Jennifer Aniston said, in a recent interview, that even “Friends” hasn’t escaped the Sauron-like eye of modern audiences, which examined it and found it “offensive.”
Speaking about the hit show of the 90s and what kids now think about it, Aniston said, “There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now going back to episodes of ‘Friends’ and find them offensive.”
Continuing, she bizarrely agreed with the “offended” and woke mob, saying, “There were things that were never intentional and others … well, we should have thought it through, but I don’t think there was a sensitivity like there is now. Comedy has evolved, movies have evolved,” Aniston added. “Now it’s a little tricky because you have to be very careful, which makes it really hard for comedians, because the beauty of comedy is that we make fun of ourselves, make fun of life.”
However, she defended comedy and said that people need to take themselves and jokes less seriously, saying, “You could joke about a bigot and have a laugh. That was hysterical. And it was about educating people on how ridiculous people were, and now we’re not allowed to do that. Everybody needs funny! The world needs humor! We can’t take ourselves too seriously. Especially in the United States. Everyone is far too divided.”
Monty Python actor John Cleese agrees with her on that point, having said in 2022 that political correctness is the “death of comedy.” In his words: “You can do the creation and then criticize it, but you can’t do them at the same time. So if you’re worried about offending people and constantly thinking of that, you are not going to be very creative. So I think it has a disastrous effect. If you go to a Republican convention and tell anti-Democrat jokes, you’ll get a very good response. If you tell anti-Republican jokes, you won’t. So you’ve got to fit your material to some extent to your audience. And that’s part of it… If you go to see your granny and to have tea with her, you don’t start telling her sex jokes. Now that’s not because it’s illegal, it’s just bad manners.”
Lisa Kudrow, another “Friends” star, defended the show’s lack of “diversity” when she told The Daily Beast in August of 2022 that creators of the sitcom had “no business writing stories about the experiences of being a person of color.” Speaking on that, she said, “It was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis (University) and wrote about their lives after college. And for shows especially, when it’s going to be a comedy that’s character-driven, you write what you know.”
She went on to say “I think at that time, the big problem that I was seeing was, ‘Where’s the apprenticeship?'”
That was in response to show creator Marta Kauffman, who said, said that she felt “embarrassed” by the lack of diversity on “Friends.” “I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years,” she said. “It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror.”
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