Jennifer Aniston claims that a “whole generation of individuals” now find the show Friends “offensive.”
Do people in the twenty-first century still find Friends funny? Jennifer Aniston is doubtful.
In an interview with AFP (reported on by Variety), the actress said that a new generation of young people were “going back to episodes of Friends” and finding them “offensive.”
I”It is true that some things were unintentional, while others could have been better thought through,” she remarked. However, she thinks that societal sensitivity was lower back then than it is now.
Aniston said that “you have to be really cautious,” which “makes it incredibly hard for comedians,” when discussing modern humour. She said, “We were forbidden from engaging in such behavior,” to stress that there had previously been regulations against this kind of behavior. She went on to remark that it was common practice to mock racists’ behavior in order to expose how absurd they were.
Aniston didn’t say what about Friends is offensive to modern audiences, but co-creator Marta Kauffman has said that she regrets that Chandler’s transgender mother is constantly misgendered on the show. During an interview with News Service, she revealed, “At that time, I hadn’t grasped how to use pronouns correctly, and we unintentionally made an error by not referring to that character as ‘she’.” ” Kauffman has also said sorry for the show’s lack of diversity. But Aniston’s comments were criticized online by people who said Friends is still very popular with young people.
But the remarks echoed what Mindy Kaling stated the previous year. She said that The Office couldn’t be made today, even though it went off the air less than ten years ago. During her interview on Good Morning America, she acknowledged that “most of the characters” featured on the sitcom would likely face cancellation in today’s climate. She further commented that the show’s content is now deemed “so inappropriate” and that many of the jokes and storylines would no longer be acceptable due to the evolving sensitivities of society. She attributed this change to the fact that what offends people has significantly shifted over time, rendering certain aspects of the show obsolete in today’s social landscape.