Sexism and Sitcom
“Is this a bit… dodgy?” I ask my boyfriend. It’s a Saturday night and lockdown has reduced us to scoffing Dominos pizza and watching New Girl.
It’s not the first time I’ve seen the series. I watched it sporadically when it was first released, back in 2011. I was at sixth-form and quickly grew tired of it, but I didn’t know why. I do now. Seventeen-year-old me may have been unnecessarily competitive with her female peers; she may have used the word “slut” liberally; she may have heard misogynistic comments and let them slide… but the feminist buried somewhere within found New Girl sexist. She just didn’t know it then.
Present me is a feminist, and I regret many of the anti-feminist actions of seventeen-year-old me. But, considering many of the TV series that were popular when I was growing up, it’s not surprising that teenage girls like myself didn’t know how to be feminists. Now, trying to write comedy TV for a living, I’m baffled by the number of sitcoms that are based around a sexist premise and continually use sexist jokes. I can’t help but wonder: have times changed?
New Girl implies that they haven’t. The episode we were watching is more than “a bit” dodgy. It’s season three, Thanksgiving, and the gang have gone camping after Coach has accused Nick of going “soft” for dating Jess. Nick’s freaking out because he and Jess do “girly” stuff together, and he’s desperate to prove that he is, in fact, a “man”.
I spend most of this episode rolling my eyes and batting away the toxic masculinity that’s leaping out of the screen. I can’t help but remember the episode of Friends where Joey gets a female flatmate who fills their apartment with pot pourri, artwork and clean towels. But Joey isn’t the problem here. Chandler is the one bothered by Joey knitting and Ross applying makeup, screaming, “where are all the men!?”
It’s clear that New Girl is hugely influenced by its predecessor. I constantly draw comparisons between Nick and Chandler, mainly because of how insecure and desperate they both are to prove their “manliness”. Schmidt, with his womanizer attitude and hidden sweetness, has something of the Joey about him. However, the ultimate resemblance is that both shows regularly base their humour around societal gender constructs. Friends constantly uses jokes about men not being masculine (e.g. “Hey Monica, maybe these guys wanna wear your dress?” and “We’ve got lace, satin, sateen, raffia, gingham, felt … and I think my testicles may be in here too”). And New Girl’s tagline is literally, “Boys will be boys. Jess will be Jess”. The entire concept is that Jess is “girly” and yet the guys enjoy her company. Men and women with different interests being friends?! You’ve lost me there…
Anyone who knows me knows I love Friends and can quote it till the lobsters come home, despite its many problems (and we haven’t even touched on the homophobia, transphobia and white privilege). But, for me, Friends is more forgivable, simply because of the era. The first episode of New Girl aired eleven years after the first episode of Friends, and seven years after the last. Whilst the 2010s weren’t perfect, I like to think that attitudes changed somewhat during that time.
Picture this: it’s 2013, and while Winston’s asking Nick’s permission to move Jess’s underwear and Schmidt’s calling Cece a “brown angel”, further east in the Fox universe, the NYPD’s first gay black police captain enters. Yes, that’s right, Brooklyn Nine-Nine airs its first episode and it finally doesn’t feel like we’re stuck in the 90s anymore. We’re taken into a new genre of “woke comedy” which proves that it’s absolutely possible to be funny without being offensive. I don’t care what Todd Phillips says.
When it comes to sexism and the sitcom, Brooklyn Nine-Nine makes both subtle and bold statements. We have Terry Jeffords - super muscly, yet super in-touch with his emotions; Raymond Holt - NYPD’s first gay black police captain; Rosa Diaz - bisexual and holding more authority than any man. However, for me, Jake Peralta is the biggest surprise. A straight white male protagonist who’s had a relatively easy life. He could very easily be another Schmidt or Joey, especially as he’s witnessed these qualities in his womanizing father. But he’s not, and it’s the subtleties that make a difference. In season two, Jake and Terry interview a suspect who talks about a bar opposite a Pilates studio, which has a “pretty sweet view” – wink, wink. Schmidt and Joey would wink back, run to the bar and revel in objectifying women. But Jake doesn’t join in. He doesn’t respect this guy at all. It might not seem like much, but it’s a huge difference in terms of the language used around women. When our confident, straight white male protagonist actively opposes sexism, it sends a message.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine also uses larger gestures to tackle issues surrounding gender. The episode “He Said, She Said” follows a sexual assault case in the workplace, where the victim doesn’t know whether she wants to press charges. Amy encourages her to do so, knowing that the case will be distressing, she might not be believed, and it could potentially ruin her career. The episode resonates with thousands of women and is reflective of the Me Too movement. Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t worry about these stories being a “dampener” of comedy; it knows the characters will carry the story and trusts its audience to appreciate something more meaningful.
Now that I’m re-watching New Girl, I can’t help but wonder how things would differ if I’d grown up watching “woke comedy” like Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Would seventeen-year-old me still have been as quick to judge a female peer? Would she have felt more inclined to stop someone when they were being sexist? I’ve only recently started to notice this kind of sexist, inappropriate humour in sitcoms like Friends and New Girl, and I’m a feminist who went to film school and writes comedy. So, how is a teenager supposed to realise that it’s wrong?
The fact is that when we see sexism in a sitcom, it normalises it. When we laugh at a male character for taking a bubble bath, enjoying knitting, or talking about their feelings, we are part of the problem. We’re saying that toxic masculinity isn’t toxic. Because of this, it’s clear that we need more sitcoms like Brooklyn Nine-Nine - sitcoms that break boundaries and mock old-fashioned views. But Brooklyn Nine-Nine is still relatively unique. Sexist jokes are not yet history on our TV screens. I can only hope that, one day, sexism and the sitcom will be a thing of the past.
