When it was recently announced that the series "Friends" would be removed from the list of series available on Netflix, it would not be an exaggeration to say that for its hundreds of thousands of fans, this announcement was almost a real tragedy.
The cries that followed did not embarrass those identified with the social protests.
When one thinks of the "friends" the associations that come to most people's minds are of a light-hearted sitcom, perhaps even superficial and privileged at times, but like everything, the layers and messages of the series are much deeper and more socially and culturally shaky than it seems.
"Sleep with the enemy? Exaggeration"
Those who are often required for these issues are members of the Facebook group "Obsessive to Friends", which currently has close to 23,000 members.
They raise more or less complex issues of the series almost daily, and analyze them and the characters in them in depth.
One of the charged issues that has been raised in the group several times and has returned to star in it in recent weeks, perhaps because of the media’s increased preoccupation with rising violence against women, has been the question of whether Ross Geller’s character is representative of that of the real-world violent man.
Is it a sarcastic and cynical character and sometimes perhaps even oppressive but not beyond, or perhaps a man who exhibits disturbing patterns of domination, obsession and jealousy that often characterize toxic and violent relationships?
The discussion created in the group was charged, with opinions divided into clear camps.
"Is Ross a violent partner?", Teammate David Siman wrote last week in a post that rekindled the storm, then scrolling through a long text with all the signs that for him the answer is an unequivocal yes.
"Rachel's relationship with Mark, the guy from the pub that Ross left out his number, the relationship with Elizabeth, the break-in of Mona's house, the reaction to the emerging relationship of Joey and Rachel, and no less central: the warm temperament and the short thread that Ross seems to have Bo (the sandwich incident) alongside manifestations of chauvinism (his mockery of a male nanny that he and Rachel hired to take care of their daughter their mother).
Towards the end of the post, Siman claims that Ross mentions the violent and dangerous character of Julia Roberts' husband from the movie "Sleep with the Enemy," a mention that alone managed to provoke an angry group discussion with hundreds of pros and cons.
"Finally someone says that," a group member wrote.
"Thank you so much for this post. I have been saying for years that Ross is a piece of dosh shit and everyone right out on me that they were on a break (even though they are not)," another surfer wrote.
"I frantically agree," reinforced another company.
"For the last two years I've been explaining to people that this is the most significant (and perhaps the only one for me) downside in the series. Really glad this post came up. In my last binges I'm really skipping those parts that he's obsessively and it's toxic and totally has to be said."
Friends, Photo: Netflix
"Ross is unbearable and a toxic partner, even if it's just a series," wrote another member of the group.
The fact that he is obsessive and jealous is what makes him so toxic, so do not understand what justifications go here in the comments.
I really understand why he is a trigger. "
"Obsessive fanatic yes. But violent reminiscent of the character's behavior from the movie 'Sleeping with the Enemy?', A group member wrote opposite.
I always write that Ross is the most annoying and snooty character in the series, but his extreme scenes are for fun.
"Maybe some of them would not pass the screen today, but to compare them to the violent psychopathic person from the film is completely insane."
"To dissect someone like Ross as gods is to reduce the real violence of certain men, it's like calling anything rape. The reduction is of the pain of the victim who really experienced these things," another company added.
"Someone here took the series too seriously. Ross is one of my favorite characters, and without him there is no doubt that the series would have been less good, it's just a comedy," it read.
"Violent? Exaggerated. Obsessive? Absolutely. Hate comparing today's feminist values to behaviors that were 20 years ago," another group member wrote.
"As for chauvinism, the period in which the series was written and filmed is a completely different period. As evidence, the whole series is not politically correct at all and probably would not have passed the screen today," others asked to mention in a repeated response.
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