Primetime Propaganda

by Ben Shapiro

  The central social transformation of Friends was replacement of family with friends. “That’s what we do,” said Kauffman. “We leave our parents’ homes. We go to college or not. We move into areas where we make friends. . . . What we were trying to do was talk about that time in your life—and that was the phrase that we used when we pitched the show—‘when your friends are your family.’ ” Of course, this is what liberals do. And they used to restrict this sort of thing to Greenwich Village, where they were aware that they were leading a rebellious lifestyle. They knew that to shock the bourgeois, they couldn’t be bourgeois. But for Kauffman and company, Greenwich Village was everyone’s village, and every American eventually substitutes friends for family.

  The show was also about the fluidity of the friend-lover relationship. “I think there’s truth in that,” Kauffman said. “I think that when you put a group of people together and some are men and some are women and they’re heterosexual, there’s going to be a blurring of the lines.” This is inherently liberal. In conservative thought, there has always been a sharp break between friends and lovers; the idea is that lovers are the people you marry. By blurring the lines between friends and lovers—today you’re friends, tomorrow you’re lovers, the day after, you’re back to being friends—liberalism suggests that sex can be separated from true commitment. Conservatives understand that some friends do become lovers, but the idea is that once lovers, they stay lovers. The notion of free flow between platonic love and sexual love is foreign to conservatism. On Friends, however, the father of your baby can be your friend, while your friend can become your lover (just ask Ross, Rachel, and Joey). Any babies resulting from these relationships, by the way, are disposable commodities that can disappear for seasons at a time.

  Because the lives of the six friends mirrored the lives of their creators, that translated into substantial coverage of issues like gay marriage. In the first season of the show, Kauffman and Crane wrote in a lesbian wedding between Ross’s pregnant ex-wife and her girlfriend. “You know, as far as we were concerned, gay marriage was not an issue; it was just something that was happening,” Kauffman explained.

  I asked Kauffman about the development of the lesbian story line, which seemed far less comedic than it did dramatic. For example, in the episode in which Ross’s pregnant lesbian ex-wife has his baby, Ross is understandably upset. Phoebe tells him that he should see his wife’s lesbian lover as a fringe benefit for the kid.

  Kauffman laughed recalling the episode. “Hah. I love that. My favorite part of that is not just her speech, . . . it was Ross’s comment, ‘Every day is the Lesbian Lover Day.’ . . . Our purpose in doing it was not to get people to be more aware of lesbian relationships or, you know, fathering and moving on. It was really fun drama.”114 (Peter Mehlman was more critical of Friends’ reliance on interpersonal drama: “You always think about the year Friends won the Emmy for best sitcom; that was the year they were promoting every episode with that tune from Enya. Every promo had that mournful Enya music, like ‘They’re having the baby.’ Put it on at two in the afternoon already, what are you waiting for?”)115

  It didn’t hurt that Kauffman had a close personal friendship with a lesbian couple. In one interview, she explained how proud she was of the lesbian storyline based on those friends: “We have friends—two women. They have a little girl, who never got to see the show last year because it was on too late. Now that it’s on at eight o’clock, she got to see it. And she saw one with the two moms, and she turned to her mother with these big eyes and said, ‘Mommy! A family like ours!’ That’s what we should be doing.”116 David Crane, Kauffman’s producing partner, agreed. “It was always important to us that Carol and Susan [the lesbian couple] be three-dimensional,” said Crane, who is gay. “It’s very significant that when you watch the show, you get the feeling that these two women are going to be good parents—and that you see there’s an extraordinary amount of love between them. And I think that comes through.”117

  I asked Kauffman whether it was legitimate to criticize the politics of the show as one-sided. She answered truthfully: “I mean, you have a bunch of liberals running the show. . . . [When we did the lesbian wedding, we knew] there was going to be some controversy. But it didn’t feel to us that we were preaching anything,” she continued. “Although, I have to say, when we cast Candice Gingrich as the minister of that wedding, [was there] a bit of ‘--- you’ in it to the right wing directly? Yeah. I mean that was a choice, and it was an exciting choice, and she made a statement during the wedding where she says something about nothing makes God happier than to see any two people together in love. . . . We felt that was honest.” Of course, it’s not honest—the definition of “two people together in love” would include consensual incest, which even liberals reject. But for liberals, it’s emotionally honest, even if it’s politically dishonest.

