Friends had jokes about Monica being fat and Chandler’s dad being transgendered. While Seinfeld had an episode that actually was pretty good satire of the attitudes toward homosexuality at the time.
Ok, please tell us how do you think Seinfeld and Friends were seen with yesterday’s eyes. Do you think Seinfeld was considered more offensive that Friends in the past? Did either of them become more or less offensive over time other than in comparison to each other?
I never found either one of them to be very offensive in the context of the time they were shown. The Seinfeld episode you mention was indeed meant to parody attitudes at the time, did people find it offensive somehow? I don’t remember much about Chandler’s dad, was there something offensive about that?
I’ve heard Friends called homophobic for reasons not given. Was it jokes about characters not wanting to be considered homosexual themselves? Was it that way in Seinfeld?
I think it was Seinfeld. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
It just seems to me like Seinfeld was more self-aware when making jokes about characters not wanting to be seen as gay.
The reason I was thinking about this, is that I seem to remember Friends being seen as the more family friendly series at the time. Especially as it had more sympathetic characters and drama elements. Whereas Seinfeld was about self-absorbed people and more of a straight up comedy.
I don’t know if Seinfeld was considered more offensive. IMHO it had slightly more edge. I tried to watch Friends, but it was just so manufactured sit-commy and the characters were annoying, so I can’t add much else.
I’ve definitely heard more lately about the problematic aspects of Friends than of Seinfeld. The latter has the fact that the leads were never supposed to be good people, so it’s rare that any of their attitudes are seen as supporting those attitudes.
And, yes, I agree that, at the time, Seinfeld was seen as the less okay show. There’s a reason why there was that rivalry between people who liked Seinfeld and those who like Home Improvement, which aired at the same time.
I think the key difference is that, with Seinfeld, the concept was, “Look at how awful these people are,” while Friends was, “Look at how cool these people are.” Couple decades later, the awful behavior in Seinfeld is still awful, but the cool behavior in Friends isn’t nearly as cool anymore.
Was that considered offensive? I can understand it being taken in different ways. I did think it was problematic because it sounded somewhat like people who say something offensive then say “No offense intended”, but not always maybe. I think there were times the characters were conveying the words of someone else and clarifying that it didn’t represent their own feelings, though in a clumsy manner.
Do you have an example of this? I don’t have that kind of detailed memory of Friends. Was it jokes about characters not wanting to be considered gay?
Hey, so when was Seinfeld(the show) offensive? I am genuinely asking as it has been many years for me.
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The “we’re not gay” episode doesn’t offend me today. It’s a mildly comical situation and they seem to genuinely emphasize “it’s perfectly natural” and “not that there is anything wrong with that” throughout. It’s borderline cliche sitcom for two guy friends to be confused as gay and for them, who are both not gay, to explain to girls that they are not. :shrug:
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The Puerto Rico Flag getting burned or damaged? I think the whole point was how terrible this was and that it was not intended by the character(Kramer?).
Are there other potential issues?
I remember the masturbation episode getting some flack back in the day.
There was an episode in which Jerry buys a cigar store Indian statue and makes a bunch of dumb, racist jokes. That didn’t get any flack then, but probably would now.
There was also the Puerto Rican Day episode in which a PR flag is burned. It did get some criticism at the time.
Both Seinfeld and Friends are just aggressively white and that hasn’t aged well.
Chandler’s father and mother divorced because of the father’s cross-dressing and his affair with the pool boy\servant. (More turkey, Mr Chandler?) He would show up at Chandler’s sports matches dressed as Carmen Miranda, complete with the fruity hat. He then gave the fruit to his friends as a healthy snack.
After the divorce, the father moved to Vegas and started an all-male burlesque called Viva Las Gaygas.
> Phoebe: All right. Forget hypnosis.The way to quit smoking is you have to dance naked in a field of heather, and then bathe in the sweat of six healthy young men.
Chandler: Or what my father calls Thursday night.
It is funny, but I can see that it portrays his father as an unflattering stereotype. I don’t recall attempt to redeem that impression during the show, it was an ongoing joke throughout I think.
I forgot about Ross’s ex-wife and her lesbian partner. Did that bring up issues?
The show didn’t get any flack in real life, but part of that was probably that Jerry the Character got flack in the show itself. He made the racist jokes in front of Elaine’s friend, who he didn’t know was Native American. She stormed out offended, and Elaine basically called him an idiot. So the real joke was actually the clueless white guy getting slapped down for being racist.
Friends was quite homophobic, especially viewed from today. See the linked article below for specific examples.
As @Miller says above, Seinfeld had plenty of uncomfortable scenes, but the butts of the jokes were the straight, white characters. In Friends, the butts of the jokes were anyone different.
In the “not that there’s anything wrong with that” episode of Seinfeld, the humor is the disconnect in Jerry and George insisting that being gay is fine, as long as no one thinks they are. In Friends, Joey and Chandler wake up from a nap next to each other and go to extreme lengths to say they aren’t gay. But the humor is simply the lengths they go to, not the disconnect between being OK with gays “but we’re not.” It doesn’t even need to be stated that of course it’s bad to be gay, or at best, deserving of ridicule.
Seinfeld had a lot of little ‘gayish’ moments, but I don’t think they were offensive, they were produced in the spirit of the times. (George getting a massage from a masseur and ‘it moved’ - gay panic! well, that happens, is it offensive?). I was annoyed at Elaine, even back then, in ‘The Beard’ when she so confidently informed Jerry she was going to convert her gay friend (that she was bearding for) to heterosexuality. Some women think they’re all. that. and who could possibly resist? I guess he performed well, but to her dismay, the conversion didn’t ‘take’.
Kinda, but not really. Later Kramer drives by with the statue in a cab and does a stereotypical war whoop. It’s all played very light and the racism has no real consequences for Jerry. The show was by and for white people, there are no characters who aren’t white and while the show had astronomical ratings among whites, it had minuscule ratings among Black Americans.
Dharma and Greg had an episode where the titular couple decided to have public sex during the Seinfeld finale, figuring they could get away with it because everyone would be watching the show.
They get caught by a Black guy.
Nice touch. I remember studying the demographics of that show in a grad school class on American politics.