Karma is a Funny Thing: Cross-Cultural Consumption in “My Name is Earl”
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Overview
Overview
Description
The popular television series “My Name is Earl” depicts the transformation of a petty criminal into a karmic believer after Earl receives a $100,000 winning lottery ticket only to lose it when he is hit by a car. Convinced that his misfortune is a direct result of his previous wrongdoing, Earl writes a list of 259 past misdeeds in order to rectify each one. This paper analyzes the ways in which karma operates as a narrative device in the series and occasionally undercuts the mechanistic view of karma assumed at its outset. It also discusses the show’s satirizing of American appropriation and reconfiguration of Asian culture and concepts. Is Earl’s list analogous to earlier Buddhist “ledgers of merit and demerit”? Or is Earl’s notion of karma merely God in another guise?