  Kauffman evidences a nonobjective view of the political debate. Nowhere is that more clear than in her retelling of one of her favorite episodes, “The One Where Dr. Ramoray Dies.” In that episode, Rachel and Monica, who are roommates, are both looking to have sex with their then-boyfriends. There’s only one condom left. They fight over the last condom. The episode caused a stir when Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) protested that it was inappropriate for primetime television.

  Kaufmann couldn’t understand why Lieberman was upset. “Wait a minute, I’m sorry . . . two women are arguing over who’s going to get to have sex because only one of them will get a condom is irresponsible?! As far as I was concerned that was extremely responsible. . . . If you don’t like what you’re watching, forget the V-chip, just turn it off.” Of course, Lieberman wasn’t truly arguing with Kauffman that sexually active people shouldn’t be using condoms; he was arguing that showing promiscuous sexual activity on television was a problem altogether. But because such behavior was considered common in New York and Los Angeles, and the only true issue regarding sexuality in those communities was the issue of AIDS, Kauffman felt that the episode was tremendously socially responsible.

  Similarly, Kauffman felt one of the best messages the show tackled concerned information about the risks associated with condoms. In one episode, Rachel and Ross talked about how she got pregnant despite his condom use, Rachel informing Ross that condoms aren’t 100 percent effective. Ross freaks out. Kaufmann was proud of the sequence: “People actually paid attention to that and they heard that in a way they hadn’t heard it in the classes they took in high school. Or even more important, the high schools that weren’t given classes. . . . It had a huge effect, which I’m very very proud of. I’m really proud that there’s a generation of kids that are highly aware. It’s not why we did it, but it’s a fantastic added bonus.”

  So I asked, it was important to you that the show be both entertaining and socially responsible? “Absolutely,” Kauffman answered. “I tend to be the one who’s more politically active. There are a few of us in that group that were fairly politically active. . . . It’s not why I did it, but I’m very proud that that’s one of the things that Friends was able to do.”118

  Friends is popular because the writing is sparkling and the drama is human (you couldn’t have a more obvious case of “boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” than Ross and Rachel). That’s the reason the show ranked in the top five for nine of its ten seasons. It’s not popular because of its politics. But because Friends was so popular, its politics became more popular, too.

  ELLEN (1994–1998): OUT AND DOWN

  The creators of Ellen had stellar credentials: Carol Black and her husband, Neal Marlens, had created Growing Pains and The Wonder Years; their co-creator, David Rosenthal, went on to become a showrunner and producer for The Gilmore Girls and Spin City. But when they ran into Ellen DeGeneres’s ardent desire to come out on national television in the middle of their sitcom, even they couldn’t save the sinking ship.

  In 1993, the show premiered to generally good review
s; by its second season, it was rated thirteenth on television. The show could have continued its climb if Ellen had abided by the hallmarks of comedian-centric television shows: Be funny. It worked for Seinfeld, Paul Reiser on Mad About You, and Tim Allen on Home Improvement. Ellen hit the air right in the midst of the craze for television comedians, and the network had to figure that her success would be a no-brainer.

  They should have thought it through. By season three, Ellen’s total inattention to the standard sitcom plot device of dating was obvious. The ratings began to decline. By the time season four came around, the producers knew they had to come up with something.

  They should have been more specific.

  Between seasons three and four, Ellen and the show’s writers decided that Ellen should come out on the show. Finally, during sweeps week, the show broadcast the famous “Puppy Episode,” in which Ellen declared her lesbianism publicly. Ellen co-wrote the episode herself. The episode featured myriad lesbians in cameos (k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, Jenny Shimizu, among others). In the episode, it is—unsurprisingly—Oprah Winfrey who convinces Ellen’s character to come out. The next few episodes grow progressively more lesbian-centric and serious.

