Like a lot of people who have watched Friends, I initially found Janice, Chandler’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, pretty annoying. Her shrill voice, loud laugh and in-your-face presence grated at my nerves.
Slowly I began to realize that there is a reason why, out of all the annoying characters on the show (and let’s be real, I love the main six but they all have their unbearable moments), I found Janice particularly irksome: she is the most similar to me. She is Jewish and the embodiment of some of the things I am most insecure about: big hair, talkativeness, being outgoing. Worse, the gang hates these things about her. They repeatedly mock her nasal voice and do their best to avoid her at all costs.
The very traits that they find so annoying are also all traits that often associated with Jewishness. Friends is an undeniably Jewish show: its creators, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, are openly Jewish, as was about half the writers’ room. Inevitably, this influenced the characters’ personalities and plotlines, as writers draw on themselves and their life experiences.
Still, the main Jewish women of Friends fit neatly into certain stereotypes. Monica Geller is explicitly Jewish and fills the trope of the neurotic Jewish woman. Her mother, Judy, is a textbook overbearing and over-involved Jewish mom. Rachel Green’s Judaism is less overt, but if you pay attention, there are definitive clues, such as calling her grandmother “bubbe” (Yiddish for “granny”). I know that Rachel is Jewish the same way I know that Cher Horowitz of Clueless is Jewish: they are both Jewish American Princesses. Maybe you haven’t heard the phrase, but you know the trope: spoiled, selfish, bratty, loves to shop for clothes using her dad’s credit card. Jewish American Princesses are pretty presentations of the trope that Jews are money-obsessed and materialistic. Presenting a woman as a JAP is an easy way of implicitly telling viewers that she is Jewish without having to state it outright.
Rachel is what scholar Vincent Brook calls a “conceptual Jew.” In his book Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of the “Jewish” Sitcom, Brooks defines this as “the increasing recent attenuation and abstraction of Jews’ links to identifiable ethnic and cultural, never mind religious, expression.” In other words, the writers know these characters to be Jewish but do not actively say that they are. This is in contrast to a “perceptual Jew,” a character who is widely perceived as Jewish by viewers of all religions (for example, Monica Geller or Larry David).
Kauffman did not conceive of Janice as Jewish but as “simply New York,” but I would argue that many viewers perceive her as Jewish. Much of her personality and style is inspired by Fran Fine of The Nanny, a sitcom produced by and starring Fran Drescher that aired a year before Friends. Fran (both the actor and the character) is a loud and proud Jew.
The Nanny has been criticized for catering to negative stereotypes about Jewish women, such as the sound of Fran’s voice and her penchant for shopping. Drescher responded to this criticism in an article for the Los Angeles Times, stating that she based Fran Fine on herself, her mother, and her community in Queens. “Why waste time putting down…someone who displays such a great capacity for love and wisdom and has such wholesome values and good instincts as a Jew, a woman, and above all, as a human being—over something so petty and superficial as plastic slipcovers and the sound of her voice?” Drescher is well aware of the stereotypes, but shows that they aren’t necessarily something to shy away from when characters are portrayed with nuance and multidimensionality.
That is where good character writing and development comes in, and in my opinion, works in Janice’s favor. True, she does embody some stereotypes. We are inclined to agree with the main characters’ petty distaste for Janice, but if we look beyond surface-level traits, Janice has many redeeming qualities. She is (most of the time) an excellent, loving girlfriend to Chandler: she gets him thoughtful gifts and puts in an effort to get close with his friends to make him happy; she calls him out on his immaturity and lack of communication; she comforts him at a fertility clinic when he and Monica are struggling to conceive. Furthermore, she offers Rachel support and advice on being a single mother. We tend to overlook these facets of her personality in favor of making fun of petty things that she cannot control.
Janice is allowed to embrace her Jewishness and her personality in ways that Rachel and Monica are not. They are riddled with insecurities, particularly concerning their stereotypical Jewish qualities. Monica is often ashamed of her neurotic tendencies, and Rachel is seen as immature for her materialistic ways. These traits are seen as something to grow out of, and Rachel and Monica rely on external acceptance to fuel their confidence. Janice, on the other hand, is self-reliant and unabashed about her typically Jewish personality, yet she is seen as a nuisance and the butt of the joke. Why can’t we appreciate a Jewish woman being confident in herself? Did the writers intend for viewers to find her irritating, or for us to criticize the gang for their insensitivity?
As Drescher wrote in her essay, there is an idea that “the only good portrayal of a Jew is an assimilated one.” Similarly, Brook writes that a performance of Jewishness “portends a displacement of undesirable Jewish traits onto non-Jews.” Like many of the Jewish women in my life, Janice takes up a lot of space, and perhaps this scares Monica and Rachel because they never felt that they could do the same.
I also tended to shy away from who I am. I felt that my thick eyebrows and big hair already called enough attention to me, highlighting my otherness, so I had to counteract that by dressing in muted, solid colors and avoiding bold eyeliner or colorful makeup. I tried to talk less in conversations to avoid being noticed.
But the truth is, like Janice, I am loud. Like Janice, I speak my mind, I care deeply for others, I get excited easily, I speak with my hands, I am goofy. My hair cannot be tamed. And I love wearing leopard print and bright colors! In some ways, these qualities may make me a stereotypical Jew, but there is no shame in being that way. I am not loud because I am Jewish; rather, I am loud and I am Jewish.
Janice is completely comfortable with and confident in herself. She never lets the gang’s passive aggressive—and often downright mean—comments change her. She knows who she is, and she is unapologetic about it. Throughout the series, she remains compassionate, supportive, fun, affectionate, and kind.
Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing to be like Janice.