The Death of Friendship Shall be Televised

A recent Netflix series has grabbed the attention and imaginations of millions of viewers around the world.  The much beloved “Wednesday” starring Jenna Ortega has garnered nigh universal acclaim-and not just for its dance moves.  Delving under the dancefloor however we see something else being championed by the masses; a romantic relationship between the titular Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega) and her female roommate Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) at the esteemed Nevermore Academy.  

Throughout the show, the relationship begins icy enough; Enid’s ultra-colorful vibes clashing with the moody monochromatic tendencies of Wednesday was a proverbial clashing of worlds.  The looming opaque faux rose window which split the room in two was a visual reminder of this tension as the two roommates had split halves of the room, and the window, in their respective color palettes.  As the series progressed a mutual understanding and blossoming friendship began to likewise blossom and the two evolved from mild acquaintances to close friends.  Then, as they are wont to do, imaginations began to run wild.

The internet began to go wild with speculation about this friendship.  Could there possibly be more to it than meets the eye?  Jenna Ortega was quoted as saying of the two in a red carpet interview with the magazine PRIDE, “In a perfect world [Wednedsay and Enid] would be a thing”, serving to only fuel the rumors more.  Sinclair has also gone on to say that she and Ortega would regularly citing to each other, “And they were roomates”, a queer saying birthed from a Vine video.  

This is not the first instance of fans taking a friendship to romantic extremes.  When the seminal Lord of the Rings Trilogy by Peter Jackson graced the big screens, fans soon speculated as well about any romantic potential between Frodo and Samwise.  Numerous articles began to circulate of a gay romance between the two.  Much like Wednesday and Enid, the latter two had a relationship that grew into something much more than it previously was.

What is fueling this desire to “ship” these characters with such strong bonds of friendship?  Why is it that so many have this desire to portray friends as anything but?  It revolves around a misunderstanding of friendship and love.  These concepts to the modern human have become so skewed we no longer are able to identify it, or truly reciprocate it.  So what is friendship anyway?

Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics describes three types of friendships; of utility, of pleasure, and lastly the deepest type of friendship, that of virtue.  I will quickly go over the first two but it is the last with which I will more fully explore.  

Friendship by utility at its core asks the question, “What can you do for me?”  Looking at the beginning of the relationship between Frodo and Sam we can qualify this as a friendship of utility.  Sam is in the employee of Frodo.  Sam offers something to Frodo to which Frodo reciprocates.  It is a relationship based on quid pro quo, not so much on the other as a person.  

Next, friendship of pleasure.  These types of friendships are formed by a bond of some type of activity.  Friends you only see on the basketball or tennis courts, or at the gym, perhaps movie or restaurant going friends that you never see in any other type of environment.  This is the second type.  

Lastly, and most importantly, Aristotle describes friendship of virtue. Unlike friendships of utility or pleasure, this type is not principally founded upon what the other person can provide. Rather, each friend desires the good of the other for the other’s own sake. They love not merely what they receive from the friendship, but the person himself.

This kind of friendship takes time. It requires familiarity, trust, sacrifice, and the slow revelation of character. Aristotle tells us that such friendships are consequently rare. They cannot simply be manufactured, because they depend upon two people who have come to recognize and love what is good in one another.

This is the sort of friendship we see develop between Frodo and Sam.

Whatever their relationship may have been at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, by the time the two are crawling across the blasted plains of Mordor there is very little utility left in it. Sam is no longer simply Frodo’s gardener. He is his companion, his protector, and, in some moments, practically the only thing keeping Frodo moving toward Mount Doom.

When Frodo can no longer walk, Sam does not abandon him.

“I can’t carry it for you,” he tells him, “but I can carry you.”

There is something tremendously powerful in that moment precisely because it is friendship. Sam does not need Frodo to become his lover for his love to be complete. He is willing to suffer for him, to fight for him, and if necessary to die for him. That is not an impoverished form of love awaiting romantic fulfillment. It is love.

This is where I think our modern imagination sometimes fails us.

We have become extraordinarily comfortable speaking about romantic love and sexual attraction, yet strangely uncomfortable allowing friendship to possess the same emotional weight. Two people exchange meaningful glances, embrace, sacrifice for one another, or become deeply emotionally dependent upon one another, and almost immediately someone asks whether they are “really” in love.

But what if they are?

What if the mistake is assuming that love must therefore be romantic?

The Christian tradition has never understood love so narrowly. Sacred Scripture itself gives us friendships of extraordinary intimacy. David mourns Jonathan with words so tender that modern readers frequently struggle to categorize them: “I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother! Most dear have you been to me; more precious have I held love for you than love for women” (2 Samuel 1:26).

David does not seem embarrassed by this declaration. Nor does Scripture feel any particular need to explain it away. Jonathan was his friend, and David loved him profoundly.

Christ Himself similarly speaks of friendship in startling terms: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

Notice what He does not say.

He does not describe friendship as a lesser affection somewhere beneath “real” love. Instead, He places the greatest possible act of love—laying down one’s life—squarely within the context of friendship.

Perhaps this helps explain why the modern impulse to romanticize every intense fictional friendship bothers me.

It unintentionally diminishes friendship itself.

If Wednesday and Enid become close enough that they would risk themselves for one another, why must that necessarily point toward romance? Why can their friendship not simply become deeper? Why can Enid’s exuberant affection gradually crack Wednesday’s emotional armor without the relationship eventually requiring a kiss?

Indeed, part of what makes their dynamic interesting is precisely their difference. Wednesday begins the series almost aggressively independent. She treats emotional attachment as weakness and frequently uses the people around her toward her own ends. Enid, meanwhile, desires connection almost desperately.

Their growing friendship forces Wednesday to encounter something she cannot solve with intelligence or manipulate through sheer force of will: another human being who cares about her.

That is fertile ground for friendship.

And friendship desperately needs fertile ground.

We increasingly live in a culture suffering from loneliness while simultaneously possessing more ways to communicate than any civilization before us. We have followers, mutuals, contacts, subscribers, group chats, and endless notifications, yet many people struggle to name the person they could call at two in the morning when everything has fallen apart.

Perhaps it should not surprise us, then, that friendship itself has become difficult for us to recognize.

When intimate friendship disappears from ordinary life, we begin interpreting intimacy almost exclusively through the categories we still understand. Deep affection becomes romance. Physical tenderness becomes sexual. Emotional vulnerability becomes evidence of attraction.

The result is an increasingly impoverished vocabulary of love.

Men are perhaps especially vulnerable to this.

For generations Western literature could portray men weeping together, embracing one another, pledging loyalty, sharing beds while traveling, writing extraordinarily affectionate letters, and even declaring their love without automatically communicating sexual desire. Today many men hesitate even to tell another man, “I love you,” without immediately adding some joke to blunt the seriousness of the statement.

Something has been lost.

Friendship of virtue demands something better from us.

It asks us to see another person and desire his good simply because he is good. It calls us beyond usefulness and entertainment into loyalty. It teaches us to rejoice in another’s victories without envy, to mourn his losses without impatience, to correct him when he wanders, and to remain when remaining becomes inconvenient.

In other words, friendship teaches us how to love.

Perhaps that is why C.S. Lewis regarded friendship as one of the great loves rather than merely a preliminary stage on the road toward romance. Friendship possesses its own dignity, its own pleasures, its own sacrifices, and its own peculiar beauty.

Not every great love story needs lovers.

Sometimes two hobbits can simply love one another enough to walk into Mordor together.

Sometimes two radically different girls can become friends.

And perhaps we should learn once again to see something beautiful in that without immediately asking them to become something else.