Friday, January 23, 2015

Nightmare at Central Perk

And the menace of Chandler Bing. It's no wonder the Social Justice Warriors are always so on edge. For them, the clock is always ticking on when their attitudes and actions will abruptly transform from heroic to villainesque:
Chandler, identified in Season 1 as having a “quality” of gayness about him, is endlessly paranoid about being perceived as insufficiently masculine. He’s freaked out by hugs, and by Joey having a pink pillow on his couch. (“If you let this go, you’re going to be sitting around with your fingers soaking in stuff!”)

In retrospect, the entire show’s treatment of LGBTQ issues is awful, a fault pointedly illustrated by the exhaustive clip-compilation “Homophobic Friends.” But Chandler’s treatment of his gay father, a Vegas drag queen played by Kathleen Turner, is especially appalling, and it’s not clear the show knows it. It’s one thing for Chandler to recall being embarrassed as a kid, but he is actively resentful and mocking of his loving, involved father right up until his own wedding (to which his father is initially not invited!). Even a line like “Hi, Dad” is delivered with vicious sarcasm. Monica eventually cajoles him into a grudging reconciliation, which the show treats as an acceptably warm conclusion. But his continuing discomfort now reads as jarringly out-of-place for a supposedly hip New York thirtysomething—let alone a supposedly good person, period.

When it comes to women, Chandler turns out to be just as retrograde as Joey, but his lust comes with an undercurrent of the kind of bitter desperation that I now recognize as not only gross, but potentially menacing.
Yes, I know that when I am in the mood for a scary horror movie, my first thought is to dial up an episode of Friends. It's somehow appropriate that Chandler Bing, of all people, should turn out to be the Freddy Krueger for the Millennial generation.

The best that one can say of these people is that they are differently sane.


43 comments:

JohnR219 said...

The comment section takes her apart. I know Slate skews liberal but they don't like this article.

Someone also points out the character had a very screwed up childhood, so.....

LP2021 Bank of LP Work in Progress said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Stg58/Animal Mother said...

Chandler hates his dad because he robbed Chandler of having an actual dad. Instead Chandler got a useless freak for a father. I'd be pissed too, for not having an anchor, an example of masculinity. My dad fought the Panthers in the streets in the 60's. I got all the example I needed.

Thanks, Dad. I hope you are doing okay.

Anonymous said...

It's hilarious to watch good Hollywood leftists being bashed by their own for being unable to travel through time and tell their younger selves what the future standards would be. The makers of Friends thought (and they were right) that they were being subversive and advancing the cause of deviancy by having a lesbian wedding and a drag queen on their network TV show, but it turns out they were being hateful. Who knew!

Plus they were racist, you know, never had a major black character. It's a wonder they haven't all been pilloried yet.

Stg58/Animal Mother said...

The show has three hot women on it. Does that count for anything?

Anonymous said...

The show has three hot women on it.

You aren't kidding. I never watched the show much, but I saw a clip the other day, and in the words of Craig and Smokey, "Daaaaamn!" I know some people find Aniston kind of plain, but that girl had one heck of a tight body.

Anonymous said...

"Friends" is extremely overrated and utterly morally bankrupt, but it makes me laugh sometimes. I actually like Matthew Perry and his character.

I was disgusted and Ross figured out a way to keep his wife infant daughter from moving out of the country and decides to let her baby mama taker her away from him to live in a foreign country anyway. Then he wins her back not for his infant daughter's sake, who remember would have been growing up without a father, but because he wanted to marry the baby mama. You suck, Ross.

#6277Hammer said...

Oh for f**ksakes.....have they nothing better to do. Trawling through decades old shows pointing out its evil....mad I tell you....SJW'se are mad

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

I couldn't stand the show. Way overrated. It was on Thursday night, if I remember, and everyone talked about it in the office the next morning. In fact, apparently they're still talking about it 11 years later.

Stg58/Animal Mother said...

My biggest problem was trying to decide which one was the hottest. The only thing that show lacked was a redhead.

Alexander said...

