5109079-blog

[5109079-blog]

Essay

Introduction

The aim of this essay is to analyse the representation and realism within the US TV sitcom show Friends. Friends was aired between 1994-2004 running for ten seasons being one of the most popular television shows of all time. On the 1st January 2018 the hit show was made available of the popular streaming service Netflix, however, it was heavily criticised by younger people who were only just seeing the show for the first time and its jokes were deemed ‘offensive’ however in the 90s and early 2000s these jokes were okay. One topic heavily discussed is the representation in Friends and its realism in comparison to the location the show is set in. Friends is set in the heart of New York City, better known as Manhattan. Like many major cities in the United States, Manhattan is a heavily diverse city with people from all walks of life living in the city. The Friends show was also criticised for its realism against the real-life Manhattan as the show is not diverse and mostly only ever features Caucasian people as the main cast or special guests. The show only ever featured two characters who were not Caucasian, and these parts were played by Lauren Tom and Aisha Tyler. People argued that is gave a poor representation for people of colour as so little featured on the show. Not only was it criticised for its poor representation for people of colour, but for people from all backgrounds, such as people from the LGBTQ+ community, single woman, over-weight people etc. When the show featured people or mentioned the topic, it made jokes about them that are quite sensitive to the people directly from those backgrounds. Such as its fat shaming for character Monica Geller, it was joked about her past being over-weight and how food was essentially a ‘challenge’ because she would eat before anyone else would. People saw this offensively as today there is a lot more acknowledgement of mental health issues that relate to people over-eating and becoming overweight whereas back when this show aired there wasn’t really any discussion of it.

Representation

After Friends was added to the UK Netflix service at the beginning of 2018. It was criticised immediately by younger generations, also known as “Millennials”, by some of the storylines that were deemed ‘problematic’. In Season 3 episode 4, titled, “The One with the Metaphorical Tunnel”, character Ross sees his son Ben playing with a Barbie Doll, the scene plays out with Ross’s ex-wife coming in with her new girlfriend, Ross sees his child Ben playing with a Barbie Doll and comments on it immediately, later trying to force Ben to play with a dinosaur toy (Friends, 1996). Some saw this as forcing gender roles onto babies at a young age, meaning that only boys can do boy stuff and girls can only do girl stuff, a more extreme examples of gender roles would be that woman cannot be doctors, or men cannot be nurses. In another episode named “The One with Monica’s Boots”, Joey Tribianni’s sisters reveals to him that she is pregnant, Tribianni reacts negatively to her news and tracks down her boyfriend who got her pregnant and begins to marry them, he stresses that she cannot raise a child without being married (Friends, 2001). This episode shows the agenda that a woman cannot run her life without having a man present which caused backlash amongst people.

One of the biggest controversies the show has was that only two people of colour featured in the show, the two actors, Lauren Tom and Aisha Tyler were the only people featured in the show who weren’t white. Tom was from an Asian background and Tyler has an African American background. The woman featured on the show playing the roles of Ross Gellers girlfriends. Lauren Taylor acted in 8 episodes from 1995-1996 and Aisha Tyler featured in 9 episodes in 2003 (Friends, n.d.). Tyler addressed the criticism Friends drew from its lack of diversity, adding that the show had received backlash whilst it was airing that it didn’t show a true reflection of how diverse Manhattan was in the 90s and early 2000s. She explained she thought it was something new for the show and a very important as it was a show set in New York City that had an all Caucasian cast (Gordan, 2019).

A further remark made in the series is when Ross sounds his disapproval of hiring a male nanny (Kaplin, 2018). In the 90s, there was a stigma for roles that a male and female could for fill, such as a doctor can only be a male or a nurse can only be a female. Over the last 2 decades these stereotypes have broken down tremendously, although they do still exist in some form today, when compared to the 90s, it is a huge improvement. As for nannies, it is a known stereotype for a nanny to be a female. However, the show did also portray the nanny as being an overly emotional man, with a feminine name Sandy, associating himself that being an overly emotional man is linked to being homosexual and creates a divide in the show as Ross doesn’t want him near his child (McCallum, 2017). But in addition to this as Friends featured a male nanny it was taken that Friends was showing how male nannies are suitable for the role, as Ross disagrees with the role, he still performs a great job in the episode. This can then be argued that Friends brings stereotypes to the mainstream media, challenges them, and then breaks them down. This argument can be presented in almost all circumstances where stereotypes are brought up in the show, as the show directs its comedy at stereotypical topics and was the reason for its success. But going back to Ross in the first episode after getting a divorce from his wife who left him for a woman and became a lesbian couple, and also raise their child between them. When looking at the fact that same-sex marriage wasn’t legalised until June 2015 in the United States, this is a huge representation, even more for showing same-sex parenting, as today a lot of people still defend their religious belief that marriage is a bond between a man and a woman and a child must be raised by a mother and a father.

