Schitt’s Creek and Bodily Storytelling

I think Alexis Rose from Schitt’s Creek is probably one of my favourite characters from recent years. There’s just so much about her to love. She has crazy stories, she’s got an amazing way of saying “David”, and I think she has one of the most interesting and dynamic character arcs for a silly comedy television show.

One of the reasons why Alexis really shines on the screen is through the way the story is being detailed in more than just words. Don’t get me wrong. The words are also great. The script is beautiful and deserves so many accolades, but there’s something more to Schitt’s Creek in general, and Annie Murphy, who plays Alexis Rose, more specifically.

To understand Alexis, we need to understand something really important about storytelling. Storytelling is an inherently complicated endeavour. It’s not just the words we read, or speak, but also the way we perform with our bodies. Bodily storytelling is not new, nor is it unique to contemporary visual storytelling like television and movies. The ability to tell a story, to explore a character, through things not described or exampled through words, but rather in action, makes a narrative incredibly impactful, and allows the audience to form deeper and more meaningful connections with the character.

Any dancer could probably tell you in greater detail than I can about how bodies can move to explore narratives. Dancers are skilled in the art of moving the legs, arms, torso, neck, every bit of the body to explore most of the narrative elements like cause and effect, emotional connections and disconnections, and the growth and development of character. But storytelling like this isn’t only for dancers, its present in so many other forms of storytelling.

Bodily storytelling is a mechanism of narrative exploration which does not involve written or spoken words, and instead is communicated through the movements, dress, and adornment of the body.

Stories are inherently performed - they are told through multiple gestures and actions. And the best example of this is Alexis Rose.

There’s a lot of little movements, gestures, and ticks Annie Murphy does to convey the character Alexis Rose. She holds her hands in a particular way, has a specific way of fiddling with her hair which feels natural while also reflecting a caricature of the stereotype of woman Alexis is.

Because this is an important element of Schitt’s Creek. Each of the main characters embodies a type of stock character we’re so used to seeing. David is an uncaring neurotic pretty-boy who cares too much about his appearance. Johnny Rose is the rich successful entrepreneur. Moira the overly-dramatic soap star whose gotten too spoiled from a comfortable life. And Alexis is the vapid rich girl who cares about nails, fashion, and celebrity gossip.

But what makes this show amazing is how these stock characters are given greater depth, character exploration, and growth over the course of six seasons to give the audience greater insight on both the possibilities and the realities of people like them. As the show goes on, we learn more about them, see they may not have always been as flat as they were initially presented to us, and then grow and develop even more. Schitt’s Creek is a masterclass in storytelling in general, and body storytelling is an important part of this.

Alexis Rose is probably my favourite character in modern storytelling. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a push, but she’s definitely up there - it would be a lengthy discussion at the very least. I love her so much. She’s crazy and weird but also so wonderfully deep and caring. Her body storytelling is the exact reason why her character is so full and well-rounded.

At the beginning of the series, when we first meet her, she appears, at first, to be a vapid self-centred woman whose focused on fame, fashion, and money. She drops celebrity names like they’re her new currency. But as we get to know her, we realise her self-centred nature is primarily simply an interpretation of her holding the people around her at a distance. She doesn’t have a great relationship with either of her parents, and this is not just clear in the way she holds them apart from her, but also in the crazy stories she tells of escapades she had at very young ages. Her parents were clearly not present in her life, and not even caring enough to pay attention to where she may be.

But there’s one person she does hold close - her brother David. Alexis and David’s bickering back and forth is quite unique compared to others. This is partly due to the sibling dynamic, but also because they truly feel they only have one another. David, like his sister, doesn’t exactly have a great relationship with his parents. And also like his sister, all of their friends and acquaintance completely dropped them as soon as they lost their money.

An example of the way David and Alexis’s relationship has always been closer than the others in their life is described in more detail in the third season, when David is stressing about needing to renew his driver’s license. He confesses every time Alexis was on one of her crazy story gallivants, it was always him on the other side of the phone. It was always him sending her passport or worrying where she might end up next, not their parents. How much Alexis was aware of this is less clear, but she seems to know David is her closest confident from the very beginning.

There’s much less of a wall between her and David compared to their relationships with other people. They bicker and trade jabs back and forth, but in a way reveals a lot of their loving dynamic. They share with each other, and confide in each other, in a way not really shared with other members of their friends or family.

And here’s the thing - we see exactly how Alexis feels about David, and not just due to the conversations had. Alexis has a little social tick she does from the very beginning, where she lightly taps someone’s nose. At the beginning of the show, the only one she does this little tick to is David. At first, we as the audience can think it’s some kind of sibling rivalry type of interaction. David shirks away from the physical touch, and she goes in to annoy him.

But then Alexis continues to grow as a character. The character arcs of the family are all quite interesting, and often run contrary to some of the expected ways things may progress. Of the two siblings, it’s often the woman who is shown to grow by getting married and settling down, while the man grows a business and gains financial and personal independence. In Schitt’s Creek, these roles are both reversed and combined. David forms a business, sure, but he also settles down, has a wonderful solid romance and settles down. Alexis, on the other hand, begins to figure out what it is she wants in life, and grows away from defining herself through the people she dates. She ends the series by pursuing a career, rather than a man.

