Update - 31/12/2014

Friends’ response to 9/11

“On the TV series Friends, in episode 8x03 ("The One Where Rachel Tells..."), Chandler and Monica could not get on their flight for their honeymoon because Chandler joked about bombing in the airport. After the attacks, the story was rewritten and re-shot.” This shows that they were seeing and responding to major events and changes in American society at the time – to the point where they re-wrote and shot a large part of an episode. This could suggest that it is highly likely that it has been more subtly impacted by other events and changes – such as the place of women in society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks

Mini Survey Results & Conclusions

For this survey, I asked fans of Friends to decide which character they saw themselves as most similar too. The aim of this investigation was to see if male fans see themselves as most similar to the male characters and if female fans see themselves as most similar to the female characters. This will then help me to see and determine if there are strong gender related view identification patterns in the show. The results of my mini survey are as follows:

Male participants:

Chandler II

Joey III

Phoebe 

Monica

Rachel

Ross

Female participants:

Chandler 

Joey

Phoebe III

Monica II

Rachel I

Ross

The conclusion I can gather from this is that male viewers identify more strongly with the male characters in the show and female viewers identify more strongly with the female characters in the show. It could be said that this is because the gender stereotypes shown attract each gender to the characters representing them best, representing their gender most strongly. It is also interesting to note that the majority male participants chose the most stereotypically "manly" of the 3 male characters, Joey. This could be because his overly macho representation attracts male viewers to identify with him. 

Update 30/12/2014

Over the past few weeks I have been researching the second half of my question about America's views on women in the 1990s. Below is some of the things I have found out along with an explanation as to how I think this affected Friends and the development of the characters.

Roles of women in 1990s America

“More recently, in the 1980s and 1990s, it has become common for many families to have two wage earners to afford a house, to pay for their children’s education, or simply to maintain a comfortable life style.” Could explain why all the women in Friends end the show with stable, relatively high paying jobs – alongside the men who do. However, the female characters have more creative and practical jobs than the men. This follows the convention of women being more creative and less intellectual than men. On top of this, Rachel is the only rich, spoilt, “daddy’s girl” type at the start of the series’. The fact that the spoilt character is not male could suggest that at the start of the show women are still shown to rely on men (Rachel relying on her father). But, her having a stable, successful career by the end of the series could suggest that these gender roles have changed and developed – showing that women can have successful careers. This is then backed up by the changing roles of women in the 1980s and 1990s, ready for successful, independent women to be the norm in 2004 when the show ended.

“President Bill Clinton has made women’s issues an important part of his agenda. He has placed women in high office in his Administration, sought equal opportunity for women throughout the labour force and encouraged greater participation of women in business.” Bill Clinton was president of the US from 1993 to 2001 and this quote above shows that during this time, the roles of women were still continuing to change and develop. Not only were gender inequality issues being more recognised, they were also being challenged by more women doing well in the business world and not just practical jobs. In relation to Friends, it could be said that even know Rachel is part of the fashion/feminine side of business, she does get a well-established job in business. However in series 10, she has to choose between her career and a man, she reverts back to the stereotype of women not being able to survive without their men, and stays in the US with Ross.

“In 1997, the persistence of sex roles at home means that most women who work full time for wages also shoulder the major part of home and family care responsibilities. At the same time, barriers remain in the work place, especially for women of color and gay women.” Friends was one of the first TV shows to have a reoccurring lesbian couple, these characters also broke the stereotype of lesbian women as they were both portrayed as quite feminine. However, the topic of the couple was quite taboo and uncomfortable amongst the other characters and they were definitely shown to keep to themselves. This is more of a negative representation of homosexuality, showing that they don't quite fit in with the heterosexual characters. 
There are also very few black, female characters.
Black, female characters in Friends

Claudia - Chandler’s co-worker

Phoebe’s boss at toner place

Jeff Goldblum’s casting lady

Nurse at the Rachel’s hospital

One of the girls they ask about ross

Charlie - Ross’ co-worker/girlfriend of Ross & Joey

Girl moving in near coffee house hit on by Joey & Chandler

Chandler’s boss (Made him move to O.K.)

