Companion to my Article on Friends
Yesterday, I published an article at Middle East Eye on how the show Friends and especially its universalisation , regardless of the intentions of the show's creators, has played an imperialist role in the Middle East. In the spirit of this blog being intended as a set of "textual trimmings," here are two sections that I chose not to include in the final of the published article. They deal with how the universalising role played by Friends is cited and carried over in two other television series. Friends and the Universal: The Case of Skins In an episode of the British television dramedy Skins, the show’s protagonists encounter a young Russian woman whom they assume would not speak or understand English. The woman then surprises the show’s protagonists and audiences that she speaks fluent, colloquial, American punctuated with local pop American references; having learned from “like, the best American show ever” (i.e. Friends ). As a running gag throughout the rest of