stop asking the Friends cast to confront structural racism: what’s to be gained by fixing the past?

guest post by David Odyssey

Like many children of the VHS era, I grew up rewinding the Star Wars trilogy box set, its paper casing worn and ripped after endless slumber parties and sick days. And then came 1997. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, George Lucas, the visionary behind the sci-fi juggernaut, released a re-edited version of the saga, this time replacing hand-puppeted alien life-forms with CGI, and changing character beats so that once-dubious antiheroes would play off as morally superior. 

I felt violated. Is that what it was like when they made cuts to the Old Testament? What did it mean that an extant artistic statement could be picked up, ripped apart, and rearranged on a whim, long after it had been released into the cultural imagination? Was the original Star Wars, which I and my brothers grew up with, lesser, outdated, undone? Could an artist walk into a museum and edit his work, even after it had been displayed permanently? 

I had thought that this was a rarity, a blip by a tyrant who couldn’t let go. But Lucas was just the beginning. The last decade has seen the rise of YouTube reaction videos and “Everything wrong with” content. And, as a craven press attempts to win over the cheugy tastes and oppressive moralisms of Gen Z, it seems that everything is under review. Television, literature and films made decades (and, in the case of Agatha Christie, a century) ago are not being criticized or explored as elements of an evolving historical canon, but processed under rigid contemporaneous guidelines. 

By arming the commoner with the technology to easily film and edit their own work, and even make supercuts of their favorite characters “being chaotic,” we have created armies of propaganda engineers, whose perspective has been warped by the time-addling effects of the internet, and digital streaming. The past is flattened into a Wikipedia entry, with no context or space for evolution. Everything can be edited and cleaned up to fit our current understanding of “right.” We can now optimize classic literature, make it more “empowering” and less problematic.

This form of cultural cannibalism recurs most punishingly in response to Friends, the banal, ubiquitous sitcom which ended its ten-year run in 2004. It seems that every month now, a cast-member or executive producer is asked if the show would be more diverse if it were made today. Dazed sitcom actors blink, stutter and attempt to apologize for the show, affirming all the ways that “things have changed” since the ’90s. 

If it were made today. What is today? Who owns today? Is TV better, or more just? Are audiences wiser, better, more evolved? And would Friends even be a hit if made today — all-beige cast or otherwise? Would it air on NBC, or on a streaming network? Still filmed in Burbank? We will never know. That’s not how history works. Everything — every life, every event, every piece of entertainment — is a product of its time. And now, that can no longer be forgiven. Like toddlers who must have the edges cut off their PB&J sandwiches, the new generation of consumer must exert their myopia over space and time, demanding that anything they find offensive be remade to fit their values. 

Should context be considered? Perhaps Friends succeeded because of its anodyne, manna-from-heaven nature; it can be whatever you need it to be, at 6pm when you’re on an elliptical machine death-march at Crunch Fitness. Friends debuted its overwhelmingly white cast in 1994, and its first seasons ran during what could be considered a boom period for Black TV, which included: Martin, Living Single, Sister Sister, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters, and soon The Wayans Brothers, In the House, Moesha and The Jamie Foxx Show. Does that mean that Friends got a pass to be so punishingly, blandly white? No. Friends can and should be put under a critical lens, but only as an artifact of its era, in conversation with the work and politics of the decade that spawned it. 

Culture should progress; its standards should change, especially as expanded vision takes firmament in the collective understanding. I recently rewatched Leon: The Professional, a favorite from my teen years. Upon seeing an 11 year-old Natalie Portman dressed like a hardcore La Femme Lolita, I felt alright putting the movie aside. I don’t need to see it again, I think. But that doesn’t mean it’s up for revision. It’s done, geschribben, as my Aunt Margie would say. It doesn’t belong to me. It doesn’t even belong to its creator anymore. It’s history now, woven into the tapestry, a part of the mosaic, whether we like it or not. 

To accept fate is not to believe that everything happens for a reason, but that everything happens — period. Roald Dahl was a virulent anti-semite. He also told some of the definitive stories of the last two hundred years. For one to be true, another doesn’t need to be corrected. 

There’s nothing we can do but accept the past: its imperfections and its glories, and appreciate that our universe only evolves through cataclysm, combustion and creation; from one piece of art comes another, and then another. You know the rules of every time travel movie: If you take something out of the timeline and try to fix it, you’ll break reality. All we have is the future. 

I have no doubt that Friends will be playing on Jumbotron screens as I toil to my death in the old-age concentration camps of the future. It will air long after the extinction of the human race, “Smelly Cat” echoing through the cosmos for eons to come. But even the most advanced alien intelligences would understand that it is a relic. Something from the past to make us laugh. Nothing more. It’s likely that Friends may have no profound effect on the development of human consciousness. But that doesn’t mean it needs to be augmented, upgraded, improved to be something it never was. Let it be bland. Let it be banal. Just let it be. 

DAVID ODYSSEY is a writer and astrologer based in NYC and Tel Aviv. He is the astrology columnist for NYLON and writes about his exploits — cosmic, sexual, spiritual and otherwise — on his Substack. IG: @david_odyssey Twitter: @adavidodyssey Substack:

originally published in cracks in pomo: the zine

Check out David’s appearance on Cracks in PoMo the pod here

Graphic by Patrick Keohane (Revolving Style) @revolvingstyle