No one will make me feel guilty because I love Friends
NEARLY 30 years ago, Friends appeared on our screens. It was the TV series that brilliantly captured the zeitgeist with its hilarious tales of a bunch of young, single folk setting out together in 1990s New York.
It was about youth, love, confusion, bad dates, bad hair, regrets, coffee shops, hangovers — but most of all, the glue of friendship that held them together.
We all related to it; we still sing along to the theme tune I’ll Be There For You, which became an upbeat anthem for young dreamers.
If only I could get back the hours I spent trying to tame my frizzy hair into a sleek ‘Rachel’ cut; or the afternoons spent on the sofa watching episode after episode as Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry, made us laugh again and again over life’s ups and downs.
It is innocent, wonderful stuff that has been lapped up by the next generation and become one of the most successful shows of all time.
But now, we’re told, the series isn’t so innocent after all — by no less an authority than its co-writer Marta Kauffman.
She says she is suffering ‘guilt’ and embarrassment because all of the cast were white. It’s painful to look in the mirror, she adds, because of the show’s lack of diversity.
To make amends, she’s given around £3.3 million (of her £330 million
fortune) to the African American department of her old university.
‘Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy,’ she says, ‘I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.’
Oh, for heaven’s sake! Can’t we simply enjoy a popular TV show without having to burden ourselves with the woes of the world? Must we all now refrain from watching due to its ‘diversity’ issues?
Because, by flaunting her embarrassment about the series, Kauffman is suggesting viewers should feel uneasy about it, too.
Can I be the only one sick to death of this politically correct revisionism? Yes, if Friends were commissioned today it would be more diverse, but times change and we cannot eradicate the past.
I love Friends as it is — and no one is ever going to make me feel guilty about watching it.