Friends

Twenty-four years of friendship and all it takes is a promotion to drive a rift between them. The driving force of a play is tension, and Cynthia’s new job was the tipping point that exposed the rust and failure of a machine that until now remained invisible or unprovoked—Tracey’s insecurity, victim complex, and racism. Even all those years of working on the floor together were not enough to stop Tracey spreading baseless rumors about her “affirmative action” promotion or throwing her under the bus for a management decision she likely had no say in. You could draw more ugly comparisons, like narcissists trying to sabotage their partners when they want to leave; but as Cynthia and Tracey’s tale is of friendship, what I thought of first were situational friends.

Situational friends are connections that exist within a specific context, like school or work. The difference between situational friends and “real friends” is that the former depends on the context of how you interact with them to exist; think an elementary school friend you’ve forgotten about or a stranger you befriended on the train that’s since become a random number saved on your phone. If not for an environment that places you in proximity to one another, you lose them or wouldn’t have been friends in the first place. In “Sweat,” we are clued that Cynthia and Tracey’s friendship started because they both worked “on the floor” at Olstead’s, Tracey at eighteen and Cynthia at twenty. Now, almost thirty years later, their shared “context” has expanded to include their children, their shared suffering, and what I argue is most important, their shared class status.

In the beginning all the characters are working class and it was Cynthia who broke this. With her promotion, she moves from working class to lower-middle class, “leaving” the rest of her friend group behind. It’s true that regardless of whether a friendship is real or situational, it will evolve over time and its original dynamics will inevitably be disturbed. It is true that Cynthia’s promotion introduces an economic power imbalance to her friend group, especially since she works as a manager of the warehouse where the rest of her friends are only manual workers. But this particular change that destroyed the original context of their friendship reveals telling things about Tracey’s character that could be highly damaging to their relationship in the future. Although Tracey considers Cynthia’s “leaving” as almost an act of betrayal, the one that she inflicted on Cynthia seems to be the worst of all—a betrayal of their decades-long friendship. To hear someone you considered your best friend spreading malicious, racist lies behind your back about one of the best things to happen to you. It makes you wonder if similar rifts have occurred in Tracey and Cynthia’s past. It becomes hard not to wonder if, like Jason with Chris, Tracey has been a force holding Cynthia back.

The contrast becomes especially stark when you consider other friend groups who were able to rise above these changes—the example that came to my mind was the TV show F.R.I.E.N.D.S. The friends, Monica, Ross, Chandler, Joey, Phoebe and Rachel, could not have origin stories more different from one another, as well as the ways they met. But the one thing and perhaps the first principle of the entire show is that they stay friends. All the characters fluctuate between different social classes multiple times. Rachel, in the first episode, leaves her rich dentist-fiancee at the altar, cuts herself off from her millionaire old money family, and begins looking for a job, which she finally lands as a waitress. Monica starts as a chef, then loses her job, starts a catering business before working her way up to become head chef at various restaurants. Chandler works various cushy white-collar jobs before quitting to pursue a more fulfilling job as a copywriter. (It’s his dream, whatever.) Part of the many reasons why the show resonated with so many is that it didn’t shy away from a realistic portrayal of the fate of everyday people in a changing economy, and maybe even more for its perhaps unrealistic portrayal of friendships that can stay constant despite it all.

The bottom line is that the friends are all from different social classes. The show tackles this directly in the episode “The One with Five Steaks and an Eggplant”: Monica, like Cynthia, has gotten a promotion, and takes her friends out to celebrate at a nice restaurant. While the richer of their friend group, Chandler, Ross, and now Monica with her promotion don’t bat an eye at the prices, Joey, Rachel and Phoebe have to try anything to cut down costs, even in the face of a sarcastic waiter: Joey asks if the Thai chicken pizza “without the nuts and wheats and stuff” would be cheaper, Rachel orders a side salad without a main dish, and Phoebe gets a cup of cucumber soup “and… take care.” In another episode where everyone is asked to pitch in $62 ($131 in today’s money) for Ross’s birthday party, Rachel says it directly to Joey and Phoebe: “Do you guys ever get the feeling that Chandler and those guys just don’t get that we don’t make as much money as they do?” Friendship doesn’t change the economic realities people face, or the complications that arise when they are different. But the friends in F.R.I.E.N.D.S stay friends, as is the point of the show. Their dynamic is the same as it always was, from the start when Rachel was a waitress and Chandler worked in a white-collar office, to at the end when Rachel gets her dream job in Paris and Joey is still trying to achieve his acting dreams. Compared to Tracey and Cynthia, the friends seem to have achieved a deeper connection that has transcended the situational friendship.

