Blessedly, a final season of Friends. Alright, go already. Be gone. And take your syndicated re-runs with you. What do I have to do to get rid of you? I'm just about ready to put on a Captain Beefheart CD.
I've always hated this show. Not really hated, for that is an active emotional state. More like the Martian hate of Stranger in a Strange Land, the kind of bitter hatred that might best be described as "mild distaste."
I charge Friends primarily with the crime of being colorless. Let me just expound by copying and pasting from dictionary.com: they are characterless, dreary, dull, insipid, lackluster, lifeless, prosaic, tame, unmemorable, unpassioned, vacuous, vapid.
In short, they have the blandest show on television, give or take the insipid Everybody Loves Raymond. These characters have no personality. They are the blandest bunch of nothing imaginable. Howard Cunningham had more flavor.
Still others have a perhaps not entirely different argument against Friends being "colorless" on the basis that none of the principal friends is black. It is apparently at least a misdemeanor hate crime to have any show without a major black character. You remember when we all voted on that, right?
I really don't see the merit in this lament about blackness. Keeping the argument all in the family, let's refer this to fellow Blogcritic Dew, and her cleverly titled column "Friends Race Against Time."
"Blacks have a problem with the lack of color as its being referred to here because where do we get to identify?" Apparently black folk can't or shouldn't identify with a caucasian character. Hmm. From my side, I have no trouble at all identifying with, say, Bernie Mac.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mac Diva
Al! Al! Al! You were doing fine until the fifth graf. Then, you stepped in a steaming cow paddy. (Or perhaps it was goat poop, knowing your preferences.)
Friends and Ray are the kind of colorless shows I don't watch. I do mean colorless in the sense you started out using it -- uninteresting. Among my all time favorites have been Frasier and The X-Files (early years). Neither was a bastion of ethnic diversity, but each was a very good at its kind of theme. Shows without people of color need not be colorless.
However, I don't believe Dew's remarks are without merit, as you imply. Shows with large casts that lack minority characters are noticeable in a society with more than a quarter of people of color in the population. I believe that is particularly true when the program focuses on youths, who polls show have much less prejudiced views than their elders.
2 - Dew
I feel like the critic who was quoted as saying Gigli was "first rate" when they actually said Gigli was "first rate garbage"
There are Blacks who do not watch the show because they feel there is no one on that show to identify. I am not speaking for an entire race of people, which Al I think you should appreciate. What I am speaking on are the mass of Blacks who have a problem with this show and the reason they give for having a problem with it: No Blacks.
And from the comments I continue to see from whites who don't understand why that is, apparently you do have to be Black to understand.
3 - Dew
Oh yea and Cedric the Entertainer is FUNNNNNY, Cedric the Entertainer presents...was not
4 - TDavid
Don't think that I've watched a single episode all the way through of Friends. Something about the backdrop and characters just never really interested me.
However I never watched STNG either until the DVDs came out and then my opinion changed when I watched the shows back to back.
5 - Al Barger
Mac, I made a statement disagreeing with a complaint from an official person of color, therefore I am by definition The Goat. I acknowledge my badness.
However, my people are from Kentucky, so you might need to dumb things down a little bit. I'm sure I committed some crime against decency, but what was it? Exactly what is my offense?
6 - Al Barger
Dew, I'm not sure I understand your complaint. I am not speaking for an entire race of people, which Al I think you should appreciate. What I am speaking on are the mass of Blacks who have a problem with this show
Are you saying that you personally don't feel the racial grievance over Friends, but are explaining what most African-Americans would say? That's the best sense I can parse out of the words. But how would that be NOT "speaking for an entire race of people"?
I'm not even disagreeing with you here. I simply don't understand what it is you are intending to say.
How am I misunderstanding you bad enough to get comparisons to purposefully dishonest movie ads? I'm TRYING to understand your intended meaning. However, as has been mentioned previously, my people ARE from Kentucky. Work with me here.
