Jennifer Aniston was at the reunion, but don’t expect a Friends reboot any time soon. The sitcom’s premise and humour were of their time (mid-’90s to mid-’00s) and may not have aged so well. Either that, or we’re all too sensitive these days. Maybe a bit of both, according to her.
Aniston, who won an Emmy for the role of sweet and slightly self-centred Rachel Green on the hit series, recently reflected on the ever-turning tides of comedy. “Comedy has evolved, movies have evolved,” she told the Associated Press, per Yahoo! News. “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. ”
Aniston added that in previous eras “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. ” I mean, Taika Waititi literally played Hitler in a recent movie, but I take her point.
About her own work, specifically, Aniston said, “There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now going back to episodes of Friends and find them offensive. ” (The show remains popular on streaming services, but yeah, if you go on TikTok, you can find people pointing out problematic storylines. ) “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. ”
If I may speak freely, I disagree that a “whole generation” can’t understand the points Friends was trying to make, but I do think there are issues like gay panic and a lack of diversity that crop up in many older sitcoms, like Friends, Seinfeld, Scrubs, and more.
However, I 1000% agree with Jennifer Aniston that we should still try to make comedies. “Everybody needs funny! ” she said. “The world needs humour! We can’t take ourselves too seriously. Especially in the United States. Everyone is far too divided. ”
Hear! Hear!
