My wife and I have recently been binging HIMYM. We never watched it regularly before, and are really enjoying it. The other day we mentioned it to our son who said something like, "The character of Barney would be considered a rapist today."
Well, I’m not sure he has “raped” anyone (at least by my definitions and at least up into S5), but he sure pursues, disparages, and lies to women consistently.
Is his character unacceptable in a post MeToo world? Were there other similar womanizing (or man crazy female) characters either before or after HIMYM?
I say HIMYM more peripherally as my daughter watched it. That said ISTM that he wasn’t “acceptable” then. He was more a mockery of the toxic male traits and behaviors and of the friend many of us have or had who we love dearly but still makes us cringe.
Well, I guess I meant “acceptable” in terms of “Would a popular, light-hearted comedy show have one of its main characters acting this way?” Not “Is he someone you would like to date your sister.”
Do other popular shows these days have characters who are a mockery of toxic male traits?
Barney is one of the 5 main characters. The other 4 at various times date and abet him. And - I think - he eventually marries one of the other main characters. So if he is toxic, does that make his enablers toxic?
Just thinking of other shows where they cut out episodes or scenes which would be considered unacceptable/inappropriate/cringe-worthy today. My wife and I have found the eps consistently pretty amusing. But my son’s comment made me wonder.
I mentioned him in a recent Cafe Society thread on unlikeable main characters: Howard Wolowitz from The Big Bang Theory (though the series ended a few years ago). He’s a relentless horndog, routinely objectifies women, and constantly drops double-entendre jokes.
The character was toned down a bit over the course of the series, once he settled down with Bernadette, but he still objectifies her, sees things like housework as something that only his wife should do (while he sits and plays video games), and belittles her accomplishments.
(Howard also embodies stereotypes of Jewish men, in particular his relationship with his mother, but that’s another topic.)
In one episode (“As Fast as She Can” S4, Ep23), Barney mentions going to amnesia wards and pretending to be the husband to some patients… which would be rape by fraud or deception in many jurisdictions.
But yeah, I think he was already on/over the line when the show aired and now he’s waaaay over the line.
That’s the point- Howard and Barney were basically different sides of the same stereotypical coin (successful vs. unsuccessful, non-creepy vs. creepy, etc…), and absolutely not played as someone anyone wants to emulate.
Which is why they were/are funny- they are stereotypes of people or at least behaviors we all know.
And I want to note that both Barney and Howard grew during the course of the shows- they didn’t just double-down on their negative traits.
As for whether he’s a rapist or not, I wouldn’t say so. I mean, maybe he took some women home from the bar who had been drinking, but it’s a bit of a stretch IMO to assume that any consumption of alcohol removes the ability to grant or withhold consent.
And I think the whole series is predicated on the concept of Ted as an unreliable narrator. It’s entirely likely that Ted is remembering Barney’s exploits and embellishing them for narrative effect. I mean, there were ample examples of things for all characters that were so over the top that they had to be artifacts of Ted’s memories. And I always had the impression that some of the shit Barney said wasn’t ever intended to be taken at face value- he might have just said that bit about the amnesia patients to jerk Lily’s chain a bit.
I don’t have anything to say about Barney, but I will take a shot at an even more iconic character: Arthur Fonzarelli. Fonzie is an absolute monster. He treats women as disposable objects that are subject to his every whim. Being the 1970s (and set in the 1950s, mostly), the series doesn’t show him bedding the women or even really getting into what happens when he gets the women home, but his exploits are quite grating on modern sensibilities.
The other boys on Happy Days really aren’t much better.
I always thought that the main reason Fonzie worked was that he only ever kissed and made out with the ladies. Plus it was always portrayed him being so cool that they CHOSE to act that way, rather than him being able to mind control them or something.
The few places where they did make it more clearly about sex actually did make me uncomfortable as a kid (in the 90s), and I seem to remember there being episodes where he explicitly didn’t go for sex, probably to help combat that.
I do not understand the notion of a fictional character being “unacceptable.”
The character is viewed in the context of the show we are watching. We have loads of despicable characters we enjoy watching such as Walter White or Tony Soprano or Sweeney Todd…the list is long.
I do not think HIMYM glorified Barney’s exploits. Most times the other characters cringed and berated his antics. The show never made his womanizing “ok.” And Barney had a redemption arc.
Maybe not a character, but aren’t there plenty of examples of scenes in blackface that have been edited out of shows for current airing? And you wouldn’t expect a mainstream TV show to feature blackface.
I was wondering if a current show would feature a dishonest manipulative womanizer for laughs.
I take Barney’s alleged behaviors with a huge grain of salt because they’re related to us by Ted. So I can turn off my “ew gross” reaction and just say “unreliable narrator”.
Yeah…there was a running gag that, no matter what, Barney always looked perfect in any photo taken of him. IIRC they even had an episode where they tried to get a bad photo but, no matter what they tried, Barney always looked perfect in each picture.
Interesting that this was the character… I was thinking about Barney just the other day, and thinking his schtick was SO over the top as to be unbelievable. But now my other issue is that since I learned NPH is gay, it’s a bit of a disconnect.
Dinsdale, ask your son about the other shows mentioned, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There’s a show where almost everyone behaves in despicable ways.
Well heck, even Seinfeld. There wasn’t a decent human in the bunch.
I guess I never appreciated the unreliable narrator thing. Never like it in literature. Just not for me. In HIMYM, there are a lot of times they show something and then say - this is what really happened.
I don’t get the idea of unreliable narrator. In terms of HIMYM - can we expect that ANYTHING described/shown actually happened?
I’d say that one main difference between HIMYM and shows like Always Sunny or Seinfeld is that those shows had everyone being terrible people so there was never a question as to why a bunch of nominally decent people hung around with this guy. In Always Sunny and Seinfeld, it was obvious that a large part of what made them a group was that no one else would want to be friends with them.
Another difference is that the Always Sunny and Seinfeld groups were usually terrible at being terrible. If George was trying to deceive a woman into dating him, it would hilariously fall apart due to some happenstance moment from 17 minutes earlier in the show. Barney was (from what I saw) usually portrayed as very successful at getting women to sleep with him by whatever means.