Analysis Of May The Circle Stay Unbroken: Friends, The Presence Of Whiteness

Still images are not the only form of visual texts that rhetorical scholars have identified as perpetuating racism. Television productions have similar effects. In his piece, “May the Circle Stay Unbroken: Friends, the Presence of Absence, and the Rhetorical Reinforcement of Whiteness”, Phil Chidester examines how the popular sitcom Friends can function, just as the discursive practices mentioned earlier, to reinforce racial identity without explicit acknowledgement of race. Chidester contends that for viewers interested in preserving whiteness’s unspoken privilege Friends, which features a racially and socioeconomically homogeneous friend group, provides them with a medium (Chidester, 2008). Notably, the show both reinforces whiteness’s freedom to convert public spaces into private ones, and argues for the right of whiteness to preserve its purity against the racial other (Chidester, 2008). In Friends, the topics of conversation remain largely the same when characters move from the private to public sphere, as highly personal matters are discussed with ease …show more content…
In his piece, “Resisting Whiteness: Mexican American Studies and Rhetorical Struggles for Visibility”, Chad Nelson speaks about the significance of concepts such as cultural empowerment, and love for one’s fellow human, in breaking down whiteness ideologies. Nelson talks about the Mayan philosophy of “Lak’ech”, which involves loving and respecting your fellow human being (Nelson, 2014, 75). Nelson points to this philosophy as an important means for resistance because it has the power to unify and motivate collective political action amongst a group by its appeal to the inter-connectivity of humanity (Nelson, 2014). Counterstorytelling is another strategy of resistance Nelson mentions. This technique is reliant on the sharing of co- cultural stories to make people both aware, and critical of, oppression (Nelson,