New Families Same Race

Aside from the TV show Friends hilarious and attractive cast, the show had many groundbreaking aspects that drew in viewers. Winning numerous awards, the show received both commercial and critical success while on the air and reruns continued to draw in high ratings as Friends became one of the most popular American sitcoms of all time. The show consisted of six best friends, Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), Monica Geller (Courtney Cox), Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry), Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), and Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) in New York’s Manhattan. The show went outside of the traditional sitcom genre and portrayed an alternative family setting which appeals to our society’s modern family norms. The show also portrayed white privileging as the cast rejected any other race but their own.

The opening theme song in Friends describes the relationship between the six main characters. Friends also tells you what the show is about in its title name, and many sitcoms do now revolve around the lives of friends who hang out at work, cafes, and apartments, but it wasn't always this way. Most sitcoms of the past were based on a nuclear family ideology, but that has changed focusing more on households filled with adults who are not related. The traditional nuclear family containing two parents and children under the same roof has become less common in today’s society. This change says something more meaningful about the about the differences of American friendships in today’s world. Children are leaving their homes at a younger age and many households are being separated by divorce. People are pushing the hegemonic view of getting married and having kids into their 30’s. This is allowing them to spend longer periods of time outside their traditional families and compelling them to form and live with new circles of close peers.

 Beginning with Seinfeld, this now common friendship genre can be seen in many shows today including, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, and Cougartown. This friendship trope appeals to a middle-aged audience who enjoy watching the characters participate in close connection with friends, which they have often have to sacrifice in their own lives. Due to the economy and many other reasons, many middle-aged American couples are now sharing the title of “breadwinner”. However, despite career pressures, many of these couples do not give up spending time with their kids rather, they give up time with their friends. So these “comedies serve another purpose for the middle-aged. They appeal to people who want to watch fictional characters enjoying the long, uninterrupted bonding experiences that they no longer have time or energy for.” (Brooks) The ensemble in Friends were, in fact, so close they wouldn't let anyone else enter the group.

The famous title theme lyrics of Friends, “I’ll be there for you,” illustrated just how close the characters were. The show portrayed their relationships not just as best friends but as each other’s family. “The ensemble selected and accepted family and friends based on their own practices of Whiteness. Though their actions, the characters communicated, whites are people whereas other colors are something else.” (Marshall, 175) If characters were not similar to the main ensemble based on race or ethnicity they were pushed away from the group. The same went for dating, if any of the characters brought in someone from another race they were denied because they did not fit in the characters alternative family. In the episode, “The One With Ross’s New Girlfriend,” Ross is dating an Asian American women named Julie which Rachel hates. “Julie's character in the episode is accent-free, sports an “Americanized” name, and displays no cultural markers in dress or behavior, this also points to an extended function of the closed circle in the sitcom—that of preventing any potentially sullying contact with racial outsiders.” (Chidester, 165)

This racial rejection is also evident within the friend group against the very proud stereotypical, Italian American Joey. He was often the butt of jokes and one of the characters usually had to fill him in on inside jokes, fix his grammar, and order him around like a child. “Joey's character serves as a visible boundary between what is white and what is not quite white, between what is acceptable to the in-group and what must be ultimately rejected in order to maintain the purity of what lies within.” (Chidester, 165) In The Pilot, Joey tries to use his Italian charm to hit on Rachel on her wedding day. Monica corrected him and told him that he needed to back away from Rachel and treat her with respect wherein Joey is left out of the group in a corner by himself. “As the extreme limit of the group's tolerance for racial difference, Joey is always on the verge of being turned away by the cluster of friends. His is a constant cycle of transgression and punishment, of learning to tame his natural tendencies to behave inappropriately based on his own racial impurities.” (Chidester, 166)

            Friends is still very popular in today’s syndication due to its appealing ensemble and wide demographic target. Group friendship is bubbling to the surface of television life because of the perplexities of the modern friendship network. Viewers can relate to the non-nuclear family lifestyles of today's times and find comfort in watching this group of friends interact very intimately. It portrays a group of racially homogeneous characters in one of the most diversely populated areas of the world, New York City. For those who are seldom confronted with racial difference in actual experience and who have come to expect media content that is equally free of references to race, episodes of Friends are sure to ring true.


Works Cited

Brooks, David.  "The Flock Comedies: [Op-Ed].” New York Times 21 Oct. 2010, Late Edition (East Coast): New York Times, ProQuest. Web.

Chidester, Phil. "May the Circle Stay Unbroken: Friends, the Presence of Absence, and the Rhetorical Reinforcement of Whiteness." Critical Studies in Media Communication 25.2 (2008): 157-74. Web.

Marshall, Lisa Marie. "I'll Be There for You" If You Are Just like Me an Analysis of Hegemonic Social Structures in "Friends" Diss. Bowling Green State University, 2007. Web.