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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To wonder how Friends has survived 'cancel culture?'

190 replies

ChocolateSantaisthebestkind · 04/01/2021 18:40

Over the course of Christmas/lockdown evenings, we have been watching these again on Netflix and DH and I were both saying we don't know how it has survived unedited some bits are down right uncomfortable to watch now.

  1. Treatment of LGBT people

  2. Making fun of disability -Ginger's leg episode

  3. Phoebe's Childhood

  4. Ridicule of foreigners

  5. Joey/Ross/ Chandler treatment of women

  6. Tag --> Sexual Harrassment at work

  7. Gunther Stalker

  8. Lack of racial diversity ('fixed' but tokenistically by introduction of Charlie)

  9. Ageism

  10. Body shaming

I know lots of us loved it back in the day and some episodes are still funny, but it just amazes me that there hasn't been more backlash.

AIBU to be Confused

OP posts:
eaglejulesk · 07/01/2021 00:25

I have no idea what cancel culture is.

It involves sanctimoniously sucking all the fun out of life generally, by nit picking on the trivial it allows genuine concerns to be ignored because people are bored to death.

Best description of it ever - well done.

JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows · 07/01/2021 00:28

@HTH1

If we sanitise everything into an idealised (and false) version of the world and pretend issues don’t exist, there would be no discussion of those issues (and sitcoms would be very boring).
This. Old comedies have jokes that were of their time. People being offended by this are a bit dim if you ask me. If nothing else we need to keep content as it was to see how far we have come as a society
MummytoCSJH · 07/01/2021 00:52

I've noticed things on older shows and movies occasionally too OP and totally get where you're coming from and that you're not saying it should be 'cancelled', just noticing that it wouldn't be done or they wouldn't get away with it if they made it now. People have gone ridiculously overboard on you here!

HeyDW96 · 07/01/2021 01:09

Because it's funny. Are you going to cancel fawlty towers aswell? It doesn't conform to today's sensitive folks, they can however chose not to watch it if it really is that dreadful.

GrandTheftWalrus · 07/01/2021 02:08

I'm watching the first episode right now in bed and for me the most outrageous thing is they are all apparently mid 20s!

Monica says in the episode with the high school boy that she's 26. Oldest looking 26yo I've ever seen Grin

NicoleKidmanSuperFan · 07/01/2021 02:29

Oh bore off, that’s the bloody problem now. We can’t watch or laugh at anything because everyone is so sensitive. If life carries on progressing like this we will all have to write down what we’re going to say in a book first and check a million times if it’s politically correct.
Steady on OP, I will carry on watching friends and giggling at all of it

2020canfuckitself · 07/01/2021 02:43

I despise cancel culture and the people who do it.

Sinful8 · 07/01/2021 03:52

@GrandTheftWalrus

I'm watching the first episode right now in bed and for me the most outrageous thing is they are all apparently mid 20s!

Monica says in the episode with the high school boy that she's 26. Oldest looking 26yo I've ever seen Grin

I think she was 30 before it started Grin
Sinful8 · 07/01/2021 03:57

@HeyDW96

Because it's funny. Are you going to cancel fawlty towers aswell? It doesn't conform to today's sensitive folks, they can however chose not to watch it if it really is that dreadful.
Yeah they removed the nigger episode from Netflix and bbc repeats a few years back.
ChestnutStuffing · 07/01/2021 05:33

So - with the Grease bit where the boys asked "did she put up a fight."

Are people really unaware that this isn't meant to be a sentiment the viewer admires?

The whole idea is the boys are immersed in this macho and reductive idea of women that sees them as a sexual object rather than a person.

The girls on the other hand see the boys as a kind of status symbol and made up romantic hero.

Neither is accurate or really anything to do with real people or who they really are, or the real relationships of the characters. They do, however, continuously get in the way of their happiness or a chance of relating to each other honestly.

And they do really like each other, you can see that throughout the film, Danny and Sandy have a real connection and affection, and so do Rizzo and Kenickie for that matter.

It's a romance, in the sense that things all unrealistically turn out ok and happy - so they all get over those things and manage to live authentically, seeing each other as real people. Which doesn't mean being a joke or a greaser or any of those things which are irrelevant, which is why Danny can get his letter sweater and still be himself, and Sandy can wear tight pants.

To a lesser extent the other characters like Frenchie do the same thing.

I hate to have to look that hard at a film like Grease which is meant to mostly just be fun, but it drives me a little crazy that people miss the parallel character development that subverts the categories they started with. Or thinks that just because a character says something it's meant to be a good idea.

GingerAndTheBiscuits · 07/01/2021 07:47

Funnily enough I read this yesterday ChestnutStuffing and found myself nodding along, as I did with your post - life.spectator.co.uk/articles/in-defence-of-grease/ . The key part being: By adding titles like Grease to their list of complaints, they’re making themselves risible. To be offended by everything is as indiscriminating as being offended by nothing – of no value.

CherryCherries · 08/01/2021 18:37

I watched The Holiday Inne over Christmas. It's a sweet film of It's time, but it did have scenes of black face in it. I can accept it was of It's time in the early 1940s, and still go on to enjoy the rest of the film. People like the OP can't accept things/jokes of their time and would have anything and everything with jokes of their time axed and burnt from our televisions!
Comedy is uncomfortable and un-pc. We all have to laugh at ourselves. Things like gay jokes in friends or black face in old films aren't funny but should really be taken as they were of that time. Doesn't stop us enjoying the rest of the show.

DishedUp · 08/01/2021 19:06

There are parts of friends that are a bit dated now. I think if it were a less popular show twitter might have gone for it.

But wokeness isn't about actually being 'woke' its essentially just a popularity contest. Its more like a hive mind of people trying to appear most woke, without any original thought put into it.

Friends is too popular, too many woke people like friends. Liking friends is a big part of the 'tumblr personality', and tumblr and woke go hand in hand and it would throw up too many issues. Itd be like cancelling yourself

hansgrueber · 08/01/2021 19:11

@Plonque

You're going to be cancelling a hell of a lot of things if you're looking at tv from 25 yrs ago.
Then the cancel-culture-vultures can get stuck into Shakespeare, Dickens etc., enough to keep their pseudo-wrath fed for years. People really do need to grow up!
hansgrueber · 08/01/2021 19:15

@user1471565182

'Joey : I fold like a cheap hooker who got hit in the stomach by a fat guy'
Didn't know that Joey played rugby.
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