The unforgettable fire

A few days ago, I saw this tweet:

On Shake it up, Cece and Rocky are just back up dancers, but they are treated like the stars.

It's a concept I come back to time and time again whenever I watch the show - the inherent paradox that bolsters, not belies, the very premise.

In real life...Bella Thorne and Zendaya are now recognized on the street by fans, followed by thousands on Twitter, and even have their photos at Target for the Rocky and CeCe clothing line.

On the show itself?  Entirely different story.  In contrast to the Wikipedia article on the series, which notes...

It also chronicles their misadventures on- and off-set, and their troubles and rising social status at school.

I often ask myself, "what rising social status?"

Time and time again the girls end up in situations where it's clear they're not exactly destined to become prom princesses at school...

- In the very first episode, Start It Up...the El station dance scene, where the gals dance to an audience too frugal to even offer them a single dollar in tips, speaks for itself.  There's CeCe's devastatingly blunt self-analysis, "I walk around thinking I'm so cool...but in real life, I'm a loser."

It's a precursor not only to the duality of in-show universe outcast/real-life superstars that we have here, but to the serious monologues CeCe later will bring to the fore in Add It Up and Break It Up (and to a lesser extent in Kick It Up and Shrink It Up).

- Kick It Up, the "Rocky goes off to karate class while CeCe tries to imagine life without her best friend" edition of SIU...provides more evidence of where the girls really fit in: CeCe's "Let's go crazy" phonecall, which ends up being to her grandmother, leads to quite a few questions.  For one, after that scene it's remarkably clear how little she has beyond Rocky and those that have known the two of them...but it also brings up the idea that even on a familial basis, she's kinda slipped through the cracks.

And the sheer awkwardness of Rocky and CeCe's behavior at the movies can't be forgotten either.

The early and mid-episode banana split "switch" scenes speak to CeCe's own dependence on the bond she has with Rocky...not in a negative way at all, but more of a "two of us against the whole world" environment that they've maintained from the start.

- Rocky's takeover of CeCe's apartment for a mischievous party in Wild It Up speaks to another point of contention with a Wiki article (the character list) -

She's extremely popular, and is friendly to everybody.

The latter assertion - that Rocky's inherently friendly - I'll scrutinize later on.  But extremely popular?

If so, then why is it we never see her with anyone her age, but her small core of friends beyond the apartment gathering?  Whatever happened to the people she met at the karate class?

Theoretically, popular kids wouldn't feel the pressure to change their image the way Rocky ends up going about in this episode.  It's as if her real reason for "not being a goody two-shoes" isn't even simply a reaction to reputation, but to experience actually having more than 3 or 4 people know who you are.

Slightly later in the season, in Show It Up, Rocky's supposed popularity never asserts itself, through her continual 2nd place finishes (in just about everything) to Candy Cho.  Other than CeCe's blatant (but heartfelt) cheerleading for her best friend...the other kids seem to be apathetic to Rocky's grandstanding, and ultimately Gunther and Tinka get two-faced after originally committing to help her win the talent show.

- The texting mishap in Age It Up suggests that CeCe does have a lot of folks' phone numbers at school...but the same query that Wild It Up offers for Rocky appears here: where are all these people beyond this one episode?

- Between Hook It Up, Reunion It Up, and Throw It Up...the girls' place on the dance show's hierarchy seems rather low, with the constant need to bribe Gary into granting them more face time on Shake It Up Chicago.  What that also implies: the sheer unimportance of their own skills and accomplishments as some form of advancement.  One could even look at the flash-forwards in Reunion It Up as confirmation of it, that despite the "it" factor spoken of in the first episode...either Rocky or CeCe could easily end up trapped in a world in which local television is their greatest accomplishment.

- Beam It Up's awkward double-date concludes with CeCe being told by the guy she's with that "she's weird"  - the point that Rocky had not-so-subtly shoved in her face all episode long, but expressed more bluntly from the less eccentric brother.

Here the dissonance between the real-life and in-universe perceptions rears itself once more: from the perspective of the many nameless kids in the hallway (and the generic overachievers like Candy Cho), yeah, CeCe's hyperactivity and snark are unusual...but for us viewers who've experienced the show almost entirely through her and Rocky, they're absolutely not strange to us.

I've found that moment to be a little hard to digest, not because it doesn't make sense in context with the episode's plot, but in thinking...CeCe's exceedingly loyal, funny, and has a lot of personal style...and that's considered atypical and almost negative, at least to that guy?

Therein lies the essence of the Shake It Up dichotomy: maybe it's only true for some of the viewing audience, but the girls clearly are in an environment in which uniqueness isn't always appreciated...and for those who have been outcasts in the real world, the show's empathy to that plight is one of its strongest points.

Certainly SIU isn't the only Disney production to talk up self-empowerment and authenticity (Lemonade Mouth is another).  What makes it stand out to me is that those positive messages reveal themselves from what, on the surface, could almost be considered a typical laugh-track sitcom...but for its heart.