However, out of the few black, female characters - they are all/look like they could be in well paying, high skilled jobs and so are not represented in a negative light by any means.

http://shenyang.usembassy-china.org.cn/uploads/images/KYFFp59L1dwF5zj84P2KNg/women-role.pdf

“But during the second half of the 1990s and first few years of the 2000s, the equality revolution seemed to stall.” This is a varying opinion to the previous one. This may suggest that the gender stereotypes of the characters in Friends did not change at all and this is because nothing to do with gender equality seemed to happen in this 1990s to the early 2000s. However, I would reject this opinion, as the female characters all seemed to grow and become more independent throughout the lifespan of the show, especially Rachel. But, again this could because she had so much room to grow as she was so dependent on men at the start of the series.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/why-gender-equality-stalled.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Update - 11/12/2014

At lunch today, I went to the EPQ meeting with Steph. In this meeting, Steph talked through everything we need to know about the presentation section and also to have a general update on what we should be doing at this point our projects. 

Between now and the overall deadline (20th March 2015)

- Meet up with supervisor to complete production log

- Complete final project (essay)

- Make and give presentation

- Submit (a) journal (e.g. blog), (b) production log, (c) final project and (d) materials related to presentation (e.g. powerpoint)

Presentation information

Purpose:

• Provide overview of your entire process - successes, failures and solutions
• Summary of your final product and conclusion
• Public demonstration - in order to demonstrate your presentational skills to an audience of non-specialists

Include:

• Evidence
• Failures - e.g. visiting London libraries
• Successes - e.g. contacting experts
• Journey of your project
• Overview of final product

Tips for presentation:

• Draft
• Don't just read from board
• Script or notes
• Rehearsing = confidence =

This session was really useful because it help put everything I need to do before the deadline into perspective and will help me plan my use of time better (I will make a blog post plan in a few days). Steph also sent everyone the powerpoint from the lesson and a checklist and a handout about the presentation. (All of these are shown below.)

Student guide to the presentation from naomikendall

Update - 10/12/2014

Today I had my meeting with Diana about ways that I can research the American society part of my question.

We started by looking on the LRC moodle page to see if there was any links to useful researching sites. The first one we looked at was JSTOR and we searched different titles around the topic - for example, "American society 1990s women". However, after quite a while of searching different words, we gave up on JSTOR. We then moved on to Google Scholar and this came up with a few more articles and so we decided that this could be one of the websites I use to research on my own. After this, we went back onto just search on Google because there is an option of "Advanced search" so that we could eliminate certain types of result. I will also use this when I go back to researching independently.

This session was really useful because it reminded me of all the links available on the college LRC page and then use this to the best of my abilities.

Views on gender in America 1990s to early 2000s

"In this article we ask what structural and cultural changes might account for this unexpected stalling of gender attitudes. We show that the mid-1990s shift can be observed within almost all cohorts, across both men and women of all ethnicities (except Asian Americans) and all levels of education and income. We test and reject a variety of the most readily identifiable social structural causes to the 1990s reversal. While several demographic and structural factors can help explain the rise of liberal attitudes throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the decline after the mid-1990s is robust to all controls. Nor does the change in gender attitudes appear to be part of a broader period shift toward more conservative political and family attitudes."

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658853

"The women's movement remained a salient force for social justice and equity in the 1990s but faced new challenges and problems. Despite substantial gains in many areas over thirty years, sexist attitudes and behavior endured. The gap between women's and men's incomes narrowed but persisted, with women earning approximately 25 percent less than men regardless of education. Abortion rights, while guaranteed, came under renewed attack and in many states were severely eroded. Sexual harassment was a recognized crime but nevertheless continued to compromise women's full equality. More women were running for and winning elective office than ever before but in 1994 women constituted only 10 percent of Congress. Women continue to be underrepresented in positions of leadership in corporations and universities. Many women earning their own incomes had to work a "second shift" because they remained responsible for most or all of their families' care, even in dual income households. And families headed by single women were among the poorest in the nation. These and other concerns shaped the ideological debates within feminism at the end of the twentieth century. The women's movement continued to contain within itself a plethora of differing analyses and opinions concerning women and social change."