7 - Mac Diva
My people are from North Carolina, but we ain't dumb.
8 - Al Barger
As the great white philosopher Forrest Gump oraculated, "Stupid is as stupid does."
I'm just saying that while Kentuckians may not have the top reputation for mental prowess, neither have we elected Gray Davis governor nor run up 10s of billions of dollar deficits in state budgets. I'm just saying...
North Carolina, on the other hand, certainly has fairly high reputation. Top obvious arguments for North Carolina, in order 1)Dawn Olsen, 2)Andy Griffith, 3)Jesse Helms, 4)Ben Folds. But now I guess I need rebuild the NC list to include Miss Diva.
9 - Michael
Al,
Even though I've never seen Friends it does seem bland to me based on the commercials I've seen for it. So I never had any incentive to check it out. I agree with your comments on people being able to identify with characters regardless of race too. But I'd like to make the point that identifying isn't even necessary to enjoy a show. You may want to watch something that is totally out there just as an escape, or to see how other people live, etc.
As for the "it's a Black thing..." comments. Believe it or not Al, there are some things that non-Blacks would likely never understand or feel like Blacks do. Certain things are impossible to feel if you haven't lived your entire life under certain conditions. Some examples: the feeling of not being able to get a taxi; having police profile you; being ignored by salespeople (ever seen those hidden camera news spots?); being the only non-White face in a class or the whole damn school; people thinking you only got into a good college b/c you played a sport or b/c of AA... It'd be very hard for White people to truly understand the feelings those things evoke. It's not about superior logic, it's about life experience & emotions. There are things that you or some other Whites might feel that Blacks wouldn't understand too.
As for Cedric's show, it deserved to be cancelled IMO. I was really disappointed in it. (I will miss the dancers though!) Now Dave Chappelle's show is funny. That's what Ced's show should have been.
10 - Steve Rhodes
If it took place in Vermont or Vail, it might be understandable (though not excusable). But Friends takes place in NYC.
The funny thing is Farai used to live in the building they use as the outside of their apartment.
11 - Dew
Al, I like Friends. The Black people who I have come across that do not like the show, have said they do not because there are no characters of color on the show. Simple enough for ya?
12 - Mac Diva
Mike said something I can testify to. Just last week, a neighbor refused to let me into the building where I live. I was juggling two grocery bags. My other reason for motioning to her to open the door was her dog (not allowed in the property, incidentally) was trying to break free and run outside when the door was opened. She sneered and refused to open it. After I used my own key to enter, I told her where both her and her mutt could go. This is the kind of white privilege attitude people of color encounter regularly. All of us. The ones who do the 'white folks are so-o--o wonderful' rap are lying 'tween their teeth.
I haven't searched for the latest stats, but as of a few years ago, the top ten shows viewed by whites and top ten shows viewed by African-Americans were completely different. If that does not speak of alienation, as Dew suggests, I don't know what does.
13 - Jane Ripley
A friend once told me that all you need to do to clear a party of namby pambys was to put on "Trout Mask Replica." Only the truly elightened would stay to listen to this odd masterpiece.
Hypothetically, if we were to try this experiment on the set of "Friends" last year, maybe we would have been spared another season of their idiocy.
14 - Al Barger
Damn Jane, what a great idea. Perhaps you'd like to accompany me and a boombox full of Beefheart on a trip to the set of Everybody Loves Raymond.
15 - Rodney Welch
I like to think of myself as completely uncool, so this little litmus test confuses me: if you like Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, you are cool; if you like Friends, you are not.
Is it possible to like both? Of course it is. But that's the problem with hipness. Hipness is all about screwing people into little boxes.
