Jennifer Aniston Responds to Cancel Culture's Woke Critique of 'Friends' - 'Everyone Needs Funny'
Is comedy dying? One of the most iconic actresses of the 90’s and early 2000’s certainly thinks so.
Jennifer Aniston, perhaps best known for her time as Rachel Green on the wildly popular sitcom “Friends,” lamented the current state of comedy in an interview with French news agency AFP — through which she inadvertently gave the most damning assessment possible about the current state of far-left “tolerance.”
The 54-year-old actress fretted that “a whole generation of people” would find the sitcom “offensive” by today’s standards.
“There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now going back to episodes of ‘Friends’ and find them offensive,” Aniston told AFP.
After noting that comedy and cinema have “evolved,” Aniston lamented how comedians have to walk on eggshells today and how that can have an indelible effect on comedy.
“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 said.
The “Friends” actress added that you used to be able to “joke about a bigot and have a laugh” and how “it was about educating people on how ridiculous people were,” but “now we’re not allowed to do that.”
Indeed, comedy certainly appears to be in its throes in 2023, but the fact that Aniston is using “Friends,” of all things, to illustrate her point actually reveals just how far gone the far-left is.
“There were things that were never (intentionally offensive), and others … well, we should have thought it through — but I don’t think there was a sensitivity like there is now,” Aniston said.
Indeed, there isn’t a sensitivity now like there was between 1994 and 2004, which is when “Friends” aired, and that should be particularly alarming to anyone who cares about comedy.
That’s because Aniston, while lamenting any cultural faux pas that “Friends” might be guilty of, has exposed just how pathetically sensitive modern audiences have gotten.
How so?
“Friends,” for all of its accolades and awards and cultural relevance all these years later, is not a particularly good show.
Sorry “Friends” fanatics, but after the original, admittedly funny season, the ensuing nine seasons were not funny. The show, which began as a slice-of-life sitcom focusing on six New York-based friends, was actually a very good sitcom in its original season.
Then the show began to jump the shark and became just the most sanitized, homogenized, overrated, assembly line-esque, milquetoast “comedy” known to man.
The fact that that show runs afoul of modern sensibilities is perhaps the most searing indictment of modern sensibilities to date.
Looking at some of the early story arcs and plots of the halcyon days of “Friends,” it’s even more laughable that this show would somehow upset far-left cancel culture.
What’s going to get the show canceled today? One of the main characters divorcing his wife due to her being a lesbian? A sister being a surrogate for her brother’s babies? A sham marriage of convenience for a gay ice skater? The creepy guy who likes to touch masseuses (no, not that one)?
If that show is so wrong and offensive to people, that speaks far more loudly about the offended than the offending show.
And while the actual funniness of “Friends” is certainly up for debate, Aniston did nail one thing on the head: We all need to be able to chuckle at ourselves from time to time.
“Everybody needs funny! The world needs humour! We can’t take ourselves too seriously. Especially in the United States. Everyone is far too divided.”
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