How to Deal With Problematic Pop Media

Entering a fandom sometimes feels like a cult initiation: swearing upon your favourite character (long may they live) to worship the franchise and defend it against all enemies. There’s definitely a great sense of fun and community within fandoms, but they are not without their problems.

Basically every conceivable form of oppression is present within popular media; offensive jokes and stereotypes are funny to a mainstream audience, especially as this audience are historically (and continually) wealthy, white, etc. As soon as anyone tries to point out the problematicness with Mrs Hudson’s conviction that Sherlock and Watson are gay, you have to deal with no less than death threats from the zealous Sherlockians.

So what’s the big deal? Case study time!

American sit-com F.R.I.E.N.D.S. is easily one of the most popular TV shows of all time, with almost unanimous international love and adoration. Every one of the six protagonists is a fave, and each episode is hilariously quotable. FRIENDS is also consistently problematic. The most prominent example is Joey Tribbiani, the stock-standard sex-manic womaniser trope. 20% of his humorous moments are him being “dumb” and making silly mistakes, the other 80% are pretty much all to do with objectifying women. Every time a lesbian is mentioned, Joey is blatantly seen to fantasise about sexually exploiting her, often verbalising his intentions to the soundtrack of canned laughter. Joey also spends a good few minutes per twenty-min episode defending his masculinity, or insulting Ross and Chandler by attacking their manliness. Basically, if you played a drinking game with a shot per sexist line, you would pass out before the episode was over. Joey being sexist barely scratches the surface of oppressive problems in FRIENDS; lack of representation for PoC, racism, making fun of intersex people, lack of acknowledgement of bisexual as a valid sexuality, the list goes on.

But as soon as you try and criticise something as immortally golden as FRIENDS, its millions of supporters scream against you before you can even really get anywhere. The thing is, accusing something of racism/sexism/-ism is often taken as an unnecessarily harsh attack, which will immediately shut down the legitimacy in an otherwise funny and enjoyable TV series. Unfortunately, so many people don’t take calling-out for what it usually is: a constructive criticism that allows for enjoyment of media in conjunction with an acknowledgement of the issues it contains, in the hope of creating a healthier attitude towards said show.

Of course, accepting criticism against something you care about isn’t exactly a trip to Disneyland, but it’s so counterproductive and more than a shade ignorant if you defend harmful and problematic media just because you don’t want to feel guilty for loving it.

And you know what? You shouldn’t have to feel bad or guilty at all! In a social justice context, those feelings are pretty stagnant and unproductive as people ignore feminist messages to try and avoid that sense of guilt for doing things that have been labelled as “problematic”. Instead, the best option is to take the education head-on and become empowered to fix your actions, and correct those around you. Definitely go ahead and marathon FRIENDS, laughing at everything Joey says (I know I do!), and definitely adore Pitch Perfect, or the Big Bang Theory, or Gossip Girl. If we refused to watch any media that is not feminist, we would literally have to live under a rock. Even feminist shows like Orange is the New Black or Mad Max Fury Road have their problems. But what we should be doing is acknowledging and understanding how and where our favourite shows fall short of the intersectional feminist mark (AKA the be-a-decent-human-being-mark). We need to put aside our blind passion for informed appreciation, and allow constructive educational conversations to take place rather than shutting them down as soon as we fear our beloved show is being called out as less-than-perfect.

Your fave is problematic. So is mine.

It’s ok, so long as you accept it J

Comment below!

Hannah