On one hand, F.R.I.E.N.D.S is a clear product of the 1990s’ glamor and promise, and “Sweat” was born from a collapsing economy and a disillusioned America. We can also look to their mediums: as a sitcom, F.R.I.E.N.D.S is meant to be wholesome, warm and comfortable—vibes over message, while “Sweat” as a play has no such obligations, and tells a piercing story about America’s working class. In fact, the wholesome friendships at the center of F.R.I.E.N.D.S are emblematic of one of its greatest achievements as a sitcom, but arguably its greatest flaw as a work of art: its fuzzy, and thus unrealistic, portrayal of reality. Even though they appear frequently in the plot, the show rarely lingers on money troubles, and the consequences rarely have teeth. Joey constantly borrows money from Chandler but there are never any lasting conflicts between them, aside from a teasing jab here or there when the writers need a punchline. Monica loses her job in one season but we never have to worry about her being evicted from her frankly-luxurious apartment. The show shies away from these uncomfortable truths, while “Sweat” uses them to drive the plot.

And par to its mission to bring a gritty picture of reality onto the stage, “Sweat” embraces its sharp edges. Whereas the driving force of F.R.I.E.N.D.S is vibes, the force behind “Sweat” is tension. Thus the nature of friendships in F.R.I.E.N.D.S and “Sweat” are both vital to their goals.

They say power doesn’t corrupt, it only reveals; and I would argue the same about money. It is why so many lottery winners and rags-to-riches NBA players go broke within years: suddenly having tremendous wealth doesn’t change their spending habits, for one. It is why in this world there exists both Andrew Carnegie and Jeff Bezos. An ungenerous person will not become rich and suddenly donate millions to charity with the sole purpose of doing good in the world. Not only is this true for your money, but also for other people’s money; and it is why Tracey is willing to sabotage her and Cynthia’s friendship without a second thought. Tracey didn’t suddenly become racist and selfish when Cynthia was promoted. This change in their dynamic simply changed Tracey’s relationship with Cynthia and exposed a different side of her, like turning over a rock in the dirt. Maybe you find moss, maybe you find maggots.

But I find this saying dismissive. Most of the time it is used to condemn someone. And as in the last paragraph, that is exactly what I did with Tracey. The problem is that it shelves all the blame onto the person being “exposed”; it poses as a universal maxim while neglecting the fact that, no, people change because of their environments all the time. Or that the reason some people are “exposed” for being how they are is because of what they lacked in the past, and that can certainly be a lack of money, or more importantly, power. The less advantaged you are, the more you are a victim to your circumstances. Because Tracey is not actually mad at Cynthia. She is insecure about her own class status; she is angry that someone with less experience and a minority was promoted over her, which is to say anger over a system she perceives as unjust; and she is projecting her own fears of never moving out of her living situation onto Cynthia. Situational friendships also have elements of “real” friendships: connection, trust and empathy. If it wasn’t Cynthia who was promoted but someone else with the characteristics Tracey takes offense to, it’s not unreasonable to think that Tracey might also be spiteful and spread rumors, and instead gossip to Cynthia instead of behind her back.

And calling Tracey a “bad friend,” while not untrue, fails to account for the complexity of her character. If she didn’t have to live paycheck to paycheck, and if her childhood was spent in material comfort instead of scarcity, would she react this way to Cynthia’s promotion? Would she still act this way if she wasn’t so powerless—in her living situation, in the US economy, to her husband’s death, and especially when she was hit on by management? There is a Chinese saying that “cold doors seldom make expensive sons” (the literal translation), or that it is difficult for children from poor families to become successful. What you are up against is lifetimes worth of systemic injustice and the goal of achieving a fraction of what privilege can.

It is why Marxism was born. We will never know what Marxist Tracey would be like, never having to worry about money or class. We will never meet Marxist Brucie who never has to go on strike for a better wage, or Marxist Stan who is finally rewarded for all his years on the floor. For all its stigma, Communism is just another take on the oldest, ultimate human fantasy: equality for mankind.

The purpose of the friendships in “Sweat” are the same as everything else in the play: to task us, as the readers, with compassion. Empathy which is inconvenient in capitalism. “Sweat” is not an allegory, the characters are not just symbols or plot points. They are human. In the pages, on the stage, and inside of every one of us.

Library

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13iufAeGDAvgzxLRz2iKMCsRJpz1mNApl_N--vXULrMo/edit?tab=t.4ojisejr5m08