Is Seinfeld less offensive than Friends seen with today's eyes?

Cafe Society
21

It’s not that Seinfeld has aged particularly well. I recall several episodes where the plot turned on cringe-worthy points. It’s just that we can write those off as the characters being unlikeable instead of the concepts being stereotyped. Friends was nominated for three GLAAD awards, winning one. Seinfeld wasn’t even nominated. The Friends episode in which Ross’s ex-wife marries the woman she left Ross for was fairly ground-breaking at the time. When it aired, same-sex marriages were not legal in ANY US. states.

There are works that were prejudiced even by the standards of their time. I give you Gone With the Wind. (Just don’t give it back.) Neither Friends nor Seinfeld meet that criteria Why are we expecting sit-coms that tackled subjects that were controversial for their tine would somehow reflect the humor and attitudes of today? I’d guess that the only series to fare well in that regard are those that never broached the controversial on the first place.

22

“This was pretty good for its time,” doesn’t really speak to the question of how well its aged, though. The motivation behind collecting the stories that became the Uncle Remus books was very progressive for its day, but Song of the South is still pretty cringy by modern standards.

23

Didn’t it win one for the Not-That-There’s-Anything-Wrong episode?

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It did.

25

What helps Seinfeld even with that stuff–at no point in-universe was Jerry’s actions related to the cigar store Indian portrayed as okay. He was actually trying to date an attractive Native American woman in that same episode and was racist toward her as well–this was not portrayed as a positive character trait. I often feel like this is a common failure in modern analyses of old TV. I don’t really find it problematic to portray racism if you portray it as a negative behavior. Like to remove any veneer of comedy, look at the film Mississippi Burning, contains massive racism, but it is literally a movie about how terrible and violent racists were in the early Civil Rights era in the 60s, it isn’t problematic to portray racism negatively. At least not inherently, there can be inappropriate ways to portray it negatively sure, and you could make that argument about Seinfeld and the cigar store Indian–but I tend to think it’s fine given Jerry was portrayed negatively for it and was generally thought of as a thoughtless ass as a core character trait.

You may be reading the wrong kind of literature, but there is nothing wrong with being white, and the term “aggressively white” has functionally no meaning.

26

He wasn’t racist towards her. He almost said “indian giver” and then became highly aware of language issues and tried to avoid saying “ticket scalper”.

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I wonder what @madmonk28 meant by “aggressively white.” But it’s true that most of the main, side, and one-off characters in Seinfeld were white (maybe in Friends too, but I never watched it). Would this have been wildly unrealistic for its setting?

28

I mean I think the reality is in the 1990s and in the 2020s most groups of white folk primarily have a very high percentage of their friends as other white folk. A multi-ethnic metropolitan city will, on average, be more likely to have racially mixed friend groups, but I would not be surprised to find out that even in this modern era most groups of white people probably predominantly have white friends. I think we don’t self-segregate as much as we once did, but I think there are still a lot of cultural reasons that it happens.

Neither series was amazingly realistic.

Friends had an extremely unrealistic setting in that a good portion of the characters were basically unemployed for most of the series but seemed to live in apartments that would have been wildly expensive in Manhattan, even in the 1990s.

Seinfeld was a little more realistic in that regard–Jerry is portrayed as a successful comedian (he has in-character appearances on the Tonight Show), and he has a relatively small 1 bedroom apartment. George has to live with his parents for long stretches of the show due to poor employment scenarios, Kramer inexplicably lives without working but it’s a tongue-in-cheek thing and is made fun of a lot, and while not frequently mentioned–Elaine has in common with the real life Julia Louis-Dreyfus that she has a very rich father and I assume that explains at least some of her lifestyle (JLD’s father in real life was a billionaire.)

In the 90s and maybe even still today–I don’t watch nearly as much modern network sitcoms, there was a practice of literally creating “for black folk” sitcoms, that would have all or almost all black casts, and be intended for black audiences. (There were also some shows like the Cosby show that had mostly black casts but were intended for white audiences.) Most sitcoms of the 90s seemed pretty racially segregated. In fact most of the major ones were: Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Home Improvement, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Full House, Everybody Loves Raymond, Family Matters, Roseanne–list goes on and on, virtually all of these shows had almost all white or all black main casts.

Edit: I don’t have nearly the comprehensive “recall” of Friends, because I haven’t rewatched it repeatedly like I have Seinfeld, but at least to my memory Seinfeld was the more “racially aware” of the two shows. Friends I struggle to remember many episodes where race is even addressed or a topic. Seinfeld has many episodes where race is a topic–usually in the vein of poking “light” fun at the fact that while all four of the main, white characters, are of the cultural background where they want to be seen as racially progressive, accepting of minorities etc…all have a lot of implicit bias. Being familiar with Larry David and Seinfeld’s work, I don’t think they were making any bold racial statement other than they found it funny how most educated urban white folk (at least in the 90s, probably still today), are not nearly as non-racist as they want to believe.

29

I recently finished watching Seinfeld all the way through, and my family seems to watch Friends all the time.

