February 13, 2022
"I resolutely boycott the castrated version of 'Friends.'"
Said someone on Chinese social media, quoted in "Chinese fans of 'Friends' angry after show re-released with censorship" (Reuters).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
34 comments:
The castrated version of of the CDC, the Justice Dept and the Supreme Court is our problem.
If only the CCP could be castrated.
Watched the show "Diversity Day" on the The Office with my DVD. The senior partner at my old law firm (cough, Cravath), said to me it was his favorite episode, it made fun of racism.
But that was too nuanced to the Left. And they had to cancel it.
It's not like there were any men on the original.
Sounds just like the Progressives in America.
I felt the same way when I learned new video releases of "WKRP in Cincinnati" had most of the music replaced due to licensing issues.
Les Nessman without Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" is castration most foul.
"Mark said...
It's not like there were any men on the original."
What are you talking about? Joey laid epic amounts of pipe.
Good for the Chinese. They have experience with Year Zero movements, and aren't having it. It's why Xi Jingping was careful to reference all of his predecessors, not just Mao and Deng.
Which Friends character most deserved to be castrated could replace Ginger or Mary Ann as Boomer/Xer conversational gambit.
I gather they censored Ross's ex-wife and the gay marriage.
Censorship is obviously wrong, but I wonder about how characters like Ross's son or Murphy Brown's baby are pushed down the memory hole by the shows themselves.
I've been watching some of those "free with ads" movies at youtube. I started watching Robocop and they had edited all the violent scenes and the swear words out. I had to stop watching because it was ruining the film. If you feel a need to do that much censoring, you shouldn't show a movie like Robocop.
I'm baffled by the idea that "Friends" could translate meaningfully to a Chinese audience in any version.
We boycotted the original version of Fiends too. A bunch of young (mostly) dysfunctional losers living in an apartment that they couldn’t afford, in a city that I loathe. Eventually, of course, they all slept with each other, and, then married. And, inevitably, that is when a series ends. What’s to identify with? The great sex scene in NYC? Give me a break. And give me my comfortable houses in suburbia and rural America, with deer in the front yard, and bears ambling by. Even had a confrontation with a coyote last week here in AZ (no doubt, he was eyeing the lunch I had for him on a leash). I also keep my eyes on circling hawks above me, maybe eyeing the same morsel on a leash, or the rabbits we sometimes inadvertently flush. The morsel sometimes tries to follow them, but they are much faster (she has fairly short legs), but the coyotes are even faster.
LOL. So their censorship is bad..but OUR censorship is good.
The original uncensored series "Friends" was all about castration.
Friends was "Seinfeld Lite." So were over a half a dozen "single in the city" sitcoms in the Nineties. And the message of at least one Seinfeld episode (and maybe the whole series) was "We're not men," meaning the characters weren't fully grown up or responsible. Still (or for that very reason), it struck a generational chord. It said as much about the country or how the country saw itself as the iconic sitcoms of an earlier generation. Friends was less original, but like those earlier classic sitcoms, if you watched it it's hard to forget. How adult or responsible was Gilligan or Lucy Ricardo or Ralph Kramden? Comedy thrives on the immature and irresponsible.
"Censorship is obviously wrong, but I wonder about how characters like Ross's son or Murphy Brown's baby are pushed down the memory hole by the shows themselves."
That's what made the whole Murphy Brown/Dan Quayle thing so stupid. People were arguing over what amounted to a plot device designed to give the main character a new set of problems that could be used for humor. The kid disappeared (and reappeared on the mercifully brief revival) the minute they ran out of breast feeding jokes.
“Eventually, of course, they all slept with each other, and, then married. “
Let’s see…
Monica never slept with her brother Ross. Duh.
None of the men ever slept with each other. None of the women slept with each other.
Joey never slept with ANY of the women.
Seems to me, the only sex was had by Chandler with Monica and Ross with Rachel, and only they married within the group.
Joey never married at all.
Surprising how easy that is to remember!
Bruce Hayden on FRIENDS: "A bunch of young (mostly) dysfunctional losers living in an apartment that they couldn’t afford, in a city that I loathe." As someone who has now lived about half his life in NYC, a decade of which in Manhattan, and the other half in the suburban South, can you tell me why you "loathe" NYC? Have you actually spent any time there, and if so, how much? Or is this just prejudice?
“ I'm baffled by the idea that "Friends" could translate meaningfully to a Chinese audience in any version.”
I’m not there is universality to the ideal of a stable group of 6 friends who will forever support each other, who live near each other and can be dropped in on every day, a family beyond your family.
"Monica never slept with her brother Ross." Too bad. That woulda been hot.
“Have you actually spent any time there, and if so, how much? Or is this just prejudice?”
