The idea that Fonzie might be objectionable isn’t something I had thought about until this thread, and I’ll add the disclaimer that although I saw most or all of the episodes during the show’s original run when I was a callow teenager, I don’t think I’ve seen more than a half-dozen or so at random since then. So memory and whatnot.
But as I recall the character, and as he’s been remembered and parodied through the years as a figure in pop culture, I do think one might see the issue as women mindlessly losing their agency around him. He just snaps his fingers, as you say, and there they are, all googly-eyed and ready to hop on his motorcycle with him.
Is that a reflection on the character? I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t think of it as anything more than his being a guy who likes the ladies and knowing he’s very attractive to them, and this is simply his variant of Richie calling up a girl in his history class and nervously saying, “Hey, Mary Lou. Wanna go to the movies Saturday night?” But seeing how easy it is for him (Fonzie), and seeing that he never fails, is he exploiting these girls? Might using this seeming “superpower” be taking unfair advantage? (Or do we view it as being filtered through Richie the Nerd’s experience and call him an unreliable narrator, even though such a concept seems a bit too sophisticated for a show like Happy Days?)
I’d want to watch a few episodes and refresh my memory before framing all this as my actual opinion, but I do think that view of Fonzie is available. I’m pretty sure, though, that at the time, the writers would have just considered it another example of how fucking cool this guy was.
In the episode “The Goat” there was a moment that was shocking even at the time. Here’s the dialogue - Barney is talking to Marshall.
Barney: You are hearing this secret, Marshall. I… I slept…
(Marshall covers his ears with his hands and starts singing) Stop…stop doing that.
(Barney throws a bowling ball at him, Marshall catches it) I slept… I slept with Robin.
Marshall: You slept with Robin?
Barney: Are you mad at me?
Marshall: I don’t know.
Barney: How’s the hot dog? Marshall: It’s helping. You slept with Robin?! I… I cannot keep that secret. I mean, you know I at least have to tell Lily.
Barney: You can’t. you can’t tell anyone. Attorney-client privilege.
Marshall: Why are you doing this to me?!
Barney: Because I need you, Marshall, as my lawyer, to prove that I didn’t do anything wrong.
Marshall: How can I help you as your lawyer? You didn’t break any laws, did you? Robin knows you slept with her, doesn’t she?
Barney: I didn’t break any state or federal laws, but I think I broke a much, much higher law. The Bro Code.
Marshall is sincerely asking the bolded question - because he doesn’t know the answer. That’s the kind of person that Barney is portrayed as being - the kind of person that even his best friends are uncertain about how awful he may be
To me Fonzie always seemed to be framed as just being so cool women were attracted to him. That’s why I said he likely would not get the ire of Barney, who definitely did use deceitful practices.
I don’t think you could have a Fonzie character today, but more because the zeitgeist is such that his snapping would be questioned in a way it wasn’t back then. We’re a more cynical audience today. That level of exaggeration of someone being attractive just wouldn’t read the same today. It would read more like people with superpowers that could make people do things they don’t want to do, as we’ve had those types of characters.
I think that you are reading way too deeply into a joke. Marshall doesn’t seriously think that Barney raped their common best friend Robin. It’s a light-hearted sitcom, that’s definitely NOT where they were going. Marshall just doesn’t understand why Barney is asking him for his help AS A LAWYER, and that question is meant to show how ridiculous Barney is being (and indeed, a moment later, we see that Barney wants Marshall to defend him per the Bro Code not the law, so he IS being ridiculous and silly)
That’s a very casual way to legitimately ask someone “you didn’t commit a heinous crime against our mutual best friend, did you?”. I don’t think that’s what Marshall was going for.
I propose: “many people would read anything else as…”
Not automatically or generally, but yes, that is a point.
IMO whether we admit it or not, and however “open” each one of us pretends to be, we all have our little internal mental “Hays Code” about how some subjects must be treaded on lightly or in a certain manner or there must be a lesson about it. Don’t glamorize vice, show crime does not pay, always show good triumph… as each one of us and our cultural zeitgeist defines that “bad thing”. Heck, it’s not just the “wacky pervert” trope, we could also call up the “rules-breaking lone wolf cop” trope or the “establishment scientists knew nothing and only the crank genius was right” tropes.