This line is key:

Joey is great! Sure, he loves beautiful women, but somehow his openness and goofiness—and Matt LeBlanc’s performance—still make him easy to watch.

Yes, because loving beautiful women is a sign of a horrible person, and all other traits must work to, at best, neutralize it: objective beauty being an abomination to the postmodern leftist.

Harambe said...

If you want to see how far we've gone and how quickly we've made that trip, fire up an episode or two of Frasier. For its time, it was very progressive and liberal, but homo's are portrayed as queer (in the original sense of the word), a gun in the house is normal and was just a set up for a joke later in the show. The token slut is never applauded for her bravery, she is lightheartedly teased by most and even ridiculed by Niles. Also, Niles is appalled when someone thinks he's gay. For the most part, male-female relations happen in the context of a relationship (this changed round about season 5 or so).

#6277Hammer said...

"Niles is appalled when someone thinks he's gay"

Oh crap JP, you just gave Slate fodder for their next "article"!

Anonymous said...

more proof that women HATE betas.

Anonymous said...

The best that one can say of these people is that they are differently sane.

Hey now, don't lump them in with me. I was here first.

Go find your own adjectival phrases. Shoo!

Midknight said...

IN the otherwise cruddy and depressing "The Ghost from the Grand Banks" by Clark, he predicted that in the future, there'd be a huge industry in retconning movies to paint out cigarettes/etc. since smoking had been recognized as the great scourge.

Of course, this was a "good thing"

Gunnarvoncowtown von Cowtown said...

@cailcorishev I thought the same thing while channel surfing past Nick at Night recently. Even though Jennifer Aniston has regularly slathered herself in Aveeno, stayed thin and grown out her locks, it's still amazing how much prettier she was twenty years ago. #fertilitywindow

@Alexander and manofstealblog
Precisely. That's why Joey (alpha) gets a pass, and they treat Chandler (beta) like a punching bag. The instinct is so powerful that it still applies to fictional characters two decades later.

Feather Blade said...

Something something applying modern American standards to the past and other foreign cultures etc.

I wonder if SJWs ever get tired of being so narrow-minded and ethnocentricaly parochial.

Tommy Hass said...

"more proof that women HATE betas."

Exacta. Chandler is a potential gamma for them. Smells like Elliott Rodger. Well not really, but he isn't as effortless with chicks as Joey is, so he is a potential rapist. Lol.

Anonymous said...

Elliot Rodger was a classic Omega, bro.

Stg58/Animal Mother said...

Aniston was a hard 10 for the entire run of Friends. If you disagree you're gay.

Anonymous said...

Oh Please Please Please tell me that Mathew Perry is going to apologize for his role in this. That would be delicious.

My biggest problem was trying to decide which one was the hottest. The only thing that show lacked was a redhead.

Aniston. And Brad Pitt should have stayed with her. Not only is she hotter than Jolie she is by all appearances a better person. Now he is running some sort of 3rd world orphanage where he has admitted to treating his adopted kids better due to their lack of privilege and his 5-6 year old biological daughter is now rebelling by claiming to be a boy named John, which he is okay and supportive of.

Anonymous said...

Gunnar, yep. She's 45 now, and while she still looks good, she certainly doesn't look young anymore. Shame to think those genes stop with her. Like the last guy said, she's always been described as a nice person, too, none of the usual Hollywood airs. Seems like kind of a sad story, really.

According to Wikipedia, it looks like she's 2-3 years into an engagement. Just in time!

Revelation Means Hope said...

I used to think the blonde was the most irritating character because she was played "dumb". Phoebe. took me awhile to recall her name.
Within a couple years, I realized that she was the only character whom I would be able to stand hanging around for more than 1 hour in real life. Biggest boobs, too.

And Joey was the only non-beta character. Ross is gamma, Chandler is beta.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Wouldn't it be true to say that none of the characters on 'Friends' was particularly attractive, funny, or interesting?

JohnR219 said...

cail. Aniston always struck me as a flake. Got married and didn't want a kid. I think that's the biggest reason Pitt left her. He wanted children and she didn't. She went through a lot men too. I always saw her as the original Taylor Swift.

