Jennifer Aniston says Friends has become the enemy of a younger generation’s feelings.
Aniston has been acting in comedic roles since following in Rachel Greene’s footsteps in the 1994 megahit Friends. She quickly rose to superstardom and in the decades since has garnered laughs in films like the 2004 romantic comedy Along Came Polly and the 2013 toll We’re the Millers, in which she died moonlighting as a stripper provided a soccer mom.
Aniston spoke to AFP (via Yahoo News) on the development of comedy.
“Now it’s a little bit difficult because you have to be very careful, which makes it really difficult for comedians, because the beauty of comedy is that we make fun of ourselves, we make fun of life,” Aniston said. “[In the past] you could joke and laugh at a fanatic – it was hysterical. And it was about teaching people how ridiculous people are. And now we can’t do that anymore.”
“There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now coming back to episodes of ‘Friends’ and finding it offensive,” Aniston added. “There were things that were never intended, and others … well, we should have thought about it — but I don’t think there was a sensitivity like there is now.”
“Friends” has been outraged for years because of its lack of diversity and the offensive nature of some of its jokes.
A once-obese Monica Geller (played by Courteney Cox) is the subject of body-shaming jokes throughout the series, and her brother Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) faces a barrage of homophobic punch lines over his ex-wife leaving him for a woman has. bustle published a list of offensive “Friends” jokes in 2018; Cosmopolitan published a list of “shocking” jokes that “Friends” “couldn’t get away with today” in 2017.
So said series creator Marta Kauffman BBC 2022 that she now regrets portraying the character played by Kathleen Turner.
“We kept referring to her as Chandler’s father, even though Chandler’s father was trans,” she said. “Pronouns weren’t something I understood yet. So we didn’t refer to that character as her. That was a mistake.”
Kauffman also addressed the show’s lack of diversity.
“I’ve learned a lot over the last 20 years,” Kauffman told The Times’ Greg Braxton in 2022. “Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It hurts to look at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know any better 25 years ago.
“After what happened with George Floyd, I began to wrestle with the fact that I had bought into systemic racism in a way I was never aware of. That was really the moment I started examining the ways I had been involved. I knew then that I had to correct the course.”
Kauffman has pledged $4 million to Brandeis University in the Boston area to establish the Marta F. Kauffman ’78 Professorship of African and Afro-American Studies, which “endows a distinguished scholar with a focus on the study of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the African diaspora. “
Lisa Kudrow, who played dizzying masseuse and coffee shop singer Phoebe Buffay, also gave some retrospective thoughts on the series in 2020, commenting on how different the show would be if it were made today.
“Oh, it would be very different,” Kudrow said. “It wouldn’t be an all-white cast … I’m not sure what else, but to me it should be viewed as a time capsule, not for what they did wrong.” she said. “Also found this show very progressive. There was a man whose wife found out she was gay and pregnant and they raised the kid together? We also had surrogacy. That was progressive back then.”
Especially in the United States, where everyone is “way too divided,” Aniston told AFP, “we can’t take ourselves too seriously.”
“Everyone needs wit!” she added. “The world needs humor!”
Source : www.latimes.com