And that also brings out an important issue: Fonzie even then, in a 1970s fantasy about the late 1950s, was really a character portraying an embodied archetype and that was not even thinly disguised. The supercool guy for whom everything turns out right for no apparent reason. The “men want to be him, women want to be with him” type. It’s obvious even in-universe: not just women fall at his feet, he hits the side of the jukebox and the right record drops in and plays free. In-universe all the girls do want him and the snap means “come and get it”, and interpreting it as some sort of mind control is IMO a very disturbing retcon.
(That 40 years later there’s a generation of incels whining about how they can’t do that IRL is their problem, not that of the creators or fans of Happy Days.)
I think there are two aspects to Barney’s character (as we remember him - I’m ignoring the character development of the last season, especially since I’m pretty sure I stopped watching the show halfway through the last season due to RL circumstances and never got back into it).
First, yes, he pursues women often, and is successful at having one night stands or short periods of casual dating with many of them.
Second is the fact that he achieves this through a very antagonistic relationship with these women. Most of these women ARE NOT looking for casual one night stands. Barney does gain their consent, but through deception - he wants them to give him their “treasure” which they will only do if they think he is interested in a real relationship. Barney fakes the desire for a real relationship long enough to get what he wants, then he’s gone.
I think many of us in this thread have focused on the first aspect, anf whether it is acceptable or not. But the first aspect isn’t the problem. The second one is. It’s an incredibly patriarchal take on sex and relationships and almost a mockery of traditional calues, since Barney isn’t huper-masculine or in line wotj conservative values; but in other ways, and in hindsight, maybe it plays that patriarchal role too straight.
If you were making How I Met Your Mother today* and wanted to include Barney, I think you could totally do so. He could still be wealthy for unspecified reasons, he could continue to pursue casual sex and short term relationships, and you could still derive humor from this. But the women he’s having sex with should KNOW that this is the sort of relationship they’re getting into, and be choosing to do so.
Maybe in 2005 the idea of women choosing to have casual relationships was just too wacky. I think today, this would go over better than lying for sex would.
*actually, now that I think about it, aren’t they doing that with that spinoff about the mom? I’ve seen ads but haven’t watched it at all. Is there a Barney-like character?
And if he, Barney, Joey Tribiani, and the rest are in some way, the avatars of masculine wish-fulfillment, so what, if there’s no coercion, power differential, nonconsensuality, etc… involved?
That’s just it in my book- a lot of the people who view say… Joey as problematic are basically objecting to the idea that men might want and achieve a lot of meaningless sex. Which I don’t get.
Or worse, they’re making a lot of assumptions that it must involve some level of deception, nonconsensuality, power differential, etc… that the evidence isn’t there for.
Just look at the way Marshall asks Barney, the way Barney reacts, and the way the laugh track goes off- he’s clearly making a joke out of it, not taking him seriously. Marshall clearly knows that Barney didn’t rape anyone, and that Barney’s being silly and going on some Bro Code tangent.
This isn’t a case of everyone knowing how sketchy Barney is; if anything this is the opposite.
I’m not familiar with the other examples involved, but the evidence is DEFINITELY there for Barney. Have you watched the show? He has an entire book (both in-show and as a merchandising tie-in) of comically overly complicated schemes meant to trick women into sleeping with him; you can buy a copy for yourself on Amazon.
I thought it was funny in 2010 or whatever, but yeah this definitely didn’t age well. Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely meant as tongue in cheek, poking fun AT pick up artists rather than glamorizing them; but the way it did so is perhaps a bit too subtle because I do think a lot of people unironically lionized Barney
It’s not all incels, it does come from whatever the most current wave of feminism is as well.
More real life examples would be a rock star picking out a woman in the crowd and having an employee ask her backstage. Baseball Derek Jeter reportedly did the same thing.
I think the term they would use is “power imbalance.” Even if the women consent to everything, go in with eyes wide open, and enjoy the experience, it’s wrong because having and using the power is wrong, even if the man worked to earn the power and he uses it benignly. So even though nothing wrong happened, it’s being judged as wrong (for the man only) by an outside third party.
Herb Tarlek from WKRP is sometimes brought up in these sorts of discussions. On the same show, the woman he was pursuing, Jennifer, dated multiple elderly men who would then bestow gifts and money upon her. I don’t think Jennifer would see the same sort of criticism, and if anything, the elderly men would be chided as “dirty old men” even though Jennifer was clearly the one in power.