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Womens_rights.aspx

Update - 8/12/2014

Today I had a meeting with Linda about how my EPQ is going and where I should go from here. We started by writing my title at the top of a sheet of paper so that we could break the question down to see whether my research so far would make me able to fully answer the title. We decided that my research so far has mainly focused on and answered the first half of the question "How far did the gender stereotypes created in Friends change..." as I have found out a lot about the gender stereotypes in Friends and if they changed. However, I have not yet managed to answer the second half "...as a response to changes in American society?" as I have not been able to find much information into American society at the time of Friends. Because of this, Linda suggested that I speak to Diana (the LRC manager) to ask her for researching tips and I have set up a meeting to speak with her on Wednesday.

We also discussed how I could structure my essay and we decided that I should set it out chronologically, for example:

Start (1994): Establish what gender stereotypes each character represented, introduction of each character's role/background, introduction of American society at the time.

Middle (1999): Tracking any changes in stereotypes and American society.

End (2004): what they ended up like and how they changed (both stereotypes in Friends and American society's views on gender).

Linda also said that it may be good to look at researching:

• feminism in the time of the show's production and if there were any key feminism protests during this time
• views on surrogacy at the time (as Phoebe is the surrogate mother of her brother's children)
• New York culture specifically
• Presidents at the time and any women in parliament
• Google Scholar for American society gender 1990s

Demographics - secondary research

After carrying out some internet research, here is what I found out about the demographics of Friends.

An interesting article by the daily mail mentioned that the age demographics of the tv channel that bought the rights to broadcast Friends, Comedy Central, is 16-36 with more episodes beig broadcast in school holidays. It also mentions how the audience who first watched it in their 20s, now watch it with their children. Meaning that the the age demographic when it was first on was people in their 20s-early 30s. And also that now, not only has the show still got this age demographic, but also have an aging age demographic as the initial viewers still continue to watch and love the show.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2465332/Friends-Why-loving-hit-TV-20-years-on.html

Easy answer to the success of Friends

Quite a nice and simple answer to the complex question of why Friends was so successful:

http://www.quora.com/Why-was-the-television-series-Friends-so-popular

Viewer identification and relatable charaters is the key.

Update - 7/12/2014

On friday, I made an appointment to see Linda on Monday when we are both free. In this meeting we are planning to check over everything for the mid-project review - making sure I have filled in everythig correctly and fully. We are also going to start discussing my findings from my research to see what (if anything) I still need to find out and we will also start thinking about my essay's structure.

I have also been getting my final few responses for my mini-survey as well as thinking of main points for my essay (to help me start the structure) and trying to find more information on America/gender stereotypes between 1994 and 2004.

Update - 4/12/2014

Over the past week I have been adding all my primary research to the primary research page so that it is all in one place, as well as collecting responses for my mini-survey about which characters audience members see themselves as most similar to. I am also still collecting all my thoughts and notes on my chat with Paul Marchbank, which is taking longer than I had hoped as there was so much detail in the discussion.

I have also written a detaield analysis of my bigger survey in which I have received two participants' answers. This will be useful to me when I come to writing my essay.

Update 25/11/2014 - Paul Marchbank Chat

Demographics

Paul said that the demographics of the show would be a good indicator towards the reasons why gender stereotypes were portrayed. He said that he read about some secondary research into the enthic viewer demographics of Friends. The results from the study were that white people put Friends second or third amongst their 100 favourite TV shows and black people put it at 98th place.

Update - 17/11/2014

Survey Results

Email convo with Paul

Update - 15/11/2014 (Paul Marchbank Chat)

In this update, I am going to talk about an interesting reseach tip/idea that Paul Marchbank gave me which I plan to use and research over.

