ORAL BAC AMC dossier

« INTRO: Good friends are the family we wish we were born with. The world-famous American sitcom FRIENDS was released for the first time on the 22nd of September 1994 and some might presume it ended on May the 6th 2004.

Altough, the 13th most popular tv-show of all time according to The Stacker never lost its sparkle especially among today’s young adults who still really appreciate the sitcom and relate to it.

This set echoes the theme that was mentionned in the curriculum as “Représenter le Monde et se Représenter”. While the sitcom was initially aimed to tell the story of a group of 6 young adults living in New York in the most simple way , the impact it had on youth is undeniable both in terms of selfrepresentation as on the way the 90s and New York were mirrored. This set of documents is composed of 6 documents.

The first and the third documents both deal with the way Friends romances our idea of Friendship, the first one being a video by The Take and the third one an article by BBC.

The second document in a graph made by The Economist that exposes the rate of murders in NYC and in London from 1990 to 2018.

The fourth document also is an article by USA Today.

It deals with the massive media coverage that took place on instagram after the famous star Jennifer Aniston opened her account.

The fifth document is an article by the National Bureau of Economic Research NBER that reviews the various factors of crime rate diminution by the Mid-90s.

Finally, the 6th document is a graph which adresses the evolution of ethnical variety in NYC from 1990 until 2015.

Taking into account each document’s specifities we’ll attempt to explain to what extent does FRIENDS mirror the way America sees itself. I.

Romanticizing a country and a time that never existed 1.

American Dream The show is so encered in the late 90s and beginning of the 2000s while still fantacising it, that it created some biaised feeling of nostalgia among the fandom.

Indeed as underlined in doc C, this nostalgia must also be due to the abscence of phones and social media that can nowadays appear as easily accessible distractions that inhibit our social interractions.

The biased representation Friends offers of NYC truly embodies the american dream, where media intentionally decides not to mention some outcomes in the sake of spreading a fanticized image of the USA to the world.

This delusion still holds a place in Friends fandom that still massively dreams of this romantacized era in NYC and even feels nostalgic for something that’s barely accurate.

Nevertheless, the sitcom still somehow represented quite accurately the american conception of capitalism and meritocracy as almost all the characters make their way through their careers in quite unforgiving fields as cinema or fashion. Furthermore, as mentionned in document A, the whole plot of the TV-Show was portrayed in its pilot when Rachel choses friends over marriage that wasn’t motivated by love, and begins a new life in the city.

The audience could already understand that the show deals with friendship and adulthood.

The only problem is that this image of adulthood is quite biased as it is far from the reality of living in NYC.

The 6 of them barely suffer from precarity while some of them don’t have really remunerative jobs as a masseuse or a struggling actor.

This social issue has superficially been tackled in the first seasons when the financial gap inside of the group lead to several conflicts but the show never really showed how it affects people’s lives.

Indeed, it can be quite surprising to see them hang out almost all the time at the coffehouse as if they have no jobs as underlined in document B. II.

An Unrealistic portrayal of 90s NYC 1.

LACK OF DIVERSITY The unrealist portrayal that is made of 90s NYC is also due to the show massively lacking ethnical diversity, while as it was shown in document F, more than half of NYC’s population has diverse origins and this wasn’t really depicted in the show.

Rachel, Monica and Phoebe suffered from some mysoginism sometimes but this was also understated.

None of them had to face injustices as racism or homophobia that were quite proeminent at that time in NYC as the cast was not really diversified ethnically.

On top of that, the sitcom itself offered several unfair outlooks towards some minorities.

Moreover, producer Kauffman himself said he regretted the several transphobic remarks in the show towards Chandler’s father as explained in document B.

Indeed, FRIENDS did not include any main charater coming from a minority and only secondary roles were offered.... »