Considering his regrets, it is a sad irony that Perry catapulted to fame starring in a show that did more to mainstream the Sexual Revolution than any other. Friends deliberately pushed the envelope on a host of social issues, normalizing same-sex ‘marriage,’ surrogacy, pornography addiction, and cross-dressing, wrapped carefully in comedy and showcased by brilliant, attractive actors. But it was casual hookups and predatory sexual behavior that made up the core of the show. Over the ten-season run, NBC’s flagship sitcom portrayed the six friends having a total of 85 sexual partners without ever contracting an STD or getting an abortion—and it was all portrayed as innocent, normal fun.
More than any previous sitcom, Friends normalized this hookup culture. As Jasmine Lee wrote for Screen Prism, “Friends showcases sex as just a natural act in which two consenting adults participate. Sex doesn’t change the world, doesn’t lock two people into a ‘til-death-do-us-part commitment, and doesn’t require much more than ‘Yeah, s/he’s cute, I’m interested in his/her sexy bits, let’s get it on.’ Considering this was a primetime television show, this is a fabulous piece of normalizing presentation.” Or as cultural analyst Samantha Allen observed, the most enduring cultural legacy of Friends was its mainstreaming of casual sex; the show, she noted, broke TV taboos and gave viewers “a decade-long crash course in sex education.”
As Sebastian Morello has written, that ‘education’ didn’t work out well for those who received it.
Decades later, after much experience of sexual degradation, superficial (virtual, even) ‘friendships,’ captivity by addiction, economic disparity, rising debt, and family breakdown, the attempt to conform our world to the liberal sitcom has left us jaded. Friends-educated millennials are generally more at home in virtual reality (or, unreality) than reality, they struggle to make prudent professional decisions, are alarmingly entitled, and have extremely unstable friendship groups and sex lives. Millennials haven’t just been unable to get the large apartments next to Central Park, they won’t even get mortgages in the whole course of their lives. Trapped inside the comedy, they’ve discovered it’s nothing like its portrayal on the television, and it’s definitely not funny.
Continued…
R&I ~ MJM
Willie Wanker
Article URL : https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-truth-about-matthew-perry/