  The show limped on for another season, but it was a zombie, living dead. “As the show became more politicized and issue-oriented,” admitted Stuart Bloomberg, chairman of ABC Entertainment, “it became less funny and audiences noticed.”119

  Still, Ellen broke new ground by featuring a main character who was gay, and writers and executives cited the “Puppy Episode” as one of the single most important episodes of television in the medium’s history. The message that Hollywood took from Ellen, counterfactually enough, was that American audiences were eager to see more homosexuality on screen, not less. Ellen left the air in June 1998. Three months later, NBC picked up an even more groundbreaking series.

  WILL & GRACE (1998–2006): EVERYONE HAS A GAY FRIEND

  “The more the show is talked about, the better it is for everyone.” That was the perspective of Jim Burrows, who directed and produced Will & Grace. And it worked wonderfully; the attention Will & Grace garnered outstripped its ratings. The show received seventy-three Emmy nominations despite finishing outside the top forty in four of its eight seasons.

  The creators of the show, David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, have been friends since high school. Mutchnick is gay, and Kohan is straight. They write all of their shows together, and broke into the business working for HBO’s The Dennis Miller Show. From there, they worked with Carol Black and Neal Martens on The Wonder Years and Marta Kauffman’s Dream On, then had their first show, Boston Common, picked up. Both are liberal.

  The show’s central focus on a gay man (Will) living with a straight woman (Grace) came directly from the network. Warren Littlefield of NBC made the decision that those two characters, out of a group presented by Mutchnick and Kohan, were the ripest for a full sitcom; Littlefield, you may remember, is the fellow who thought that Michael Moore’s TV Nation was hilarious. And Littlefield made clear that the network would allow Mutchnick and Kohan to go as far as they wanted. “We don’t have a lot of absolutes,” Littlefield told the Advocate. “Things are always changing. . . . On Seinfeld we had an entire episode about masturbation. There’s not a lot you can’t do.”120

  Mutchnick gives Kohan the credit for “making sure that we told a gay love story,” but he takes credit for making the show mainstream. “The pilot had been picked up for Will & Grace,” Mutchnick told the gay website AfterElton.com, “and now it was all about casting. And I was sitting in the Bel Air home of a very famous gay director. And when I told him about the script, he said: ‘Just make sure you don’t make it too butt-f***y.’ And I said: ‘What does that mean?’ And he said, ‘You never want the American public to have to think about butt-f***ing.’ And it could not have been better advice. . . . I chose to not do explicit stuff, and edgy, edgy gay stuff. Because I wanted people to stay with it, get comfortable with it. David and I said to each other, we’ll have won if by the time this show is over the audience wants Will to be in love, wants him to be in a relationship.” The idea, said Mutchnick, was to lead off with the premise that the show was gay, then allow the audience “to absorb it and figure it out and get comfortable with it. And realize that we’re the same as everybody else in the room.”

  Mutchnick and Kohan were highly successful in that attempt—and for good reason. If a viewer tuned in to Will & Grace without knowing the premise, he or she could watch fifteen minutes of the show before discovering that Will is gay—unlike Jack, who is far more flamboyant, Will is portrayed by Eric McCormack as an openly but not overtly gay man. McCormack himself is straight, whereas Sean Hayes, who played Jack, is gay. (For the record, the vast majority of actors who play gays and lesbians on television are straight; very few gays and lesbians play straight on television, by contrast.)