Both have a fair amount of gay panic, but it’s much worse in Friends, The fat jokes in Friends are just accepted, whereas in Seinfeld, there was a bunch of fat jokes that, effectively, help land them all in jail.

The Native American episode from Seinfeld was pretty cringy by today’s standards. Also, their portrayal of Asians was pretty bad throughout.

Having a lesbian couple in Friends was pretty progressive. Ross had a Black and an Asian girlfriend, Elaine thought she had a Black boyfriend. But, the gay panic between Joey and Chandler and the fat jokes were bad.

On balance, I would say that Seinfeld aged better, because as people said above, they were supposed to be terrible people, so when they said terrible things, it seems more acceptable.

30

I said what I meant, it was made by and for white people. Anyone who isn’t white is just a background extra with no more depth than the cigar store Indian statue. It is set in NY but might as well have been in Mayberry for all the diversity it showed.

And let’s not forget Michael Richards screaming the N word in a comedy club at a table if peopl,

31

Which is why I asked how realistic that was for that time and place. Some real-life settings really are racially homogeneous, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with setting a sitcom in such an environment.

And it may have been made “by and for white people,” but more specifically, the type of people it was made by were to a large extent New-York-Jewish-style white people living in a different cultural milieu than many of the show’s audience.

32

You’re wondering if New York City is racially diverse?

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I don’t really read that as the question, I think the question is how realistic is it that a group of four close friends would be white and/or not racially diverse in New York City. I don’t think we can delve any amazingly apt statistics for this, but I think it is still fair to say most Americans move in primarily racially segregated close friend and family groups. Obviously less so in more racially integrated portions of the country.

Note the background of the Seinfeld main four: Jerry and George are childhood friends who went to High School and college together in Queen’s, NY, growing up in the 60s/70s. Very likely that kids growing up in Queens in the 60s/70s of their background (Italian American and Jewish) would not have black friends. Elaine is a former girlfriend of Jerry’s, also still the case that the vast majority of Americans date other white people. And Kramer was Jerry’s random neighbor. You could argue that there would be some likelihood Kramer wouldn’t be a white guy, but even that is in doubt when you dig deeper. Jerry lived in the Upper West side of Manhattan, which is majority white in 2022 and was majority white in the 1990s (around 70%), there have been demographic changes–it had more blacks living in it in the 1990s, and less today, and it had much fewer Asians living in it in the 1990s and much more today, but it is still a majority white neighborhood.

In doing some brief research on living patterns and racial segregation/integration, I was surprised to find that it is estimated as of 2014, 78% of New York’s white residents live in groupings that are more concentrated white than New York’s overall population would suggest if they were “evenly sorted” along the racial percentages of the city. I.e. most New Yorkers of white race, live in whiter surroundings than is the city’s overall demographic mix.

34

Wait, are you saying that NYC wasn’t racially diverse in the time of the show?

Seinfeld is every bit as white as a show like Good Times, or Sanford and Son were Black. That whiteness might not be a problem except that Good Times and Sanford and Son were off the air by the time of Seinfeld and there was a lot of whiteness on Primetime by then.

Black people were invisible on Seinfeld and maybe had a line or two, but were mostly just props. The real problem though is how comfortable we all were with this whiteness. We didn’t question it and even now trying to point it out is triggering for people.

35

There is no real problem with a show not featuring black people. Morally or otherwise. It is also not a problem to be comfortable with an all white cast. Also curious who you are saying is “triggered?”

36

Sitcoms were rarely diverse at all. Julia & Hogan’s Heroes both standout for being a little diverse in the 60s.
All in the Family (the first few years) and the Jeffersons of course.
MASH at least had a recurring black nurse and in season 1 a black Doctor, but that was about it. Not even the enlisted were black.

Taxi barely qualifies with Jeff I guess. But he was a minor recurring background character.
WKRP had their one character.
Barney Miller was pretty diverse, especially at first. Less as the years went on.
The short lived CPO Sharkey had a Black Chief but I don’t remember any of the regular recruits being black. Pretty bad considering the situation.

37

Did they say there was something wrong with being white?

What kind of literature is the “wrong kind”?

Also, while you might find the meaning of “aggressively white” to be unclear, it absolutely has functional meaning, just like “aggressively spicy” has meaning that is functional if not completely clear.

38

There was one black recruit in the main cast, seen at left here:

39

I’m sure NYC is racially diverse as a whole, but I have no idea how much diversity there is within individual neighborhoods. So I was looking for the kind of info that @Martin_Hyde gave.

40

When they write TV shows based on our personal lives, how many characters will be of a different racial persuasion?

The cast of my show will be pretty white with a Black and Hispanic character or two in recurring roles. An occasional gay character was well.

There will be Russian family next door, a nosy retired white neighbor, and and redneck neighbor across the street.

And I live in Sacramento. It would have been a little different when I lived in L.A., but not THAT much.

Which is long-winded way of saying that the racial diversity, or lack thereof, of these shows looked a lot like my life. More Seinfeld than Friends but I could identify in both.