The TV show Friends has long been beloved and is one of the biggest shows that came out of the '90s, but there are problematic issues with both the casting and scripts that have left a lasting impression on its legacy.
One of those issues is that of one of Chandler Bing’s parents, a trans woman whose stage name when she performed was “Helena Handbasket."
She was constantly referred to throughout the show as “Chandler’s father,” even though she was a woman, which thus misgendered her in the process. One episode in season seven of the show was even titled "The One With Chandler's Dad."
Marta Kauffman, the co-creator of Friends whose most recent work includes Grace and Frankie, came forward in a recent interview to express her regret in misgendering Helena in the show.
The World Service's The Conversation interview will be released in full on July 11, but BBC News released a snippet of the interview, where Kauffman told the interviewer that the show "kept referring to [Helena] as ‘Chandler's father,' even though Chandler's father was trans."
She went on to explain, "Pronouns were not yet something that I understood, so we didn't refer to that character as ‘she.' That was a mistake."
Kauffman expressed her regret in how the character was handled in the show, and it’s clear from this and other actions that she is trying to right some of the wrongs from the show.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kauffman said she intends to donate $4 million to her alma mater, Brandeis University, to endow a chair in the African and African American Studies department. According to the article, this chair “will support a distinguished scholar with a concentration in the study of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the African diaspora.”
The Friends co-creator said she is specifically endowing this chair as a direct result of the classic show’s lack of diverse casting.
"I've learned a lot in the last 20 years," she said. "Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It's painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know better 25 years ago."
The post ‘Friends’ Co-Creator Says It Was ‘A Mistake’ To Misgender Chandler Bing’s Parent appeared first on The Mother of All Nerds.
‘Friends’ Co-Creator Says It Was ‘A Mistake’ To Misgender Chandler Bing’s Parent
Source: Pinoy Inquirer News
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