The evolution of comedy has made the art quite complicated for comedians, according to Jennifer Aniston. The ‘Friends’ star has reflected on how the entertainment landscape has changed since the era of the sitcom, which debuted on NBC in 1994, and he acknowledged that a whole new generation of viewers now finds the series “offensive”.
Aniston spoke to AFP in Paris while promoting’Murder Mystery 2′, his new movie with Adam Sandler.
“Comedy has evolved, movies have evolved. Now it’s a little tricky because you have to be very careful, which makes it very difficult for comedians, because the beauty of comedy is that we make fun of ourselves, we make fun of life. Before you could joke about a macho guy and laugh, that was hilarious. And it was about educating people about how ridiculous people were. And now we’re not allowed to joke about that.”
On the sitcom that made him famous, which has been criticized as racist or homophobic today, Aniston commented:
“There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now coming back to episodes of Friends and finding them offensive. There were things that were never intentional and other… well, we should have thought about it at the time, but I don’t think there’s a sensitivity as there is now”.
What he let us intuit in his interview is that maybe that’s why Hollywood is producing far fewer comedies, Aniston maintains:
“It’s a tragedy. Everybody needs humor! The world needs humor! “We can’t take ourselves too seriously. Especially in the United States. Everyone is too divided.”