Hey y’all and welcome back to another blog post. So, this week was a big grinding week. Doing interviews, recording our voices, preparing music and editing to put together our podcast episodes. But we had a couple in-class activities that I was pretty interested in and decided to look more into. 

One thing that we did this past week was listening to a podcast called “History of the 90’s” and the episode was titled “The one about Friends”. Friends, being the amazing sit com created in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Me, being a Friends fan for the last few years was especially interested to learn some random facts and stories about the show. We only watched about half the episode in class, so I decided to watch the rest of it back at my house. There was one story that they talked about in particular that I found a little more weird than interesting, but still interesting.

 So, so you that you don’t have to listen to the 10 min clip talking about the story, there was someone named Amaani Lyle that worked as a writer for about 4 months before they got fired. She then filed a dismissal suit against the writers and producers of Friends, where she claimed that she had been subjected to racial and sexual harassment and very dark suggestions to the show. 

There was a sign by more than a hundred film and television writers including Norman Lear and Larry David, stating that group writing requires an atmosphere of complete trust. Writers must feel not only that it is alright to fail but also that they can share their most private and darkest thoughts without concern for ridicule, embarrassment or legal accountability. In the end, the California Supreme Court sided with the writers and there was something created known as the Creative Necessity Defence. That became something that was integrated into HR paper work and basically any creative industry, education, journalism, etc. 

They also discussed that in this day, where you have to be a lot more careful about things like that and that this situation would’ve been handled way differently, especially with the whole “Me too” movement.

I actually didn’t know very much about the “Me too” movement other than the fact that it’s about sexual harassment and sexual assault, so I decided to do some research. 

So, after doing a bit of research, I found their website. They even have a healing series that is made to help survivors from sexual violence to help recover and a way for others to donate or do something to help the survivors. 

Here’s what I found on another website: “The “Me Too” movement, which focuses on the experiences of sexual violence survivors, has earned a large response in part because sexual harassment and sexual assault impact people every day. By sharing their own experiences, the movement’s proponents make clear just how common sexual harassment is. The hope is that, if people are more aware of sexual harassment and how casually it is sometimes treated, then tolerance for it will decrease and support for victims will rise.”

All in all, it is amazing that there is finally starting to be awareness spread on this subject, because it is very very necessary and long overdue. 

Bye! And I’ll see you in my next blog post!