To me, words like hip, with-it, or cool have come to be synonomous with being trendy, immature, adrift in the winds of shifting opinion, and completely alienated from one's own thoughts or feelings. It means insecurity; it means the dread fear of being thought out of touch, and I personally have come to the conclusion that being out of touch is one of the things I do best. Being in touch, being hip means being married to the status quo; it means looking at the latest issue of Esquire or Rolling Stone or Details or some other cultural arbiter and hoping to God that you stack up, that you're closer to Hot than Not Hot. And it has always been Hot to dig Captain Beefheart and Not Hot to dig "Friends."
Well fuck that and fuck it hard.
Being uncool, unhip, and out of it, I like "Friends." I laugh at it. I think it's one of the funniest shows on television and I like all the characters. There's no difference between liking "Friends" and liking "Mary Tyler Moore," "Cheers," "Frasier," "The Bob Newhart Show," "Taxi," or "NewsRadio," considering the same man, James Burrows, had a creative hand in all of them.
I like "Everybody Loves Raymond," too -- except for the guy that plays Raymond's brother; him I find grating.
I bought Trout Mask Replica a number of years ago and gradually came to kinda sorta like it, to respect it in sort of a distanced way. It's a record that takes getting used to, because it's so different than anything you've heard. I loaned it to my daughter's teacher some years ago, and she took it with her when she moved, unfortunately. I started mourning the loss of it just this weekend, because I was listening to another record made around the same time and produced by the same man -- Frank Zappa's Uncle Meat. These are works of absolutely extraordinary minds who soaked up everything and who seemed to have been especially influenced by Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman, and tried to reinterpret them in somewhat rockish ways.
Unfortunately, liking these records puts you in a cultural mold, one best exemplified by the Al Bargers and Jane Ripleys of the world; this idea that if you like Trout Mask Replica then by definition you don't like "Friends." It's one of those assumptions people make that are just so wrong-headed. Similarly, people think if you love the music of Frank Zappa you also like his movie 200 Motels, which is possibly the worst film ever made. (In fact, all the musicians I love -- Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Frank Zappa -- are terrible, terrible filmmakers, from what I've seen.)
So, to sum up, go with your gut and epater le hipoisie! Laugh loud, long and heartily at Joey's lunkishness, Monica's obsessiveness, Phoebe's spaciness, Chandler's snarkiness, and the mix of girlish naivete and overly-educated dullness that make the blissful on-again, off-again pairing of Rachel and Ross. Then crank up "Nine Types Of Industrial Pollution" or "Dog Breath, In The Year Of The Plague" from Uncle Meat. Then settle back and watch "Will and Grace."
With any luck, the hipsters will leave your house and never return.
16 - andy
so, as a white person, I'd never be in that situation where someone's just an ass and won't open the door for me? It's just a racial thing? Come on. People are asses. Period. Whether you're black, white, hispanic, doens't matter. Assness is color blind. Welcome to the 21st century. People aren't nice. I was the only white person on my block when I lived downtown. What if I said it was a race issue when my car got broken into twice, or my alley was chosen as a heroin drop off point, or when my friend got mugged outside of my apartment? Give us "white folk" some credit Mac. We're trying to better ourselves and move on. It seems like you're the one holding on to something.
17 - andy
Another point...
It's a great racial crime to not have black people on "Friends" or something, but when the WB put a show on like the Wayans Brothers", and the only white character on the show's name was "Whitey" and was made to look like a complete fool and country bumpkin, that's ok?
18 - Steve Rhodes
Well, I can understand why she would think that was the case. Law professor Patricia Williams once wrote about how when she would try to go into the exclusive clothing stores in SoHo which always had locked doors, she wouldn't be let in.
I'm sure some people working on Friends would like Trout Mask Replica.
The guy who plays Ross, David Schwimmer, just directed a play of Studs Terkel's book Race at the Lookingglass Theater company in Chicago. I wonder if he talked about the issue of race and Friends in any the press around the production.
19 - Mac Diva
Sometimes, I wonder how even white folks (who are very tolerant toward other white people) can tolerate "Andys." Between the stupidity and the bigotry, I would be like "Outta here, dude."
