek shows us a world that, while fictitious, rings true because it’s a town that many of us would choose to live in if we could. It’s a community of neighbors whose sole focus is not a relentless drive for bottom-line profits at all costs. Of course, being profitable and staying in business remains important, but because these businesses are run by actual people—not distant board members and shareholders—they’re given the freedom to choose to be truly human, which is to say compassionate and supportive in a way that raises up the community as a whole.
Shades of this type of town still exist today, we haven’t yet been completely conquered—though it’s only a matter of time if our “consumer welfare” antitrust framework remains as it is. By and large, however, it’s not much of a stretch to say that we are no longer a nation of neighbors, and no longer a nation of interconnected neighborhoods. Having been largely stripped of the interdependent, person-driven economic activity that once bound us together in mutual support, we’ve found ourselves, rather, in the zero-sum game of mutual conflict.
“Having been largely stripped of the interdependent, person-driven economic activity that once bound us together in mutual support, we’ve found ourselves, rather, in the zero-sum game of mutual conflict.”
“Other” people in our communities—once our suppliers, customers, neighbors, and friends—are now simply in our way. They’re in our way at Starbucks, they’re in our way in traffic, and they’re in our way at Whole Foods and Costco and Meijer. This deeply unfortunate situation should come as no surprise. The extractive economy writ large, being as it is now the rule of the land, was always going to find its way into our personal economies—with complex, negative effects on how we approach entertainment, food, development, transportation, housing, recreation, and other people. In sum, it transforms how we view the world around us, and can only lead us to the conclusion that other people are, mainly, competitors for resources. Those who live nearest to us, then, are our most direct competitors.
As we’re forced to fend off competition for fairly-priced housing, decent-paying jobs, open lanes in traffic-clogged roadways, parking spots for our costly private transportation systems (cars), available doctor appointments—and even for toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and other basics during crisis-induced shortages—the “proper” way (consistent with the logic of our system) to view the people around us is as enemy combatants. Perhaps this sounds hyperbolic; it’s not. When the economic rule becomes a war of all vs. all, only two options remain. One is to win.
About the Author
Jeremy Schmall is a freelance writer, personal trainer, and the author of two books of poems, Jeremy Schmall & the Cult of Comfort and Open Correspondence from the Senator, Vol. 1: But a Paucity of his Voluminous Writings, both published by the book artist team of Mark Wagner and Amy Mees. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, he now lives in San Diego, California.
You can see more of his writing at poeticfitness.substack.com.
Economic productivity, cost-effectiveness and safety: stroads fail at all three. Advocates in Port Huron, Michigan, are working to make their city recognize that, so they can turn the dangerous Huron Avenue into a thriving community center.