Of course not. Yes, I am prejudiced. Very. It’s not how most of the country lives. Rather, it’s the lifestyle of a tiny very self important minority - the people designing and producing these types of TV shows.
Let’s take one example - transportation. Who do you know between the ages of maybe 18 and 65 who doesn’t have a car, and drives it for their primary source of transportation? We know one - 21 and not working. Sister and mother enabling. In shows like Fiends, Seinfeld, Sluts in The City, etc, it is taxis, subways, now Uber and Lyft all the way. Oldest two grandsons live by their cars. Third one is working on getting his license ASAP. That is normal. Try thinking of what car each of the characters in those shows drove. You can’t, because they mostly didn’t.
Ann - of course my synopsis wasn’t accurate. I knew that there a brother/sister pair. Just hadn’t watched it enough to remember who it was.
Asking recent immigrants from China, "How did you learn English??"
The universal answer was....."Friends re-runs!"
>> We boycotted the original version of Fiends too. A bunch of young (mostly) dysfunctional losers living in an apartment that they couldn’t afford, in a city that I loathe. Eventually, of course, they all slept with each other, and, then married.
There was a Brit-com ripoff called Coupling that was pretty entertaining. In that one, the three guys pretty much did all sleep with the (for want of a better word) gals. And vice versa, of course. The Brit version was arguably better than Friends. Then one of the networks tried to do an American version of Coupling, which was a total disaster, even though the scripts of the first couple of episodes were pretty much the same as the original British ones.
Similar to the total disaster of the American version of AbFab, though there were many other American versions of Brit-coms that did well (e.g., Sanford and Son, many others that I can't recall off the top of my head).
--gpm
>>We boycotted the original version of Fiends too.
Don't know if it was intentional, but the reference to "Fiends" reminded me of an old sequence on Rocky and Bullwinkle where Boris Badenov would change "Rocky and His Friends" to read "Rocky and His Fiends."
>>Let’s take one example - transportation. Who do you know between the ages of maybe 18 and 65 who doesn’t have a car, and drives it for their primary source of transportation?
OK. I'll take the bullet. I'm 68 and have never owned a car in my life. Car driving has never been my primary source of transportation except when I go up to New Hampshire, where I used to use rental cars and more recently Zipcars (a lot more expensive but a lot more convenient). But I'm one of those horrible people who have chosen to live for the last fifty years in Boston, where it's insane to own a car and use it as your primary source of transportation.
--gpm
Personally, I watch TV sitcoms to laugh - not for life lessons. Friends always bored me. The humor always seemed too tame. I preferred the sharper humor and more nasty unlikable characters on Sienfeld. But them I don't like many sitcoms post 1980. Lets see:
Cheers
Seinfeld
Newhart
Fraiser
That's about it.
Bruce Hayden: so, because it's not how most of the country lives, that makes the characters in Friends evil,or if not evil, "losers" to be shunned, even as entertainment? How about a show where the characters are all like the people I've met in southern suburbia: status obsessed, culturally illiterate consumerists who will only read books if they're written by tv ministers, get-rich-quick financial gurus, or (for the ladies) ripped-bodice romance novels. The gals and guys on that show can have sex with each other, too,as long as the guys drive the "right" kind of cars and their financial statements are up to snuff. Instead of "Friends" we can call it "Philistines."
gpm: the original, British "Coupling" was great, and with some pretty hot babes. I'm one of the few people who actually saw the American version (mainly because it starred Paula Marshall, an actress I have always found attractive); and it was bloody awful. Weird, because they followed a script from the original almost word for word, and it just didn't work. Not one laugh. Gornisht. Zippo.
Bruce Hayden, forgot to ask: if you never have lived there, or even spent any time there, why do you hate NYC?
“ Bruce Hayden, forgot to ask: if you never have lived there, or even spent any time there, why do you hate NYC?”
Hit a nerve there. Yes, I have been there a number of times, over the decades. Just didn’t like it. Turned down jobs there because of that.
""Monica never slept with her brother Ross." Too bad. That woulda been hot."
Well... spoiler alert... Phoebe had triplets with her brother.
And Ross struggled mightily with sexual desire for his cousin.
Since you like incest stories...
"Ann - of course my synopsis wasn’t accurate. I knew that there a brother/sister pair. Just hadn’t watched it enough to remember who it was."
Your synopsis was completely wrong.
There were only 2 couples that ever reached sexual intercourse and both of these were couples that actually married. That's consistent with conventional morality, not stories of everyone sleeping with everyone. In fact, their friendship was put above sexual activity repeatedly and it was the higher value that made it impossible for Rachel and Joey to have sex even when they were really trying to do it.
You need to acknowledge that you were thoroughly wrong, not just missing the brother/sister pair. You are wrong to the core, missing the whole premise of the show: *friendship.*
Post a Comment