Character Placement and Relationships

When the group assembles, there is a certain consistent seating pattern that is adhered to. Eric normally sits on the couch in the centre of the room, this seems appropriate because although all of the kids inhabit the basement, it is Eric's house, so connotatively, he is in a position which is central, even dominant. Usually Donna, Jackie or Kelso also sit on the couch, but we rarely (if ever) see either Hyde or Fez there. Hyde normally sits by himself in a chair next to the couch. This is in keeping with his "cool loner" image. Although he is friends with the rest of the group, he thinks of himself as being autonomous. In fact, he is the complete opposite of Jackie who constantly clings to Donna, although Donna thinks that she is ditzy and shallow and flat out tells her so (albeit in somewhat less harsh ways). Hyde is politically-conscious and anti-establishment. He is cool and aloof. Unlike the other characters, we rarely see him upset or flustered, and also unlike them, he generally keeps his problems to himself. And he doesn't seem to care much about what the others think of him. He is somewhat outside of the group, which is illustrated by his positioning in relation to the others.

This is also true of Fez; however, his reasons for being outside of the group are different. While Hyde distances himself from the group by choice, Fez just sometimes doesn't 'get it'. Being a foreigner (from which country we never learn), Fez doesn't understand a lot of the jokes and social cues that the other American-born group members take for granted. Fez's social missteps and odd remarks always provide a great deal of amusement for the members of his group as well as for the audience. Although in a some sense, all of the members of the group are outsiders in some way, Hyde and Fez seem the most isolated. It is true that the characters all have their own little idiosyncrasies (which is probably why viewers love them). Kelso is dumb, Jackie is shallow, selfish, conceited and materialistic, and Eric is scrawny and awkward. Donna is a tomboy (or at least ‘one of the guys’) and Laurie is promiscuous (or was when she was still on the show). Perhaps this is why the characters all relate so well and have such a great dynamic; however, it seems as though Hyde and the 'foreign kid' are the most removed from the others, or at least that is what their positioning in relationship to the other group members suggests. On the denotative level, they sit by themselves, and they are by themselves—outside the group—on the level of connotation as well.

 

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Written by Tamara Extian-Babiuk