A certain category of people always take offence to anything they find. They're usually so deeply entrenched in some cult-like mindset for some cause or belief. It's the vegan who always finds a way to drag animal cruelty into every conversation, the religious loony who seems compelled to proselityze or talk about how such-and-such cultural phenomenon is from the devil, or the SJW who wants to score some woke points.
In this case, it's the latter.
Friends is offensive to people who subscribe to the Social Justice ideologies because it's not "progressive". The most common accusations I see levelled against Friends:
1. It's too "white". This accusation was more of a joke in the '90s, although it did exist then. The main cast are really, really white. Monica and Ross are Jewish and that's as diverse as it gets, really. It'd have to travel back in time for Joey's Italian background to rule him out. To be fair, it's not terribly realistic for NYC to be so monochromatic, but I don't find that offensive.
2. It's "fatphobic". The "Fat Monica" jokes in-particular are singled out for being "problematic".
3. It's "homophobic" because Joey and Chandler do the "I'm not gay!" thing a lot.
4. It's "transphobic". Detractors from the mob talk about how Chandler doesn't respect his father. This bugs the daylights out of me because Chandler's father is never directly identified as "trans" anything. He just seems deeply entrenched in the gay/drag lifestyle. He could be trans, but it's ironic that the woke brigade assume his gender. More to the point, however, they also seem to have missed two important things. First, Chandler's dad was insanely embarrassing for a teenage boy and never even considered toning it down to help his son through the most difficult time in his life; Chandler has a decent reason for being estranged from his father. But the second - and most important - aspect of this that the wokeys ignore is that the whole plotline with Chandler's dad is that *Chandler* has the biggest problem, needs to get over himself, and just invite his dad to the wedding. The story is about Chandler putting the past behind him so he can have a relationship with his father and accept him for who he is. They don't notice that the storyline is *pro* LGBT - also conveniently forgetting all of the broken ground Friends put towards the same issues with Carol and Susan.
So, while I can see the point with the "too white" thing (not enough to be offended) and I can see where mocking fat Monica might go too far (not enough to be offended) I really don't get the transphobic accusations. They're nuts. But, that's pretty apparent.
Sometimes other accusations come up, like Ross' anger being unhealthy (which...it's portrayed that way on the show) or something else, generally when I see people offended at Friends, it's on one of those four points.
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SomewhereElse24 (44)
2 years ago
With the regards to the white thing, it has to be kept in mind that the characters lived in Manhattan, one of the whiter boroughs of New York City. And the show began in the 1990s, when the place was majority white. So not really unrealistic for there to be all-white groups of friends.
Even today, I live in a diverse, big city, and most "cliques" I see are monochromatic, whose members only interact with other races outside the "friends & family" circles, and there's rarely a gender balance. For immigrant circles, it's even less integrated than that, because they're usually not only of the same race, but of the same country of origin as well.
By the way, and that's just me and my own standards but David Schwimmer is not white.
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Ace_Spade (9574)
2 years ago
I think it was that a lot of the guest stars and even background extras were also white. So, while it's one thing to have a friend group with similar racial backgrounds, it's another thing to have them almost exclusively run into people who are the same racial backgrounds as they are. And, yes, I know that they had more than just white people guest star. As I said, I understand why people pointed this out, but I'm not offended by it or upset by it. It just is what it is.
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liscarkat (18541)
2 years ago
I was the "Friends" characters' age in the '70s and '80s, and none of the people I hung out with were black. It's not that black people were avoided, they just weren't around where I was and we didn't encounter them. It was a matter of local demographics, not "racism". For any of us to have traveled afield in order to search out and cultivate black acquaintances would have been fake and racist in its own way.
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blue1981 (7825)
2 years ago
If the writers based a lot of their stories on real life they might have had only white friends. No one cared then and any sane person doesn't care now. Also black people had Martin and Living Single which were very similar shows at the time to Friends just race swapped.
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Ace_Spade (9574)
2 years ago
I used to joke about them, too; and, if I'm being honest, I thought it was a little said that there seemed to be "white" TV shows and "black" TV shows. Why couldn't there be TV for everybody?
I never thought any of this was offensive or wrong, just that it would be nicer if we were all on the same TV shows.
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blue1981 (7825)
2 years ago
It's not offensive to have a TV show featuring an all white cast when other ethnic groups have TV shows or movies that appeal to them all the time.
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ATG6 (3000)
2 years ago
Don't forget Joey objectifying women, and judging them on their looks.
Really though, the show was No. 1 for a long time. No one was offended at the time. The show had a lot of secondary characters to represent other groups, who would undoubtedly be represented in the main cast if it were created now.
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Ace_Spade (9574)
2 years ago
"Oh, and before I forget: to work in soap operas, some of you are going to have to become much more attractive." Joey was awesome.
I'm still not offended.
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