The overall tip was to basically focus my hypotheses and conlcusions around typical "childhood fairytales we tell our children". What he meant by this was that in terms of gender representations and the evolution of them, one could say they have never really completely changed. For example, Monica in Friends can be seen as the mother and caregiver of the show and Rachel can be seen as the daughter. And also that the series ends once Monica and Chandler have children, Rachel and Ross get back together and Phoebe is married to Mike. Likewise, fairytales always end with their "happily ever after" of marrying "Prince Charming". The reason for Friends to end in this way could be because of this happily ever after and the satisfaction this kind of ending would give to the target audience. 

This brings me to another one of Paul's points about who the target audience of the show actually was and knowing this will then show me why a fairytale ending works. Paul also said that including actual facts and satistics about the show would help create a good essay. Because of these things I am planning to do some internet research about the actual viewer numbers and demographics for Friends and I will write a blog post about it for my reference.

There is still a lot more I will post about my chat with Paul Marchbank, however writing it down in seperate blog posts like this is really helping me go into detail more about what he said and what this will help me to do in terms of further research.

Update - 14/11/2014 (Rebecca Feasey Conversation)

Since my last update, I send a message to Dr. Rebecca Feasey to ask about her opinions on gender and Friends. A screenshot of the message I sent her is below.

She replied a few days later:

Although this was not the response I was hoping for, it was still a response and helps reassure me that the topic has been analysed by many experts in the field so it is a good topic for my EPQ. The book that Rebecca Feasey is referring to in the email is one I have already found through my internet research, however I have yet to read the chapter on Friends in more depth. 

Because of this response, I have printed out the Friends chapter from her book "Masculinity and Popular Television" and I have started to read and highlight it. The 3 things I have highlighted for are: structure elements (for example where she has included a reference to another show, I have highlighted this so that I reference in this way or a similar way in my essay - helping me to start thinking about how to write my essay), definitions (for when there is a key term I am unsure about, I look up the definition and write it down so that I could maybe use this in my essay) and key points (which I write my own thoughts around). (See the chapter of the book below)

I think this has been a really useful way to read the chapter so far as it really makes me pay attention and focus on what I am reading (which I often find difficult) and because of this I plan to go through some more of the articles I've found and analyse them this way. It has also helped to print it out so that I can physically write and highlight it, and I plan to do this more for my research.

Update - 9/11/2014 (Paul Marchbank Chat & Further Experts)

Since my last update, I have received an email from Paul Marchbank, a lecturer at Southampton Solent University whom I emailed about his expert knowledge on Friends and gender. We decided that it would be best if we spoke on the phone so that it wouldn't be a long essay (as most of my other research is) and I can pick and choose the opinions and pieces of advice that I want to do further research around and that can include in my project.

During the discussion, I realised that my project so far and at the moment has been mainly focused on the representations in Friends and not American society even though I have tried to research these two topics in relation to each other. Because of this, I believe that maybe this means that there isn't much of a link between the two and I need to discuss this further with my supervisor. This may lead me to re-evaluate my question.

Paul said that Friends' representations were and are extremely typical of the sitcom genre as this is both a way of adding to the comical element of the show and also a way of encouraging viewer identification. This reinforces my own opinions and thoughts as I was thinking this too, and he also added that this is very important in terms of viewer demographics of Friends and why this was chosen/why it works.

Another interesting point he also raised was that gender representations (although having minor changes) have been pretty much the same for at least 100 years in popular media platforms and that it may be highly unlikely they will change over the course of Friends, however may still be possible. We also discussed how the female characters are represented it a far more stereotypical way than the male characters (this may point to the main demographic being a female audience - having mostly feminine characters to relate to, even the men themselves). This also could suggest that even if there are an even split of male/female viewers (need to research demographics), this is likely to show that male stereotypes are difficult to enjoy watching on a unisex level and that they are more strong when represented.