As Alexis grows, so, too, does her physicality with the people around her. While, at first, she only booped the nose of David, she begins to do so with others. Stevie receives it after Alexis allows herself to see Stevie as a complicated and fully rounded character. Stevie is also the first female friend Alexis forms, other than Twyla. But Twyla’s relationship with Alexis is far more complicated, and takes longer for Alexis to see true connections with. This is partly because Stevie is never considered by Alexis to be a rival for a man. Stevie is at first romantically linked with David, but this falls apart quickly. After, her movements are very different to Alexis, and therefore Alexis sees her completely different than Twyla, who was romantically linked with Mutt when Alexis first arrived, and who she wanted to date.

So it’s a cute moment when Alexis first gives in to her sudden connection to Stevie and boops her nose. She sees a kinship with her, and one initially linked to her brother. So, therefore, the connection across makes a lot of sense. Her brother’s best friend becomes close to her. Similarly, when Alexis boops Patrick, who eventually becomes David’s husband. Patrick obviously is a very good fit for David, and makes him incredibly happy. This is something Alexis picks up on, and she even frequently encourages David to not screw up the relationship. Again, like Stevie, connecting to these other people as members of the family becomes easier due to having David as her conduit.

Nowhere in the script does anyone explain in explicit detail this is part of Alexis’s character. We don’t see someone explaining she only boops the noses of people she cares for. We don’t get this explained on paper - or in verbal dialogue - but its an element of her character we get and understand through watching. Its through the stories she tells with her body, the way we understand and take in the way bodily shifting, connections, and movements help to explore the story of Alexis’s character - and without it, we would be losing a key component of feeling her as a complete person. The way Annie Murphy moves communicates Alexis Rose fully, and even moves differently as the character changes and grows to demonstrate this with more than just words.

Despite how important the body is to storytelling in general, as we see in more formal forms of this like dance, as well as pop culture examples like Schitt’s Creek, attention to the body in anthropology is… lacking. The anthropology of the body wasn’t really given much formal attention until about 1973, mostly brought forth by anthropologist Mary Douglas. She was bolstered by others in philosophy, like Foucault, and sociologists, like Bourdieu. In fact, Bourdieu shifted the field to see awareness of the body as a form of social practice.

That being said, there has been movement on this front. Academic buzzwords like “embodiment” has become much more prevalent. On the front of storytelling, for our purposes on this channel, Katherine Young established the idea of a subfield called “bodylore” - a subsection of folklore studies focused on how the body can communicate and partake in folklore.

We are bodies. To study people necessitates studying bodies. It is through our bodies we experience the world, and through which the world experiences us. The body is the location in which culture and self are both grounded and understood.

This is why, as the final episodes of Schitt’s Creek are beginning to come to a close, we see Alexis’s boops with much greater fondness, and as a way Alexis’s character has grown. The first we’ll discuss is her boop with Moira, her mother. Alexis and Moira’s relationship has always been fraught, which has definitely also impacted Alexis’s relationship with other women. But as the story progresses, Alexis comes to understand aspects of her mother in different and new ways. While Moira has never been, and never will be maternal, she at least had tried in a few new endeavours, and even began to understand her children differently. In the first season, Johnny has a funny line when Moira asks if they did a bad job raising their kids, and Johnny responds they sent them to the best boarding schools and always had nannies. It demonstrates the parents’ separation from their kids, and their unwillingness to consider her past choices.

However, as Alexis sees her mother grow and develop, try and take on new things, and also try and be there for her kids, Alexis starts to see her mother differently. Its takes both of them to bend a little for their relationship to start to mend. There will definitely still be scars, but they can at least start to heal. And so when Alexis finally boops her mother’s nose for the first time, its laden with deep emotional growth and development.

Twyla is the other boop that was meaningful and intentional. And I think the best part of the moment with Twyla is how Twyla understood, deep down, what it meant to receive that from Alexis. While Twyla was a kind of rival to Alexis for most of the show, she was also a friend who Alexis kept at a distance due to their close romantic connections. Twyla represented a lot of what Alexis could be as a person. She was financially comfortable - as Alexis once was - but saw joy not in spending the money but in living in a community and forming meaningful connections. Twyla is a wonderful foil for Alexis, one who has many similarities, but with very important and substantial differences. This foil kept Alexis from seeing Twyla as an actual friend, despite the fact Twyla continued to act as one.

For Alexis, Twyla was primarily a sounding board for her problems, but one she began to actually listen to as time progressed. In the beginning, she didn’t. Twyla was ignored despite Alexis coming to the cafe regularly to chat with her. In essence, Alexis was chatting to Twyla, but as her time in the town progressed, and she began to see Twyla as a full person in her own right, and some of the actual good advice she had, Alexis began to actually give in and allow herself to feel a real female friendship with Twyla.

This is why, at the end of the show, Alexis giving Twyla her boop is so meaningful.

There are many examples which could be used to demonstrate the role of body storytelling for contemporary narratives. The best actors and directors will make sure the body helps to communicate a narrative, a character, and/or a character’s growth.

The important thing is that stories are performed - they are told through multiple forms and actions. To study narratives, we need to appreciate the role the body has in our understandings for both the creation of narrative and the consumption of narrative. Bodily storytelling is an incredibly important way in which stories become real, deep, and impactful.