Realism

Friends has and still is being criticised for its portrayal of Manhattan in the 90s and early 2000s. Manhattan has been known to be a diverse city for many decades so when the show was introduced and only featured Caucasian characters for the vast majority of the show, it was argued that the show was an inaccurate portrayal of the real New York City . The show, however, made up for this for often including restaurants, bars, strip clubs and airports that would feature people from multiple backgrounds in the shots, although they wouldn’t actually play a part in the show and only feature as extras to create the environment for the scenes. The shows first person of colour appeared in season 3 for 8 episodes, the character Julie, played by Lauren Tom, who is a Chinese American (Anon., n.d.), plays the part of being Ross Geller’s Girlfriend. Another problem with Friends is that the show is mostly based upon stereotypes. Because of this, Friends could never be realistic, although stereotypes do exist in the real world, they do not in the extremities that are shown in Friends. Furthermore, in that context, Friends cannot be sourly accused of being unrealistic when many shows that are aired today cannot be realistic, because they are purely made for entertainment purposes. One of the many stereotypes portrayed in the show is the role of woman. The 3 main female characters Monica, Rachel and Phoebe, all express stereotypes assigned to females. For example, Rachel has a job as a waitress in the famous coffee shop in friends Central Perk, this is showing the common stereotype for women to be on minimum wage jobs without any huge aspirations, she also later on in the show becomes an assistant at a fashion designer, another common stereotype that women will work in fashion because of the stereotype that women are obsessed with clothing and current fashion. Another example is Monica being an obsessive cleaner, this stereotype can be dated back for decades because one hundred years ago it was normal, for a woman to stay at home and clean and do the chores around the house and cook, these stereotypes are all expressed by Monica as she is obsessed with cleaning and also loves cooking, proven by when she becomes a chef after writing a critical review of a restaurant in Manhattan. Phoebe is a twin sister, a mother who committed suicide, and lived on the streets and is mentioned to have been in trouble with the law on a few occasions. Phoebe’s character is presented a loud, crazy tone and it’s often reflected in the stories she tells and way her character acts, an example of this is from an episode when all six friends are discussing their worst thanksgiving experiences. When Phoebe tells her story, we are taken back to the 1800s where Phoebe is playing as a nurse and has her arm blown off by an explosion, this is told in the story as Phoebe believes she has had many past lives and can remember them, this is a trait that can be associated with someone who is crazy or potentially has some difficulties with their mental health. These fixed gender roles assigned to the characters does invoke humour as the show uses these stereotypes to induce the humour within them, however, its criticised that the show did wrong for the female characters and should have made them more ambitious and have better life experiences, however this could have resulted in the show being as successful as it was because the leading cause for the show’s success was the love that fans had for the characters. Ross, Chandler and Joey are the three main male characters featured in the show. These characters also protrude common stereotypes associated with men. They all love sports and have gone to baseball and American football games, and all overly make it clear constantly that they are straight men and whenever there is some sort of accusation of them being homosexual, they are very fast to defend themselves so they can protect their masculinity. Often the men fear to show their emotions and when they do its represented in a feminine context. In one example, Monica tries to persuade Chandler to take a bath as it can help to relax him, when he does, he is in an extremely bubble filled bath with candles surrounding him along with calm music, he also does consider the fact that what he is doing isn’t ‘manly’ and so brings a toy warship into the bath with him to reassure himself. Joey is an actor and is also seen as being naive, he often behaves like a child, as in an episode where Rachel questions Joey about a secret he sticks his fingers in his ears and starts shouting gibberish to stop Rachel from talking to him, he also is what can be described as a “Player” for how he treats women. Joey sleeps with a lot of women throughout the show, and also cheats on women during the show, this in a way could also change Joey’s role of being easy to sleep with because he is very childish and is attractive. Ross is arguable the most disliked character of the show, this is mostly down to way he behaves around woman and is a very controlling boyfriend. He is very problematic when he is dating Rachel, and they temporally go on a break from each other during a bad time in their relationship, Ross then sleeps with another woman and this upsets and angers Rachel a lot who breaks up with him. But Ross continuously argued that they were on a break and therefore made it okay for him to cheat.

Analysis

On the 1st January 2018, Netflix added all ten seasons of Friends to its popular streaming service in the United Kingdom. This then became the first time a lot of young people or millennials were watching the popular US TV sitcom for the very first time. Many did then voice their concerns over the shows handling of race, gender and sexuality (Kaplan, 2018). Many of the points I have discussed prior in this essay. However, these points also then raise the issue of how society views these topics on friends in a different way in the late 2010s than it did the 90s and early 2000s. A lot is said that many younger people get too easily offended by subtle jokes and are often referred as snowflakes, a lot can also be pushed onto the fact that a lot of the world has become politically correct in the last decade which has made talking about specific topics about individual groups cannot be openly discussed and criticised as they once were. A lot of comes down to that unless you are part of the minority group, you then have the right to talk about that topic, for example, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, you are given the right to talk and make fun of LGBT topics, were as if you were a straight person, making jokes about the LGBT community it would be much more likely that it would come across as offensive and/or homophobic. Because of lot of the way society views the world today is politically correct, most shows have changed their morals and are produced in a totally different way today. This can be seen in the transformation of the successful cartoon series “The Simpsons”. Topics, sayings and plots have changed with time as the show has aged since 1989. An example is it was one of the shows biggest jokes that Homer had anger issues and often took it out on his son Bart and strangled him. This kind of behaviour wouldn’t be acceptable if a new episode was aired today as viewers would question the shows role of showing an active parent role model and how it nearly normalises child abuse in its show.