Anonymous said...

And Phoebe didn't believe in evolution before it was popular.

JohnR219 said...

LBF: Yes...

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

@JohnR219 ~ I never understood the appeal of such a mediocre production. It became very popular in the UK, too.

Markku said...

"differently sane"

I steal.

Markku said...

Remember, fence sitters. Our values are millennia old. They're not about to change. Be loyal to us, and we're loyal to you. Be an enemy to us, and we'll be an enemy to you. Make your choice, and it's permanent.

But if you choose those guys over there, well, they might be at your throat five years later even if you did your very best to appease them. And you'll STILL be an enemy to us, and we will... well, I'm not saying what we will. But we will.

S. Thermite said...

"Chandler is painted as a self-loathing loser with women... He was 19 when he first touched a woman’s breasts, for example."

Does this mean we can we assume the author was a "winner" with guys and let one stick it in her at age 14? And isn't it the SJWs who are always saying it's wrong to judge someone based on their sexual history? Wow...just wow.

"If an actual friend behaved this way, I’d be tempted to slap him...After all, if we’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that nerds are not necessarily sweet and lovable; they can also be misogynist jerks, or worse."

Great, another anti-GamerGater fantasizing about committing violence

"Maybe by 2015, Chandler would have gotten some therapy"

It's called Game, girl.

"He could grow up, embrace his softer side"

Or he could learn how to watch what a woman does rather than listen to what she says.

"Could he be a bigger creep?

manofstealblog already beat me to it - "more proof that women HATE betas"

Retrenched said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Retrenched said...

Aniston was about a 7, tops, even at her best. Would still bang of course.

Stg58/Animal Mother said...

Retrenched you are obviously gay.

mmaier2112 said...

Aniston is an 8 instead of a 7. But sure as hell no 10, even in her "commando" dress.

CR: you obviously have low standards.

Anonymous said...

If you are doing anything other than debating whether 1990's Aniston is a 9 or 10, your grading scale is skewed such that 95% of all women rank below a 7.

Anonymous said...

One obnoxious aspect of the manosphere is the way you can mention a woman who was hired and given lots of money specifically because she was hotter than 99.99% of women, and some guy will insist that she's barely doable. I think I know what they're trying to do, sort of a species-wide neg, but it doesn't work. It just comes off as trying too hard, as if to say, "I don't find her as hot as you all do, therefore you are desperate geeks compared to me. Bow to my manliness!"

Feminists give themselves feelgood by denying reality. We shouldn't do the same.

mmaier2112 said...

@whateveritsrandomcharacterinternetname is:

What guy thinks 1/10 of women are 10s?

mmaier2112 said...

@cali: it's not a neg and it's not trying too hard. It's just different opinions on what you find attractive and how potent that attractiveness is.

There women out there that make my heart melt at 100 paces. You see a handful of such women a year out and about in life. I don't know how rare they statistically are and I don't care. That's a 10 to me.

I am not going to call Aniston a "10" when I see women prettier than her all the time and they're not making my heart melt.

Similarly, how many women make you involuntarily swear out loud from how ugly they are? Yeah... that's a 1.

If you want to have a system that doesn't hugely bulge in the middle with all the average females, that's your prerogative. Some of us differ.

Anonymous said...

Differing opinions is when you say, "I recognize that she's objectively attractive and most guys would call her a 9-10, but there's something about her that doesn't do it for me." Not when you say, "If you disagree with me, your standards are too low." See the difference? If it's just your opinion, why should another man's standards be affected by it?

Stg58/Animal Mother said...

Mike, I have it on good authority that you are very gay.

Anonymous said...

It's just different opinions on what you find attractive and how potent that attractiveness is.

There are objective standards of beauty. If you were required to rate women as ugly, normal or hot, 95%+ men will come to the same answer no matter who you throw up there.

What guy thinks 1/10 of women are 10s?

None. But then 10 is commonly understood as perfect and obviously 10% of the female population can't be perfect. However 7-9 does not mean 97th, 98th and 99th percentile. Because then you really are just quibbling over personal preferences while conveying no useful information.

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