Just be friends
In a series of articles, various authors examine friendship in the 21st century.
Everyone wants a circle of friends, but almost no one has it.
At least that’s what author Jenny Singer claims in the article “The Friend Group Fallacy” published in The Atlantic. In her opinion, the longing for large circles of friends is so widespread that there are several startups in the growing “friendship industry” (brr) with business ideas that involve bringing new friends together.
There is clearly a strong “demand” for friendly community. However, I question Singer’s explanation that this demand is due to insecurity and jealousy generated by social media. Not all problems are due to the Internet, even if it certainly feels like it.
Rather, I believe that our longing for a group of friends stems from the fact that “society,” or whatever you want to call the social patterns that currently organize our lives, is not friendship-oriented. It becomes a kind of luxurious bonus rather than a constitutive element in the fabric of society.
According to the convention is the friendship that is rock solid and stable while love is fragile and shimmering. In fact, the opposite is true. Love has an army on its side – friendship is defenseless.
The basic building block of society is still – perhaps more than ever – the loving couple. We don’t live with our friends. We live together with our sexual relationships and the possible fruits of them. And if we still live with a boyfriend and have a romantic prospect, the clock is ticking.
They tell each other about their lives – but rarely share it. They seem to be running on parallel tracks, forever separated and alone. Very often over an empty layer
What you do most often when you meet your friends is called “updates about your life.” Not without reason. They tell each other about their lives – but rarely share it. They seem to be running on parallel tracks, forever separated and alone. Very often over an empty layer.
The longing for a close circle of friends is the longing to cross a boundary. Unlike normal one-on-one conversations, a close-knit group of friends – a circle – has the ability to draw an invisible pentagram of conspiratorial belonging around itself. As in a satanic ritual, the pentagon cuts through several different levels of existence and unites them together. Magically, the creatures within his invisible chalk line can suddenly share one and the same existence.
As you enter the circle, the world begins to shimmer. You can see it from inside a soap bubble.
Only a few works record This sentiment is as good as Whit Stillman’s 1990 “Metropolitan.” It’s usually said to be about class – and it is – but it’s even more about existential belonging.
It’s a wonderful film full of wonderful lines. One of the very best films comes after former enemies Charlie and Tom were awake all night thinking that there was a danger that Audrey, the girl they were both in love with, had gone out to another man’s country house. As they say goodbye for the evening, Charlie promises to call Tom at seven the next day and wake him up if he hears anything new. Just before he enters the elevator, he blurts out in a broken voice: “Could you call me either way?”
Can you still call me?
The line is an attempt to extend the strange bubble they find themselves in into the next day; consolidate their newly formed community into reality and make it something more than just another nocturnal state of emergency that disappears with the daylight. The naked, sober and alone.
There is like any number of works that draw their energy from the community of the friend group. The most well-known are television series such as “Friends,” “How I met your mother,” “Seinfeld,” etc. I do not believe, as many others seem to believe, that their continued popularity is primarily due to nostalgia. The main reason is that such series conjure up a universe in which the circle of friends is obviously the focus. The everyday community is rarely threatened there and always wins in the end.
Such a world is safe and pleasant. But also infinitely strange.
Meeting the same friends in the same café every day and constantly having endless fun is a fantasy that shimmers in the bold and surreal colors of the dream factory
Because as pleasant as it is to immerse ourselves in the series, we instinctively have the feeling that they are being lied to. Meeting the same friends in the same café every day and constantly having endless fun is a fantasy that shimmers in the bold and surreal colors of the dream factory. A soap bubble made of hard plastic.
Art that represents An intense, friendly community in a way that better fits our lives has far greater potential. In books like – for example – “The Wild Detectives” or “Brideshead Revisited”, friendship becomes a dream that bursts in daylight. All that remains is the memory of a mirage – which over time turns out to be the most real thing life has to offer the protagonists.
In fiction, such a community tends to belong to the young. And perhaps it can only survive in that special space between unconsciousness and conformity.
At least that’s how it is in “Metropolitan.” At the beginning of the film, the little old socialist Tom is accepted into the circle of charmingly affected upper-class judgments by pure chance. It’s Christmas vacation in upper-class Manhattan and there’s a debutante ball every evening. Tom stays awake all night, sleeps until five in the afternoon, and spends every waking minute with his new friends. He slips into a previously unknown world – and it becomes like new. Another life is possible.
Or not. “Metropolitan” is devastatingly simple, but carries with it the same disappointments as most of our lives. Inevitably the night will soon come when Tom’s companions are no longer available. Of course someone has a date. Someone else has already managed to get tired of constant socializing.
As a sort of confirmation of the unspoken alliance the gang has formed in the film, the girl who is usually the hostess has asked them to come to her apartment uninvited at any time as long as the lights are on. But when Tom and Charlie take her at her word out of companionship, she sees them as intruders.
“We can’t just see the same people every night for the rest of our lives,” she states – as if that were a given.
“At some point it has to go back to normal.”
It is the voice of reason that speaks. It is of course correct. It’s just a little sad that loneliness is the norm.
Read more:
Whit Stillman’s timeless nostalgia has a future ahead of it
