“Be Your Own Windkeeper”: Friends, Feminism, and Rhetorical Strategies of Depoliticization

Abstract

The television program Friends reinforces therapeutic rhetoric, Third Wave feminism, and postfeminism as it depoliticizes women's issues through three strategies: (1) the representation of female empowerment exclusively as individual transformation, (2) the simplistic resolution of systemic women's economic problems, and (3) the portrayal of political issues as worthy of mockery. This rhetoric has material consequences, especially for young women, because it portrays political action as unnecessary and undesirable.

Keywords:

• Therapeutic rhetoric
• Friends
• Second Wave feminism
• Third Wave feminism
• Postfeminism
• Depoliticization
• Situation comedy