After this, you’ll never view Friends the same way
The people who make films and TV shows don’t always see them the same way as the fans
If you’ve ever seen the movie The Karate Kid, you know that it’s about a young man, played by Ralph Macchio, training with a wise old martial arts master until he is ready, both physically and spiritually, to face down a bully, played by William Zabka.
There is, though, another interpretation. From a different point of view, it could also be the story of a serious-minded martial arts student – Zabka – who is the victim of an unprovoked and violent attack by an emotionally unstable young man – Maccio – who subverts the tenets of martial arts to win over the girl and become the de facto boss of a street gang.
I know about the second, unorthodox, interpretation because of (what else?) the internet. Simply Googling the words “alternate interpretation of” and then inserting the title of a popular movie or television show is likely to turn up some fascinating theories.
The long-running sitcom Friends, which until I Googled the words “alternative interpretation of Friends” I thought was a show about, well, friends who hang out together in a Manhattan coffee shop could also be about – and fair warning: this is dark – a homeless and mentally unstable woman (Phoebe) who peers into the window of the hip coffee joint (Central Perk, for the Friends fans among you) and imagines the lives and adventures of the personalities she spies. This interpretation of the series is apparently supported by the final episode, in which the character of Phoebe is left alone as each of the friends moves out of the city and into the suburbs.
It’s highly unlikely that the creators and writers of the show had any intention at all of supporting this interpretation, just as it’s unlikely that George Lucas, the impresario of the Star Wars multi-film universe, would agree with a currently popular internet perspective on his creation, which is that the Jedi knights are a crackpot terrorist organisation with an allegiance to a bizarre cult who are dedicated to overthrowing the basically peaceful galactic empire, policed by a one-man law enforcement officer who goes by the name Darth Vader. Vader, in this version, is sort of like a blackclad, spooky Jason Bourne. If you think about it long enough, it starts to seem possible.
These are what is known as “fan theories”, and once you allow yourself to consider them, be prepared to lose a few hours.
They’re not all totally nutty. Some have suggested that the character of James Bond isn’t really a person at all, but a code name given out by the British Secret Service to any agent who is tasked with his special duties. (That would explain, I guess, the multiple actors who have inhabited the role, though it still leaves Roger Moore’s truly awful hairpiece as a baffling mystery.)
There are fan theories about Steven Spielberg’s 1982 masterpiece ET – namely that ET goes home, gathers an army of invaders and returns to conquer the Earth in Spielberg’s 2005 film, The War of the Worlds. There are fan theories about the television show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (that the Fresh Prince was actually killed in the “one little fight” he describes in the title song and is now living in heaven, also known as “Bel Air”) and even a rather convincing one about the old detective series Murder, She Wrote, which was about a kindly old mystery novelist who finds herself embroiled each week in solving a murder. The fan theory, as you might have guessed, is that she is in fact a diabolical serial killer.
These fan theories are fun to think about, naturally, but they also show just how fragile some films and television shows are once they are released into the wide world. Fans tend to pick and choose which parts of their favourite shows or movies to hold dear and which to twist and bend in their imaginations. Years ago, the prolific and ambitious television producer Normal Lear created a controversial and newsworthy comedy, All in the Family, which captured the tumultuous early 1970s. His two main characters were a reactionary bigot and his progressive, liberal son-in-law. Lear meant for his show to expound on the virtues of the younger, modern and open-minded generation. He did his best to lampoon and mock the values and ideas of the old generation, bound up in racial and ethnic prejudice.
Alas for him, it was the most bigoted characters, the oldschool father-in-law Archie Bunker and his caustic African-American neighbour, George Jefferson, who caught fire with audiences. It was those two who despite – or maybe because of – their outmoded and utterly reprobate attitudes became fan favourites. (It also helped that they were, by far, the most hilarious characters on screen.)
“Why don’t audiences understand what I’m trying to do with my show?” He is said to have asked a network executive. “This isn’t what I was going for at all!”
The reported answer was: “What do you mean, ‘your show’? It’s their show. It became theirs the moment it appeared on their television sets.”
Fans tend to see the movie and the television show they want to see, even if it means – as with ET and Friends – making up a very different story.