I do agree that the narrative I described above, where women jealously guard their intimacy, only trading it in exchange for the benefits provided by a relationship, is pretty much exactly the incel worldview, and this sort of media (unintentionally) undoubtedly helped create the societal conditions under which the incels evolved (or at least, it mirrors those conditions in society)
I think I would stop short of calling it “disturbing.” Perhaps “mistaken” or “overanalyzing it.”
As I said in an earlier post, I really don’t think Fonzie’s ways with women were seen by the writers/producers/etc. as anything more or less than a demonstration of how cool this guy is. So obviously he’s going to be successful with women. That’s part of being cool, and possibly it’s a mistake to read any more than that into it. It’s just fifties-themed light entertainment that purports to be nostalgia, designed to sell commercial time.
The wrinkle comes in, I think, when you consider that there’s been a growing tendency since then to read “messages” into various aspects of popular culture. People didn’t talk about that kind of message too much when Happy Days was running, but they talk about it a lot now. I don’t know what the right level of message-reading is, but when you have a guy who can snap his fingers and have women come running (and he can do it frequently and reliably), I’m going to say that I understand that someone might read a general attitude about women into that.
At least starting off, there was a kindergarten teacher, a law student, a junior architect, and a nth-rung TV personality. Pretty sure Barney was the only one who had a high paying job.
But I realize, TV /= reality.
Last night we watched an ep where Barney was apparently bedding one of Ted’s students. At this point he is 30+. Getting close to a squick line (if not over). And there is no “power imbalance” between a wealthy businessman and an undergrad?
Well, that is a bit of a challenge I have w/ MeToo. The definition of consent seems to be changing - especially with power differences and when ETOH is involved. Some of Barney’s lying to stupid young women (and he consistently emphasizes that he seeks out stupid and young women) as he plies them with alcohol - sure exceeds some of what I’ve seen reported as harassment/date rape. And many of Barney’s conquests have been less than happy afterwards - suggesting their consent was less than informed.
Could the same be said about many politicians/celebrities? Not exactly “cool” - but somehow “attractive.”
Aside - I really enjoyed Happy Days back in the day - but I bet if I tried now, it would be unwatchable. So much TV comedy just doesn’t age well.
Y’know what? Now that you mention it… Barney is a caricature of Players/PUAs/“game” as seen by someone who looks down on the Player/PUA/“Game” ways as stupid and unfair and worth ridiculing (and the “real PUAs” would argue that this is not what they are about…).
But notice: worth ridiculing. Not requiring condemnatory judgement. The question in part is if this has by now entered the territory of “there’s things you just don’t joke about” (a whole debate in its own).
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I wonder if as xkcd once famously put it, this sort of character could be portrayed as antagonist/foil to female characters who were themselves involved with “the Rules” sort of sexual gameswomanship. Or if that would itself be off limits as misogynistic.
Including Joey is a red herring - he slept with lots of women, but it was because he was handsome, charming, and later on, a fairly successful actor. No deception involved, no targeting women because they were drunk or vulnerable.
Sometimes he wanted a more serious relationship and it just didn’t work out; he was quite a good boyfriend when he was an actual boyfriend rather than a fling.
He’s one of the least problematic characters in Friends, even today. Even the “woke” people that get criticised are fine with people sleeping around as long as it’s consensual.
Fonzie was a joke character and him clicking his fingers and women swooning was never meant to be a real thing.
It’s not the same as Barney, who occasionally verged into Quagmire territory, though not quite as badly because Quagmire did commit rape at least once (he found a drunk high school cheerleader passed out in a bathroom, and raped her). I don’t know if Barney’s supposed to have ever had sex with someone who’s completely unconscious, but that scene with Marshall indicates that his friends, the normal ones, thought it was at least a possibility.
I always felt like that was part of the point of Barney; he was ALL those things. NPH is a good looking guy, Barney was some kind of successful financial type (what he actually did was a running gag), and charming. He didn’t have to do any of the PUA nonsense or “plays” to score with women, which was part of why he was so worthy of ridicule.
You’re reading WAY too much into a scene where Marshall is clearly giving Barney a hard time. Just because they made a joke out of that, isn’t evidence that he’s prone to that sort of thing.
Absolutely, although some people, even in this thread, don’t seem to believe so. Joey’s a bad comparison because he wasn’t actually doing anything wrong, and Quagmire’s a bad comparison because he was an actual cut-and-dried rapist, but OTOH he was not presented as the kind of person anyone would want to be like.
