Race, Gender, and Class in HBO's Vice Principals Ad

Introduction: Conflict and Character in the Vice Principals Trailer

An online ad for Season One of HBO's show Vice Principals, starring Danny McBride, Walton Goggins, and Kimberly Gregory, consists of a two-minute trailer that showcases the main selling points of the comedy series: conflict, romance, bromance, action, and racial tension. The two main sources of conflict in the series, as represented in the ad, are the rivalry between the two vice principals played by McBride and Goggins—both of whom vie for the principal's job—and the shared animosity both men direct toward the new principal played by Gregory, against whom they unite in an attempt to overthrow her.

The characters represent distinct social types. McBride plays a middle-class, middle-aged white male with a traditional, somewhat pudgy bearing: he sports a sweater vest to school and wears a severely out-of-date haircut and moustache that more closely resembles a stereotypical 1980s police officer than a contemporary male role model. Goggins plays a white, yuppie metrosexual with blonde-tipped hair, tight-fitting clothes, and a colorful bow tie in every scene; his walk looks more like a runway strut than a conventional masculine gait. Gregory plays a bold, upper-middle-class African American woman who holds a position of authority over both men as their new boss at the school. The ad makes clear that McBride and Goggins resent her for taking a job they feel rightfully belongs to one of them, and the two men conspire against her—overcoming their mutual repugnance in the process.

Gender Convention and Its Inversions

The ad inverts several race and gender conventions in order to generate conflict and laughs for its intended audience. The first convention overturned is that of gender. McBride's character embodies the stereotypical stuffy, choleric, authoritarian personality—yet midway through the ad, he breaks down in tears upon learning that the job he coveted has gone to Gregory. The moment carries additional weight because Gregory is not only a woman but an African American woman, which compounds the sense of grievance felt by a character accustomed to the privileges associated with whiteness. His masculinity reads as vulnerable and emotional rather than dominant, yet the ad does not depict the moment sarcastically or condescendingly. Instead, it presents the breakdown as an honest beat that produces both laughter and sympathy simultaneously—it is at once genuine and pathetic.

Goggins's character displays the most overtly effeminate tendencies of the three leads. His immaculate wardrobe, perfect hair, hip-shaking walk, and the body language that more conservative commentators have described as "limp-wristed" (Palmer) all invoke qualities traditionally associated with femininity. Where McBride's masculinity collapses inward through tears, Goggins's is externalized through style and affect—two very different, and equally unconventional, departures from the expected male archetype. Together, the two characters disrupt the straightforward association between white maleness and authority that the premise might otherwise imply. For more context on metrosexuality as a cultural phenomenon, Wikipedia provides a useful overview of how the term and its associated aesthetics have been discussed in popular culture.

Class and Race Subversions in the Ad

Class convention is also inverted in the trailer. The ad shows McBride's character conversing with an African American lunchroom employee who represents a working-class Black archetype commonly reproduced in American popular culture. Gregory's character, by contrast, represents an upper-class African American woman—a minority figure far less typical of conventional screen narratives. Yet Gregory's character also displays the gritty toughness traditionally associated with street-level Black identity, especially when she leans into McBride and tells him through gritted teeth, "I will drag your face all up and down the parking lot"—delivered with an expression that makes the threat entirely credible. Her upper-class status is signaled through expensive, fashionable clothing, an upscale home, and a higher-paying job than McBride's character holds, yet she refuses to be confined by the decorum those markers might imply.

The ad also inverts racial conventions more directly. McBride—the stuffy white guy—appropriates the language of Black culture when he tells the African American lunchroom worker, "It's gonna be dope—super dope." The worker responds with a wary, "You're not gonna kill everyone, right?" A scene of McBride's white rage immediately follows, the camera pitched low at the floor and tilted upward as he towers over the frame, hulking his shoulders and bellowing fiercely like a fighter about to enter the ring. The ad ends with a title card at that moment, displaying the name of the HBO series. The rapid succession of comedic appropriation and explosive anger leaves the audience riveted, unsettled, and slightly giddy. Cultural appropriation in media has been widely discussed as a recurring tension in American comedy, and the trailer self-consciously exploits that tension for effect.

Conclusion: Comedy Through Complexity

The ad effectively portrays a world where race, gender, and class are complexly intertwined in non-conventional ways. The ad attracts the viewer by presenting this complexity and the ensuing conflict that arises from tensions within the relationships through a comedic lens. At the same time, moments of serious drama elevate that lens in an introspective and honest way that makes the viewer question the exact nature of the show's narrative and structure. To answer that question, the viewer will have to tune in—and so the ad achieves precisely what it sets out to do. It sparks curiosity by displaying a situation comedy saturated with race, gender, and class tensions turned inside out: a world where a moral order may or may not exist, and where the only way to find out is to keep watching.

Works Cited

Palmer, Brian. "What Do Limp Wrists Have to Do with Gay Men?" Slate, 9 May 2012. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/05/sean_harris_on_gay_men_what_do_limp_wrists_have_to_do_with_homosexuality_.html

"Vice Principals Season One." YouTube, 6 June 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rZLVEicLLM