Friends - Context
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Discussion Points
The young characters have a very care-free attitude to life and relationships. They model a very relaxed style of living in pre 9/11 America. References to popular culture such as TV, Film and Literature are frequent and accessible to a global audience.
The ‘twixter’ generation in the 1990’s America was the generation of young adults that seem permanently trapped between adolescence and adulthood. It could be said that it takes 10 seasons of Friends for them all to move on to adulthood.
Rachel’s arrival in the city seems to represent the next young adult hoping to pursue a new life in the city. The short introductions to each character indicate that each of them are quite independently in the city away from parents and family and looking to live out their dreams in the big city. Even in 1990’s there were plenty of films and television programmes about the American Dream and ‘making it in the city’.
We are introduced to 3 characters in Friends that epitomise the term new-man. Talking about their emotions, supportive to each other and having positive relationships with women demonstrates a definite development of sitcoms that would focus on strong alpha males in charge of a household. This reflects the ‘metrosexual man’ a term first coined in 1994.
We meet 6 white middle-class characters enjoying luxury time in a spacious apartment and comfortable coffee shop. This is not truly reflective of the 1990's New York City and is actually quite a limited cross-section of culture.