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Bianca Camille E. Lukban

Ms. Alexandra May Cardoso
English 13 THU1
09 September 2019
The One with The Sexism and Homophobia: A Proposal
Topic: I am studying the portrayal of sexism and homophobia in the humor of Friends

Question: because I want to find out how this led to the promotion of more inclusive

humor, and allowed for better postfeminist masculinity and LGBTQ+ representation and

visibility in television today.

1: Explication of topic

The early 90’s and 2000’s saw the premier and rise in popularity of Friends – a sitcom that

featured the lives of six friends in their late twenties and early thirties who lived in the heart of

New York City. Throughout the years, however, for a show that has been regarded in a lot of

cases as one of the most popular and important shows (qtd. in Melcher 4), the body of

scholarly writing devoted to the sitcom remains scarce and was largely produced during or

succeeding the show’s initial premiers on television (Cobb et al. 2).

This study aims to focus on one of the most important facets of sitcoms – the fact that

according to Miller, images portrayed in media radically define the social climates in which

individuals exist (3). Media did not and does not only reflect (whether accurately or not) the

social climate or some aspect of the real world, but instead, media also promotes the

circulation of meanings of identity categories, which in turn shapes how consumers of said

media may view themselves or others (Hilton-Morrow and Battles 29).

With that in mind, Friends, for its time, presented an unfamiliar take on representation

and visibility for the LGBTQ+ community (Melcher 6). Firstly, the sitcom provided a level of

representation through the characters Carol Willick and Susan Bunch. Carol is Ross’s first ex-
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wife, who after getting married to Ross, soon realizes that she is in love with one of her closest

friends. Carol comes out to Ross as a lesbian and divorces him, to marry her “lesbian life

partner,” as they refer to her in the series, Susan. For its time, the visibility of the lesbian

community, was not and is still not always present in meaningful ways (qtd. in Melcher 6).

Secondly, visibility is also given to the transgender community through Chandler’s

father, Charles Bing, who later on in his life discovered that he was a trans woman. The

portrayal of a trans woman was definitely notable, especially for the time being, when Friends

was still on the air (qtd. in Melcher 10). Through the employment of humor surrounding

Charles Bing, which is evidenced by the use of a recorded laugh track that follows shortly after

jabs are made at the character’s sexuality, the sitcom pleas to elicit laughter from its audience

while trying to portray a topic that was described as seemingly progressive for the 1990s

(Melcher 12).

Aside from this, the sitcom also depicted and opened discourse about femininity

(Melcher 20) and the presentation of hegemonic masculinity, especially because the main

characters do represent a strictly heteronormative view in terms of sexuality (Melcher 12).

Ultimately, Friends offered a representation that transcended the boundaries of prejudiced

ideas of male friendship, which by the availability of these images, put them in a possible

situation to shape men’s expression of masculinity in real life (Schudson 162).

Finally, this study aims to provide a deeper look into the value of both LGBTQ+

visibility and the discourse surrounding femininity in men and hegemonic masculinity and their

representation in mainstream media, because as Miller discussed, the sitcom genre provides

incentives for writers to develop characters that are realistic and relatable to audiences (7),

therefore allowing people to create a connection with these characters and continually negotiate

their ideas about others and themselves with their interactions with these texts (Hilton-Morrow

and Battles 29).

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2: Explication of question and the significance

This study seeks to help readers gain a deeper understanding of the representations of both

hegemonic masculinity and LGBTQ+ visibility. Although some may argue that the show was

“overrated at best and problematic at worst” (Baragona, “Friends”), others will say that these

representations may be considered as progressive, especially for the time and within the social

and political climates that they were produced in (Melcher 12; Keller and Stratyner 131).

The study will be conducted by analyzing what was considered as humor and the jokes

made in two episodes that showed the highest number of hegemonic male stereotypes per

season (Reed 12), to analyze the nuances of hegemonic masculinity and sexism, and episodes

where LGBTQ+ visibility is the most prominent (episodes that focus on Carol and Susan’s

dynamic, and where Charles Bing is a central character in the plot), to analyze the portrayals of

both the lesbian and transgender communities.

This is examined in order to gain a wider range of knowledge in regards to why this

type of problematic but also progressive (Baragona, “Friends”; Melcher 12; Keller and

Stratyner 131) type of humor was necessary to act as mediators for taboo topics (Mintz 78;

Meers 660) in order to achieve the representation of postfeminist masculinity and LGBTQ+

visibility in television to date.

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Works Cited

Baragona, Louis. “Sorry, but ‘Friends’ is overrated at best.” Insider, 23 January 2018,

www.insider.com/friends-is-problematic-2018-1. Accessed 08 September 2019.

Cobb, Shelley et al. “Friends Reconsidered: Cultural Politics, Intergenerationality, and

Afterlives.” SAGE Journals, 2018,

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476418778426. Accessed 08 September

2019.

Hilton-Morrow, Wendy and Kathleen Battles. Sexual Identities and the Media. Routledge,

2015.

Keller, James R. and Leslie Stratyner. The New Queer Aesthetic on Television. McFarland &

Company, Inc. Publishers, 2006.

Meers, Whitney. “The Funny Thing About Mediation: A rationale for the use of humor in

mediation.” Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2009, pp. 657-685,

cardozojcr.com/vol10no2/657-686.pdf. Accessed 08 September 2019.

Melcher, Kelsea. “The One About Gender and Sexuality: An Examination of the Television

Series Friends.” OUR@Oakland, 2017, hdl.handle.net/10323/4530. Accessed 08

September 2019.

Miller, Diana. “Masculinity in Popular Sitcoms, 1955-1960 and 2000-2005.” Culture, Society

and Masculinities, 2011,

www.academia.edu/12335948/Masculinity_in_Popular_Sitcoms_1955-

1960_and_2000-2005. Accessed 08 September 2019.

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Mintz, Lawrence E. “Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation.” American

Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1, Special Issue: American Humor, The John Hopkins

University Press, 1985, pp. 71-80, www.jstor.org/stable/2712763. Accessed 08

September 2019.

Schudson, Michael. “How Culture Works: Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacy

of Symbols.” Theory and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2, Springer, 1989, pp.153-180,

links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0304-

2421%28198903%2918%3A2%3C153%3AHCWPFM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G.

Accessed 08 September 2019.

Reed, Kelly. “Gender Stereotypes in the Sitcom Friends: Content Analysis.” Indiana

Wesleyan University, 2013. kellyreedblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/gender-

stereotypes-in-the-sitcom-friends.pdf. Accessed 08 September 2019.