Reflection

Whilst writing this essay, I spent time watching episodes of friends, to better understand the context of the jokes and understand the shows humour better. My research has definitely changed the way I feel about the show and has changed my opinions on some of the characters in the show. I’ve also seen though how the jokes in the show changed from when the first episode aired in 1994 to the last episode in 2004, the show grew and developed over the 10 year period, as well did the jokes and the issues that were brought up in the series, this leaves me to believe that if in the case the show never ended in 2004 and continued to air for another 10 years and was ended in 2014 instead, I believe that if this was the case that the show wouldn’t have some of the jokes that it originally started out with, but I also believe that the show was aired at the right point in time, if the series started today, it would be more likely to be pushed away as just another sitcom, and probably wouldn’t have lasted for ten seasons. The show was aired at the right point and ended at the right point, the last episode even had 52.5million viewers watching live (Carter, 2004). . I’ve found myself now highly despising Ross for the way he behaves around woman and his homophobic comments, but the way he often tries to control woman in the show is one particular aspect of the show I cannot ignore as it is horrible behaviour to see Ross being deceptive and lying to woman so he doesn’t feel bad. however, looking at how topics on LGBT were talked about I still acknowledge how the way members of the LGBT community were seen when the showed aired. This doesn’t justify for the way the show presented these issues however, given the context of the time it is from it would be wrong to judge the show for what it is, and more for what it was. Fifteen years after the show ended, the sitcom is still loved by millions across the globe and most people who still love to watch it are mostly people who watched the show when it originally aired, giving this and how popular the season finale was, it was bound that the show would remain relevant but also more susceptible to criticism as it ages and peoples morals and beliefs change over time.

Conclusion

In conclusion to this essay, Friends has definitely not aged the best it could have; however, it seems to have aged differently for the two generations that are still watching it, younger people who are watching the show for the first time seem to be more likely to find the show hard to watch for the jokes that featured in the show, essentially meaning the show was deemed to be problematic. But the show mostly stayed popular due to life-long lovers of the show who watched it from 1994 to 2004, and still actively talk about the show spreading it around to more and more people who may still have not watched it. Representation in Friends in today’s standards is not the best it could be, the show definitely shows a lot of potential for growth, however, in the standards of when the show aired, it was meeting its criteria, it did feature people from multiple backgrounds a lot in the show, in the stereotypical theme and made jokes of them. The show didn’t present itself Manhattan in the way it actual was but of how people perceive it to be, this goes back to how the show takes stereotypes as its main format, because of this, this is the reason why Manhattan was presented the way it was, not in a way to defy what New York City actually is, but to make the show easier to watch for people who are not directly from the city. Furthermore, I believe it is wrong to judge Friends on the jokes made on it today, the times have changed a lot in the last twenty years and society is a lot more open and compassionate to people from smaller minorities meaning joking about them can be deemed offensive by anyone whether or not they be part of that community. Friends, was one of the best TV sitcoms of all time and I don’t think that opinion will change for a long time.

Works Cited

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Friends, 1996. Netflix. [Online] Available at: https://www.netflix.com/watch/70274048 [Accessed 6 May 2019]. 

Friends, 2001. Netflix. [Online] Available at: https://www.netflix.com/watch/70274176?trackId=200257859 [Accessed 6 May 2019]. 

Friends, n.d. IMDb. [Online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108778/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast [Accessed 6 May 2019]. 

Gordan, N., 2019. Digital Spy. [Online] Available at: https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a26178784/friends-stars-confront-problematic-storylines-diversity/ [Accessed 6 May 2019]. 

Kaplan, I., 2018. Millennials watching ‘Friends’ on Netflix shocked by storylines. [Online] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/friends-netflix-sexist-racist-transphobic-problematic-millenials-watch-a8154626.html [Accessed 20 May 2019]. 

Kaplin, I., 2018. Independent. [Online] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/friends-netflix-sitcom-problem-sexism-men-joey-phoebe-chandler-ross-rachel-a8168976.html [Accessed 2 May 2019]. 

Lee, E., 2018. The NY Times. [Online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/business/media/netflix-friends.html [Accessed 2 May 2019]. 

McCallum, M., 2017. Gender Roles and Stereotypes in Friends. [Online] Available at: https://genderraceandpopularcultureblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/gender-roles-and-stereotypes-in-friends/ [Accessed 19 May 2019]. 

Taylor, A., 2015. The Washington Post. [Online] Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/06/26/what-was-the-first-country-to-legalize-gay-marriage/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c25153d94700 [Accessed 1 May 2019].