  Alongside Ellen, Will & Grace is often cited as a transformative show in American culture. There is no question that Mutchnick and Kohan helped forward the gay rights cause, even within Hollywood. Mutchnick acknowledges that in Hollywood, there is no longer discrimination against gays and lesbians. “There’s no oppression,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that the straight people that are working in these positions of power, not a one of them that I’ve come into contact with in my professional dealings has felt reluctant or homophobic or disinterested in this subject matter. Not once.”121

  SEX AND THE CITY (1998–2004): THE NEXT STEP IN WOMEN’S LIB

  “That’s the show,” said Marge Simpson in one episode of The Simpsons, “about four women acting like gay guys.” Marge wasn’t the only one suggesting that interpretation. “It is a show with a very gay sensibility, definitely,” admitted Willie Garson, who plays Carrie Bradshaw’s (Sarah Jessica Parker’s) best friend on Sex and the City.122 Critics across the spectrum recognized that same gay sensibility in a series about four women who constantly discuss dildos, anal sex, rim jobs, and other fringe sexual practices in graphic terms (leaving aside the overdone and flamboyant gay wedding that opened Sex and the City 2).

  Where does that sensibility come from? The two head writers on the show, Darren Star and Michael Patrick King, are gay. Star has championed promiscuous sex in virtually all of his shows dating back to Beverly Hills, 90210, when he wrote Brenda celebrating her loss of virginity (the network forced Star to write in a pregnancy scare soon after that).123 In Sex and the City, he tried to take that celebration of sex to the next level by turning women into sexual predators. “We were very consciously turning the stereotype on its head,” Star told Macleans. “Women have always been objectified by men, and in this case the women were objectifying men. The men had names like Mr. Big, Mr. Whatever; they weren’t even referred to by name.” As with most television creators, Star believes that such behavior reflects reality, even if there aren’t many women who parade around New York looking for Manolo Blahniks and big penises. “Sex and the City was a reflection of the experience a lot of urban women were going through,” said Star.

  The message of the show, Star said, channeling Allan Burns of Mary Tyler Moore, was “that you don’t need to get married. You don’t really need that love to be fulfilled. . . . I think these women have each other.”124

  In other words, sex without commitment is a requisite component of a healthy life. That’s certainly how Samantha lives her life; the Sex and the City website describes Samantha as “Forget wedding dreams; Samantha takes lust over love any night, and she’s proud of it. Once, she even experimented with lesbian love, but when her ‘girlfriend’ demanded more intimacy, Samantha knew it wasn’t going to work out.”125

  Michael Patrick King, who is also gay, started off his career with Diane English on Murphy Brown, then wrote for various shows, including Will & Grace, before Star brought him in on Sex and the City. King explained why gay men loved Sex and the City: “I think anyone who’s ever been an outsider, whether it be
due to your sexual orientation or your anything—your gender, your race, your anything—these four girls have moved through the world trying to claim themselves . . . I think that the villain, in any great story you need one, and I think ours is still society. I think society tells you to be some way and the individual always pushes through that bag, punches their way out.”126

  King’s remarks recall the bobo mentality yet again—he’s rebelling against society as a whole as the obstacle to true happiness in a bizarre sort of Rousseauian “back to nature” way. Sex and the City likes to push the notion that finding one’s identity revolves around overcoming society’s demands by embracing biology. Samantha is the most liberated of the women, and she’s also the most carefree; Charlotte, by contrast, is the most rigid, and therefore the most worried, someone to be pitied for her WASPy cultural background. Miranda fights society but runs up against the strictures of the male-dominated capitalist system. Sex and the City takes the position that it’s biological to want sex, it’s biological to want a baby, it’s biological to want relationships, but it is not biological to want a long-term monogamous relationship—even though by the end of the show, all of the women end up in long-term monogamous relationships (although Samantha later breaks off her relationship in the first Sex and the City movie).

  The ending of the show is ironic: all of these supposedly strong, independent women end up married or in committed relationships. This is odd because it so closely follows the traditional comedic pattern: Characters engage in a misguided pursuit of wrong desires, then finally find happiness. The ending of Sex and the City undermined the entire premise of the show, suggesting that these women had been wasting their time for the past few years, and that if only they could have found love and settled down earlier, everything would have been hunky-dory. Even though the audience for Sex and the City supposedly loved the promiscuous sexuality of the main characters, in the end they demanded the age-old comedic conclusion: a wedding.