TV

I know that, by now, no one is actually watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (especially since it’s on hiatus, with a return date as-yet unannounced). But they should! Because it is great! Content-wise, there is a lot of discussion while watching the show about what arguments Aaron Sorkin is trying to make politically, mostly because he’s usually not particularly subtle.

The last new episode, called 4 a.m. Miracle, has a number of plot lines, but the one I’m interested in is the one concerning the lawyer that shows up about a sexual harrassment claim. Throughout the episode, Matthew Perry’s character is questioned about whether he will be a witness for a case defending against a writer who claims that the nature of jokes in the writer’s room at Studio 60 constitutes sexual harassment. Outside of its general appeal as news in the world of sexual harassment law (fun!), this plotline is interesting because it almost exactly mirrors a situation that actually happened on the Friends set a few years back. After a protracted legal battle, the California Supreme Court ruled that “writers have the right to talk dirty and make lewd comments while creating a television situation comedy without having to worry about being sued.”

Now, there are a couple of differences between the actual case and Studio 60’s narrative. In the Friends case, the person alleging harassment was the transcriptionist, so she couldn’t very well just walk out of the room when discussion moved to graphic descriptions of Courteney Cox Arquette’s infertility or what the best way to have sex with Jennifer Aniston would be, and on the TV show, the womyn in question was a writer. Zap2it has a good explanation of the claims the plaintiff made, none of which were disputed substantively by the writers of the show.

I don’t know whether the California Supreme Court was wrong. They were unanimous, and deciding on a California employment law with which I’m not familiar. But I do have a couple of concerns with the notion that writers’ rooms are always protected speech, even when that speech is unquestionably misogynistic, perceived as harassing, and not relevant to any sketch or scene that will make it to air. I think that the idea that there are some places where anything goes, even though what always goes is jokes against the same groups of marginalized folks, is the same argument used to justify lower standards for sexual harassment at construction sites or oil rigs, which I find ridiculous. As this defense of the court’s action admits, the jokes are usually racist and/or sexist. The fact that they’re funny is the defense, which I think is good but incomplete. I mean, if the idea phase is so important, why was Amaani Lyle asked not to take notes at certain times? It just seems so much more complicated than to say that free speech means she should get over it, or that these jokes are “sexually coarse and vulgar language” but not sexist or overall demeaning to womyn. How you make that distinction in this situation is beyond me.

Given this knowledge, which I know not everyone would be aware of upon starting to watch the episode, I became skeptical as soon as the lawyer walked into the room. There were a couple of factors that raised my hackles right away, especially the snide way that everyone said “claiming sexual harassment” as though the person filing the lawsuit was probably lying, and the fact that Matt’s first reaction was to say that she was a bad writer because the boss before him would certainly not have done anything illegitimate even though he wasn’t there and doesn’t know the writer in question. There is a difference between saying that there is an obligation to prove one’s case and the implication that the filer of charges is a liar, and it is my experience that sexual harrassment/sexual assault cases are the ones in which the latter claim is most likely to be made.

As the rest of the episode played, I wasn’t surprised to find out that, despite being appalled by the slurs made at the love of his life, Harriet Hayes, that he said he would testify on behalf of the defense. He said that although it was no way to run a writer’s room, and he would never run a room like that, plenty of funny stuff comes out of rooms that he doesn’t run, so he’s their guy. Now, I have no doubt that obnoxious people are critical to the joke process, and it’s not like perfectly normal people don’t make offensive jokes. But why is that the only concern? Why is the only question whether or not the jokes produced are funny? If it were an unfunny writer’s room, influenced by the fact that all the jokes told were sexist ones, would it be sexual harrassment then?

I am hesitant to put controls on speech, because it’s free speech, and that’s good. But what happens when it’s harassing speech? Isn’t the point of things like the 1991 amendments to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which classifies sexual harassment as discrimination and thus against the law) that not all speech should necessarily be protected? On the other hand, I want spaces for art to be as open as possible. But maybe I’m not surprised that there aren’t more female comedians when the rooms are all telling the same staid sexist jokes.

What do you think?

Image via Studio 60 Guide

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Studio 60, Sexual Harassment, Friends, Amaani Lyle