A further interesting point that Paul made was the relation of the storyline's to classic fairytales that people tell their children and that everyone is forced to conform to. He pointed out that, as all show's do, Friends ends when Monica and Chandler have had a baby CHILDREN, Ross and Rachel get back together LOVE/MARRIAGE, and Phoebe and Mike get marriage LOVE/MARRIAGE. This is a classic way of ending a series and it is done because the audience is made to feel as if that love, marriage and children are the only goals in life - especially for women (proposed demographic) - and this makes the show more satisfying and fulfilling in their eyes.

Paul went into a lot more detail and added a lot more information than just this and so I will do another blog post about the discussion in the near future. Below is a copy of the notes I made during the phone call, they may not make a lot of sense so (as I have done here) I will breakdown different course of discussion in another blog post.

I have also found another "expert", Dr. Rebecca Feasey, that I am going to email about my project in the same way I did here. I found this person by attending Bath Spa University open day and her name being mentioned as a "gender representations in popular television" expert. In my next update I will mention my progress with this.

Update - 27/10/2014

From my to do list, so far I have completed all things highlighted in green:

• Complete source table and upload

• Self evaluate work so far

• Choose final two episodes for essay (maybe re evaluate the way I will write my essay to incorporate more evidence from episodes - blog post to come)

• Write questions to ask experts

• Email experts (for example Paul Marchbank, Southampton Solent) and find others

• Either use same questions as experts for viewers of Friends or write new questions

• Ask views of Friends these questions through surveys and interviews

• Analyse findings from this primary research

Today, I finished writing the questions I want to ask experts related to my topic and I emailed the head of the Media Department at Southampton Solent University. 

Survey questions

Below is a copy of the survey I will be asking viewers of Friends to fill out. The survey includes both general Friends gender questions and also questions related to clips I will show them of the show.

Survey:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3poDpWGHM-_aWc1UG5yd0J5NTg/view?usp=sharing

Gender in society research

As my question is relating Friends to changes in American society, I have chosen to do some research about gender attitudes and how they developed in the time period that Friends was produced.

Articles so far:

The end of the gender revolution? Gender role attitudes from 1977-2008
http://www.vanneman.umd.edu/socy428/CotterHV11.pdf

Survey clips

For primary research, I am planning to make a survey for people to fill out in relation to gender and Friends. I have decided that for some of the questions, the participant will be shown a clip from the show and asked about it's representation of gender. 

In order to be able to show the audience clips, I searched gender topics on Youtube as well as episodes I have chosen to look into. These are the clips I will be using, not all of them just some. I also chose clips based on having them spread out and not all at one time period of the show.

Clips for survey

S1E4 The one with George Stephanopoulos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gHmvlzFGdI&spfreload=10%20Message%3A%20JSON%20Parse%20error%3A%20Unexpected%20EOF%20(url%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D7gHmvlzFGdI

S1E5 The one with the East German laundry detergent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYVXcmeH0xc&spfreload=10%20Message%3A%20JSON%20Parse%20error%3A%20Unexpected%20EOF%20(url%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DZYVXcmeH0xc

S2E8 The one with the list

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGoC8FTLKSI&list=PLh5uHBRC0Ny5KVlA8xXJPSZow1DfRiY8S&index=1&spfreload=10%20Message%3A%20JSON%20Parse%20error%3A%20Unexpected%20EOF%20(url%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DiGoC8FTLKSI%26list%3DPLh5uHBRC0Ny5KVlA8xXJPSZow1DfRiY8S%26index%3D1

S7E10 The one with the holiday armadillo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYqOklkZ3gM&index=2&list=PLh5uHBRC0Ny5KVlA8xXJPSZow1DfRiY8S&spfreload=10%20Message%3A%20JSON%20Parse%20error%3A%20Unexpected%20EOF%20(url%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAYqOklkZ3gM%26index%3D2%26list%3DPLh5uHBRC0Ny5KVlA8xXJPSZow1DfRiY8S

S10E3 The one with Ross’s tan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XukeBEv6R3Y&spfreload=10%20Message%3A%20JSON%20Parse%20error%3A%20Unexpected%20EOF%20(url%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DXukeBEv6R3Y

(PDF document)