I’ll always associate The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There For You” with one of TV’s greatest, longest-running sitcoms, Friends.
Friends was an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004. The series revolved around three young men and three young women, all of whom are best friends, who lived in the same apartment complex and faced life and love in Manhattan. Not one of the six were above sticking their noses into one another’s businesses, either, which made for a majority of the comedic relief the show brought to its audience. They went through marriage, having babies, getting fired, getting hired, relationships, sex, money, and a lot of other different life situations. I’m sure they went through everything – the show did have 10 years’ worth of humor!
Friends practically screams John Fiske’s levels of codes to its TV-14 audience. According to Fiske, “a code is a rule-governed system of signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members of a culture, and which is used to generate and circulate meaning in and for that culture” (1987, p.221). The levels of codes in the world of semiotic analysis are almost indistinguishable as well, since most depend on or elaborate on one another. Social codes, as Fiske describes, are those adhering to appearance, make-up, environment, behavior and gesture. Technical codes such as camera, lighting and editing are part of the level of semiotics which depicts representation. Technical codes transmit conventional representational codes, like narrative, conflict, character and action. These codes are organized into coherence and social acceptability by ideological codes, which translate to forms of hegemony. This means that ideological codes are based on the consent of the dominated and they often go unchallenged. The levels of the aforementioned codes can “only be produced when ‘reality,’ representations, and ideology merge into a coherent, seeming natural unity” (Fiske, 1987, 223).
The audience makes sense of the six main characters’ dress, behavior and environment according to conventional codes in American culture. So, essentially, we’re a little bias from the get-go. For example, they all live in New York City. American culture stamps this environment as a city that never sleeps. People are always busy, in suits, on their cell phones. We have a realistic (but truthfully stereotypical) idea of the show’s characters because of a single social code. Another is behavior. Each of the six friends typecasts a certain role that seems natural (dare I say hegemonic) in American culture. Joey and Chandler play the cute, dumb guys, Phoebe is the stereotypical, dumb blonde hippy-esque friend, Rachel is the stuck-up princess who relies on Daddy too much for someone in her thirties, Ross is the nerd, and Monica, well, she portrays multiple behaviors. She’s the mother, the cleaning freak and the way-too-organized-for-her-own-good character. Truthfully, it pissed me off most of the time. She was never the family’s favorite.
From left: Chandler, Rachel, Ross, Monica, Joey, Phoebe
Through these raw social codes, representational conventions are automatically linked. In one episode, Rachel and Phoebe have to stay with Joey or Monica because there was a candle (or a straightening iron – they were never really sure) that set their apartment on fire. Both women want to stay with Joey, because he’s the care-free one who doesn’t care if you spill a little spaghetti on the carpet. If you stayed at “Hotel Monica” and did so much as to drop a crumb not over the sink, all hell may have broken loose. The different characters’ behaviors transmit the conventional representational codes depicting conflict (who has to put up with Monica or stay with Fun Joey) and character (clean versus care-free).
The characters’ (I’m obviously talking mostly about Rachel) clothes tie into the third level of Fiske’s codes, ideology. A major ideological code is class. Rachel is the Jewish American Princess. Yes, I’m labeling again, and it’s just another stereotype, but hear me out. After all, a majority of social codes are already stereotyped, right? Anyway, Rachel couldn’t get by without Daddy’s credit cards, especially in the earlier seasons, and always stopped at a Bloomingdale’s if she saw a “sale” sign. She never needed any more shoes, blouses or purses, but she had the money for it. Bam – Friends adheres to *class and materialism just by following one character. Can you imagine how many ideological codes there are if we looked into all six? I’m not going to for the sake of time, but I’ll throw in one more, just for fun, and because she’s fun. There’s no other character that wears individualism on her sleeve more than Phoebe. Who else wants to legally change their name to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock? I rest my case.
"The Rachel" haircut
Media have the power (and succeeds) to shape individuals, society and culture. It helps societies, particularly in America, see the effects texts have on their decisions, be it what food to buy, what clothes to wear, how to talk, or what hairstyle to get. Studying the social codes in Friends will make it really easy to figure out why “The Rachel” was so popular in the 1990s. This form of criticism helps us better understand Friends’ influence on culture because during that decade, Rachel’s hairstyle in season two was extremely popular and so many females all over the United States copied it. It was “in fact requested so often at hair salons, it became the most popular hairstyle of the year, then the decade, then in all recorded history” (The Rachel). Too bad I missed out on something epic that the media were responsible for. I’m sure another opportunity will come soon enough – they always do.
*For link – bring up the “find” tool on your browser and type in “daddy.” The excerpt I’m referring to is the second “daddy.”
Works Cited:
Fiske, J. (1987). The Codes of Television. In Television Culture (pp. 221-230). London and New York: Methuen.
The Rachel. (n.d.). Retrieved March 8, 2011, from http://www.jenniferanistonhairstyles.com/friends/rachel/
