Genre development, according to Thomas Schatz, can be broken down in to movements starting with "experiemental" and leading into "classic", "refinement", and finally "baroque". The genre at the "baroque level enters the realm of parody and can only stand as an example of the genre and not on its own merits.
The New York Times looks at Friends as an example of a genre in these last stages. While we mourn for the New-York-as-utopia world that Friends and Sex in the City create, we also mourn for the genre.
"Friends" didn't just ride the economic recovery. It tapped into the country's rediscovery of New York at the dawn of the Giuliani shape-up-or-ship-out era. Suddenly, and in large part because of "Friends," Manhattan once again looked like a safe, fun and romantic place to be. The six stars of the show became the non-nuclear family that everybody really wanted. "Friends" was a slightly sexier, more knowing version of sitcoms like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Cheers." Other shows came along that also romanticized New York, most notably HBO's "Sex and the City," which pushed past the bonhomie of "Friends" to a more postfeminist place where women could please and be pleased by men without befriending them at all.
As the article points out, there was nothing particularly new about Friends--all of the things we see have been played out. But it was the greatest amalgamation of the best that the sitcom genre has offered, compared the mindless dribble and borderline verbal abuse of Everbody Love Raymond. All we have to look forward to is more sitcoms about sitcoms and reality-based situation comedies.
Christopher
Portland, OR
November 2002
MAY 05, 2004 06:00 PM