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Friends creator Marta Kauffman is very, very sorry. No, not for forcing us to endure the exhausting decades-long debate over whether Friends or Seinfeld is a better sitcom (the show about nothing wins without question, obviously). Instead, Kauffman apologized to the woke mob for not being nearly three decades ahead of her time.
The fun-sucking left has for years complained that Friends is *problematic*. The show, they whine, lacked diversity and mocked and trivialized issues such as fat-shaming and transphobia. Kauffman says she finally took these concerns to heart after the death of George Floyd because the incident forced her to reckon with the way she “bought into systemic racism.” Gag.
“It was after what happened to George Floyd that I began to wrestle with my having bought into systemic racism in ways I was never aware of,” Kauffman said recently in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “That was really the moment that I began to examine the ways I had participated. I knew then I needed to course-correct.”
Kauffman, in fact, was so embarrassed and guilty that the six main characters in the show — Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler and Ross — were all white, that she pledged to donate $4 million to Brandeis University’s African-American studies department.
In addition to her monetary apology, Kauffman said she was also sorry that she had “misgendered” Charles Bing. Charles was the father of Chandler Bing, and he divorced his wife and began performing as a drag queen under the name “Helena Handbasket” after discovering he was gay. It’s unclear throughout the series whether Charles is just a drag queen or if he actually identifies as a woman — the character still goes by the name “Charles” offstage — but Kauffman confirms that he was intended to be trans.
“We kept referring to her [Chandler’s transgender parent] as Chandler’s father, even though Chandler’s father was trans,” Kauffman said. “Pronouns were not yet something that I understood. So we didn’t refer to that character as she. That was a mistake.”
It is bizarre that Kauffman feels the need to apologize for not living up to 2022 wokeness standards on a show that premiered in 1994. Of course she could not have predicted what would be considered the “proper” way to portray or address transgender people more than twenty-five years ago. Despite a few gags at Charles Bing’s expense, the thrust of the storyline is that you don’t have to fully accept nor understand someone else’s lifestyle in order to treat them with kindness. Is that really so outdated?
Another Friends co-creator takes a more sane view on the show’s all-white cast, pointing out the actors and actresses had an undeniable chemistry with one another that drove the show’s success among audiences.
“I would have been insane not to hire those six actors,” executive producer Kevin Bright explained. “What can I say? ‘I wish Lisa was black?’ I’ve loved this cast. I loved the show and I loved the experience.”
Aisha Tyler, who played one of the few recurring black characters on the series, similarly took a softer tone towards the criticism.
“The role wasn’t written as a woman of color, and when I auditioned, I read against women of every ethnic background,” Tyler said. “They didn’t make it into a ‘very special episode of Friends‘ where the friends suddenly confront issues of race… I was just a character on the show, with her own appeal and quirks and foibles, and I think that’s why it worked so well.”
Isn’t that more respectful and humanizing than shoe-horning in certain characters just for the sake of advancing woke narratives anyway?
The criticism of the Friends cast is also wrong because of the suggestion that it is unacceptable for six white people to be portrayed on television together. There is no implication that any of the characters are racist, and yet their existence alone seems to be affront to the woke left. There were no similar complaints about Nineties sitcoms that portrayed all-black friends and family, of course. Who remembers the episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when the Banks family is shocked that Aunt Janice brought home a white boyfriend?
The woke left is unfortunately incapable of viewing entertainment (and people!) as a product of its time, leading to the erasure of positive content that doesn’t perfectly fit the left-wing narratives of today. In the aforementioned Fresh Prince episode, the Banks family is able to overcome their prejudice and accept Janice’s boyfriend despite the fact that he looks different than them. Shouldn’t we all be afforded that opportunity at growth without the need for endless guilt and groveling?
It’s no wonder that Americans are tuning to non-woke content like Chris Pratt’s new show The Terminal List — which critics hate and audiences love, naturally — when even their favorite classics fall victim to joyless progressives.
