Not-So-Modern Family: Ayesha Siddiqi’s Rules for TV Diversity

Ayesha Siddiqi, editor of the highbrow punk online magazine The New Inquiry, is proud of the fact that the magazine, having relinquished itself from the clutches of Amazon’s payment system in place of a self-made subscription service, is now completely independent. That key, she says, in the key to producing meaningful content as the online world increasingly becomes policed by the companies that own the very content we willfully post on “free” services like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. But at her core she is a lover and critic of popular culture. In her conversation with Maria about diverse representations on television, she breaks down what makes Modern Family quite the opposite of what its name suggests, why Jane the Virgin’s success is so significant, and why a world with only one Shonda Rhimes is simply not enough.