it's just a joke, okay?

In the media we find a saturation of comedy. Everything and everyone is subject to humor on tv. What I have noticed however is that this can be extremely harmful. In my research for my final paper, this became glaringly apparent. In the shows friends it is astonishing how this humor and laugh track mantra of the show is used to normalize misogyny and transphobia. When these things are expressed by characters, it is often presented as if it is normal to be this way (which it often is in this culture) and is usually followed by a laugh track. This provides the perfect set up for someone to watch the show, particularly at a young age, and have these things normalized in their mind. I can say this unfortunately from experience. Only going back after having learned a lot do I realize how terrible some of the humor is in that show. As a child watching the show, my first concept of misogyny and transphobia became normalized as that it was a joke, something to be laughed at and nothing more. So here comes the point. We have make sure that humor does not continue to be a normalization weapon of the media to convince us that thing are okay and even laughable.