The co-creator of the hit TV series Friends has claimed that she is “embarrassed” by the show’s lack of diversity. Martha Kaufmann told the Los Angeles Times that she had moved from being upset over criticism of the series in the past to feeling that it is justified.
Greg Braxton, who interviewed Kaufmann writes:
“The series’ failure to be more inclusive, Kauffman says, was a symptom of her internalization of the systemic racism that plagues our society, which she came to see more clearly in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the worldwide protest movement that erupted around it.”
Kaufmann told Braxton:
“I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years. Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”
In order to make amends for her mistake, she has pledged $4 million to her alma mater, Brandeis University in Massachusetts, to set up a professorship in the university’s Department of African and African American Studies. She said:
“But until in my next production I can do it right, it isn’t over. I want to make sure from now on in every production I do that I am conscious in hiring people of color and actively pursue young writers of color. I want to know I will act differently from now on. And then I will feel unburdened.”
I read once, that writers often write about what they know or what they have experienced. Friends is a sitcom about the lives and loves of six friends, set in West Village, Lower Manhattan.
Martha Kaufmann is Jewish. She grew up in a Jewish community in Philadelphia. It’s safe to assume that most of her friends were white Jews.
Three of Friends main central characters, siblings Monica and Ross Geller and Rachel Green are Jewish. As Sandy Rashty, writing in The Jewish Chronicle last year points out:
Whilst two of the main actors (Schwimmer and Kudrow) are Jewish, three of the core cast play Jewish characters. Dr Ross and Monica Geller compete for the affection of their parents, Jack and Judy, whose home is shown with a mezuzah.
Throughout, the characters refer to their Jewish backgrounds. Monica cringes as she recalls Ross performing a rap at her batmitzvah. Meanwhile, Ross pines after his childhood crush, Rachel Karen Green.
To an extent, Rachel is the archetypal Jewish American Princess from Long Island. The daughter of Dr Leonard and Sandra Green, she flippantly talks about her privileged background, her early nose job, calls her grandma her “bubbe” and has a penchant for shopping.
She abandons her wedding to an orthodentist and forges a successful career in fashion.
Over Chanukah, the set is adorned with channukiyot, from the main apartment to the Central Perk coffee house. When Phoebe performs a festival song, she belts out: “Monica, have a Happy Channukah!”
In another episode, Ross whips out a dreidel as he tells the story of the “miracle of lights” to his son Ben. Competing with Santa Claus, he dresses up as the Holiday Armadillo…
Kauffman told how her rabbi was heavily invested in the Ross-Rachel love story. And in a segment drawing on some of the series’ most iconic outfits, Justin Bieber appeared as the Holiday Armadillo.
How many TV writers would do the same now? How many would make unashamed references to Israeli produce, the Israeli army, Jewish holidays or their rabbi?
Martha Kaufmann wrote about what she knew. It is preposterous for her to apologise for the lack of diversity in Friends. It’s nonsense anyway, as I’m sure I remember a series of episodes where Ross dated an intelligent black PhD.
Drawing on her own experiences, Kaufmann made one of the most entertaining and successful television series in history. She should be embarrassed? Please!
Enough of this woke fuckery.
