Comedy is an extremely difficult genre to master and almost every performer feels it is very hard to make the audience laugh. However, it is also very challenging as one man’s joke can be another man’s ordeal and in recent times people are quick to take offence. Jennifer Aniston feels that in today’s times comedy has become a tricky and risky business and said that “comedy has evolved” and said that there is a whole generation of people who are finding her some episodes of her hit sitcom Friends as offensive.
Jennifer, who has been promoting her latest Netflix release, the Adam Sandler comedy-thriller Murder Mystery 2 while speaking during an interview, said that one has to be careful about what they say and how they say it when it comes to the comedy genre. She said, “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. (In the past) 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.”
She further added and said, “There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now going back to episodes of Friends and find them offensive. 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. Everybody needs funny! The world needs humor! We can’t take ourselves too seriously. Especially in the United States. Everyone is far too divided.”
In the recent years, Friends has been called out for its lack of diversity. The sitcom ran from 1994 to 2004 and starred Jennifer, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc. All six main characters in the show were white and the series rarely featured actors of colour in prominent roles across 10 seasons and 236 episodes. Lauren Tom, Gabrielle Union, Mark Consuelos and Craig Robinson appeared on the show in small supporting roles, while Aisha Tyler, the most prominent actor of color featured on the series, only starred in nine episodes.
(Source: AFP)
