Has Frasier dated? I thought not, but then I realised that the strange, relaxing sensation I get from the show is because it’s from a closed era. It’s done, signed sealed delivered, and while I recognise the world it inhabits, it’s gone now, a time period that is firmly in the past. I suppose, given my age, that it’s the first such one for me — a time I remember from having lived it, even if I was just a kid. But halfway through the show, a catastrophe happened, and the era it depicts — one that sits in my head alongside Dilbert cartoons, Windows 95 and Bill Clinton — drew to a close. The catastrophe was 9/11, of course, and it wasn’t just that it symbolised the end of some idea of an American innocence (however delusional or ahistorical that might be), but it was also an intimate human tragedy for Frasier, as one of the show’s creators, David Angell, was on board American Airlines Flight 11, the first of the planes to hit the World Trade Center that day. I can only imagine what a shock that must have been to a creative project involving so many, for its creator to be tied up in a national tragedy in such a way.
Even in later seasons, however, Frasier retains its prelapsarian sense of an eternal present, a time without news, a time beyond the challenge of the Cold War. The show premiered a year after Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man, and while it would be a stretch to say it furthers the arguments on Fukuyama’s book, it does inhabit a world of remarkable social, political and economic stability, a highpoint of the American bourgeoisie. It seems to be a world of steady continual growth, of a stable middle-class, of children doing better than their parents, of plenty of disposable income and increasing quality consumer goods. It’s in such a world that Frasier finds himself needing to renegotiate his contract — remember them?
Frasier has decided on a number of ethical points. The first, and more minor one, is that he won’t do paid endorsements on his show. As a respected doctor, his advice carries a certain weight, he feels, and he can’t take advantage of that by taking money for restaurant recommendations. How much are they offering??? And so, the slippery slope begins. He claims it’s because he has principles, but what is the principle at stake here? It’s because he wants to believe that the society he thrives in is not one based around cut-throat self-interest, but that fair and honest men can survive. If that’s not the case, does his success not imply he’s not the honest man he feels himself to be.
And yet, he’s already taken the money for the paid endorsements, and the trail of ethical breadcrumbs he’s laid for himself to find his way home convinces no one, least of all himself. His new agent turns out, inevitably, to be a disaster, and Frasier becomes the victim of a number of catastrophic public relations failures. And here’s the other thing that dates the show — the failures and humiliations are contained and limited by their importance, and the media. That’s to say, when the naming ceremony at the zoo for a new crane ends with Martin being attacked by the bird, and Frasier humiliated on the evening news, the extent of the humiliation extends to the viewership of the news. Without social media, so many things that would destroy characters in Frasier today pass off into the airwaves. It can be difficult to remember what it was like when the audience couldn’t answer back, yet here, when Bulldog, a fellow presenter on KACL 780, does a racist impression of a Chinese person, the worst Frasier can imagine is the station being sued.
Indeed, the growth of social media is a far bigger division between past and present in US society than even 9/11. So much represented in the show would manifest in a very different way today, both within the Frasier universe, but also in the reaction to the show’s storylines. Racism and workplace sexual harassment are taken as givens within the show, tackled, if they’re tacked at all, by the victims using it as an opportunity to bite back, to lean in to the corporate system or otherwise show their street smart reactions — as in the case of Bulldog and Roz. It’s hard to imagine today that such a character could get away with harassing his co-worker without the show somehow offering some moral comeuppance for Bulldog before the twenty minutes are up. Racism would be still more obvious, were there any people of colour in the show: like other shows of the time, such as Friends and Seinfeld, Frasier is remarkably, preposterously, even surreally, white.
This is what I mean when I say I don’t think it would be possible to set Frasier in a world with social media. It’s not just that the presence of smartphones would derail much of the farce, but that the whole concept of humiliations that are simply moved past would be unimaginable in a world where any one of Frasier’s pratfalls could go viral, and where Frasier’s listeners could maintain a dialogue around Frasier without using his platform. The possibility of a backlash would make it a much different show, with higher stakes and higher anxiety. But perhaps least viable of all is a world where Frasier could, as he does by the end of the episode (by signing with the wonderfully satanic Bebe Glazer), sell out. Today it seems preposterous that anyone could rise to his prominence in the media without having already compromised himself in public 100 times, while the cultural designations of having sold out seem so much more complicated. Prostrating yourself for the benefit of a corporate behemoth is now just called going online — contemporary criticism revolves around far more complicated cultural signifiers than being seen as merely trustworthy and principled. Somehow the accusation of having sold out seems so… nineties.
Check out my non-Frasier writing at utopian drivel.
(Upon sending this, I realised I’ve conflated two separate but similar episodes, which I happened to watch on the same day – so this essay also references 5.12 Zoo Story. Sorry, I just confused myself!)