Why Sitcoms Shouldn't Hire Women, Except As Actresses
A female assistant on "Friends" who was fired for typing too slowly had the bright idea of trying to collect a few bucks by alleging, first, racism (that one was nixed by the court), and then, sexual harrassment -- merely because she was in earshot of off-color banter! -- turning the writer's room on sitcoms into a hostile legal arena.
assistants who can't take off-color banter
photo by Gregg Sutter
Harvey A. Silverglate (a director of a foundation which signed an amicus brief in the case) explains in The Wall Street Journal, how cases like this "allow punishment even of workplace discussion that's central to the professional mission of an enterprise" -- something I find personally and professionally terrifying. So...why did the court allow her to sue for sexual harrassment? According to Silverglate:
Because she had to attend sessions at which writers tossed around "lewd, crude, vulgar jokes and comments in the writers' room" as part of the creative process of scripting "a show about the lives of young sexually active adults" (as the court characterized "Friends").The trial judge had dismissed her claim because the offensive speech was not directed at her personally and was geared to create an atmosphere conducive to producing script ideas. Not so, said the Court of Appeal that reinstated her claim. "A woman may be the victim of sexual harassment if she is forced to work in an atmosphere of hostility or degradation of her gender." If she has to work in an atmosphere that "sufficiently offends" her "so as to disrupt her emotional tranquility in the workplace," that's the equivalent of depriving her of her opportunity to work. Ms. Lyle "was a captive audience." In other words, by performing the very job for which she'd applied, she was unwillingly exposing herself to the offensive atmosphere that constituted gender discrimination.
The California Supreme Court gave civil libertarians hope when, last month, it agreed to review the decision. If it fails to reverse, the workplace will join the college campus as a place where some are entitled to the comfort of not having their sensibilities challenged, while others suffer arbitrary censorship.
The writers pointed out that they shouldn't be penalized where they felt required to tell colorful jokes "as part of the creative process." The court disagreed and ruled that the jurors would decide "whether defendants' conduct was indeed necessary to the performance of their jobs." How is the jury to do this? By deciding whether the writers had "no alternative to these sexual brainstorming sessions." After all, noted the court, the creative necessity defense would not justify writers' assistants being "kissed, fondled or caressed in the interests of developing a 'love scene' between the characters."
So, banter is akin to sexual assault. What's more, the burden is on the writers "to convince a jury the artistic process for producing . . . 'Friends' necessitates conduct which might be unacceptable in other contexts." They'd have to convince jurors that "the recounting of sexual exploits, real and imagined, the making of lewd gestures and the displaying of crude pictures denigrating women was within 'the scope of necessary job performance' and not engaged in for purely personal gratification or out of meanness or bigotry or other personal motives."
It was a frighteningly simple step for harassment law to go from punishing actions to punishing words. Here, we glimpse the next plateau -- punishing bad thoughts. Stay tuned.
Nobody writes really great (or even borderline adequate) humor in an environment rife with propriety and decorum. You need a sense of play to crack stuff out of the muse (that bitch!). For me, at least, this takes batting a bit of vulgarity around -- something I make clear to any potential assistant I'm interviewing.
I also point out the porn films from my friend Walt lazily piled on top of my stack of videos, noting that I'm a girl who has porn films lying around in the open; ie, if this troubles you, perhaps the church choir is hiring.
Let's review this week's vulgar Advice Goddess verbiage: There was that one rather mildly Puritan-peeving line, "Yeah, this is going to happen -- and Mommy and Daddy are going to have a threesome with the Easter Bunny" -- which actually got nixed for the cleaner, and, I thought, funnier option: "Yeah, this is going to happen -- and your grandmaís going to rob the corner liquor store, buy crack with the money, and sell it to schoolchildren."
Truth be told, I'm actually having a hard time coming up with good smut examples after the fact...although, again, on the extremely mild side, there was that question of whether somebody should be described as "the love child of Danny DeVito and The Swamp Thing," or whether DeVito would best be replaced with one of a number of other Swamp Thing guy-wife candidates.
Hmm, I guess that's still a distressingly unshocking example, since The Swamp Thing isn't really classifiable as an animal, thus eliminating any potential charges of beastiality banter at the office. Then again...there was that goat bit I like to retread from time to time: "Well, if the goat is consenting, I really don't have a problem with that." Shit! I'm screwed. (Oops, I mean..."Poopy! Gee whiz, I'm in trouble!")
Luckily, I'm an underfunded hostile workplace.
And this person has been working for "Friends" for how long? And she has endured this for how long? And now that the series is ended, she's just now bringing forward her complaint? Yeah, right.
Patrick at August 9, 2004 10:04 AM
Amy, you are so cute in that photo!
Lena at August 9, 2004 2:32 PM
First, the religious right, and now the courts. At least a veep can still say fuck you in the senate. I have as much contempt for our so-called legal system as you have for religious zealotry. Little weasel gods with no natural enemies to contain their burgeoning over-population. Sometimes I wish I had opted for a law degree just to be a human monkey wrench bent on sabotage. Or at least something akin to a whistle-blower. But reason tells me it's way too late.
allan at August 9, 2004 5:18 PM
Allan -- Most people who go to law school have similarly high aspirations -- whistle-blowing, civil rights, etc. By the time they graduate, however, their debt is so severe that they have to settle for high-paying jobs like working in the legal dept. at Tupperware or Toys-R-Us. Lena
Lena at August 9, 2004 5:47 PM