Rodney, your point about the whole arbiter of coolness thing is well thought out. I hope you posted that as an entry to your blog, too. My own reason for not watching Friends is just lack of interest, I think. And Zappa is still my arbiter for irony done well.
Steve, thanks for handling "Andy," so I wouldn't have to. Anyone clueless enough to think people of color are victims of crime less often than white people would have been in for a drubbing from the Diva. BTW, used to run into Pat Williams a lot back in my Critical Legal Studies days.
20 - andy
I'm sorry...what part of my statement was racist again?
21 - Eric Olsen
I can easily see all sides of this, and while I have no problem believing life in America is still different on some fundamental levels for people of different colors, I also think Andy is getting a bad rap here. I believe all he was saying was that crime, indifference, lack of courtesy, etc., don't necessarily have to do with race, unless I am misunderstanding something.
What people of color sometimes forget is that there are all kinds of discrimination and prejudice: by class (NO ONE likes poor people), by culture (who do you think the clerk in an upscale Beverly Hills boutique would serve first: a well-dressed, sophisticated middle-aged black woman, or a tattooed, pierced, smelly, mohawked, snarling young white man? Race is not the answer to this one), by ethnicity (I would guess most white Americans would feel more in common with a black person of similar socioeconomic status than some "foreigner"), etc., etc.
Race still counts, some experiences are peculiar to people of a certain race, lynching only ended less than 50 years ago and "Strange Fruit" still rings a very ugly bell, but as Andy implied some people are just dicks to everyone and race has nothing to do with it.
Re coolness and taste and all that, two things: I am so in my own little world that I have always assumed whatever I like is what is cool, and sometimes the rest of the world gets it like I do and sometimes they just don't.
Of course you can like both Friends and the good Captain because people like different things for different reasons - there are many planes of judgment, not just one where Beefheart precludes Friends. We are not one-dimentional beings: we can like ABBA and John Cage, Friends and Beefheart
22 - andy
Right Eric. What I'm saying is, stop seeing it as a black/white issue, and see it as what it is. A humanity issue.
23 - Joe
Proposed comment: Sometimes, I wonder how even black folks(who are very tolerant toward other black people) can tolerate "Mac Divas." Between the stupidity and the bigotry, I would be like "Outta here, dude."
Status: Rejected, too hypocritical, ugly, racist, ad hominem, etc, etc...
24 - Al Barger
Rodney, up in #21, let me take issue with your hipness argument. You went about presuming a lot about my tastes and motivations that really isn't in evidence.
"Hip" actually is defined as "whatever Al Barger thinks is worthy." I am in fact the ultimate arbiter of what is and is not "cool." The definitions are derived internally from my gut. If you need to know if something is cool or hip, ask me and I'll give you the correct, objective answer.
Lots of relatively smart, college educated people like Friends. Exactly WHY totally escapes me. I do not like the show because I internally judge it to SUCK.
I've been on the Beefheart tip so long that he doesn't really sound especially weird to me. I will admit, however, to taking some active pleasure from time to time in seeing the strong negative reactions that his music often generates. It is some of my best music for scaring the straights.
On the other hand, just to counter misperceptions that I chase after trendy coolness, I'll note that I've become a sincere fan of The Flying Nun.
25 - Al Barger
Let me second the defense of Andy. He said absolutely nothing that could reasonably be seen as offensive.
Mac Diva- It wasn't very nice at all for you to call him a "stupid bigot" like that.
His statement was reasonable. Perhaps you could disagree, or make subtle distinctions or counter his point. Discussing our disagreements is the point here.
You have NO legitimate reason at all, however, to address him disrespectfully as you did. His statement is not dishonest, nor is it hateful.
You reacted to it as if he was the Klan or something. Frankly, right here you're indulging in unearned presumptions of moral superiority. You're putting me in mind of Dana Carvey's "church lady." Although I'm sure you would do a much funkier Superior Dance.