A photo, which was posted by The Good Place and Frozen actress Kristen Bell, has gone viral.
Said snap featured in a carousel of eight pictures. Other photos were of her husband Dan Shepard and their two children on what looks to be a big trip to Idaho.
However, it was the third snap that caught people’s attention. It features a lot of famous faces including Friends co-stars Jennifer Anniston and Courtney Cox as well as late-night show host Jimmy Fallon and Arrested Development’s Jason Bateman.
Of course, a table of famous faces is cool and fans would probably be talking about it anyway, but they’re not really talking about who’s there; they’re talking about who isn’t. That table is a sea of white.
Naturally, the internet did the best thing they could possibly do: they made it a meme. This thread on Twitter has some golden ones that are sure to give you a giggle.
Of course, as the initial tweet on that thread notes, the fact there is no diversity at that table stems from the “systematic exclusion of marginalized people” and perpetuates it further. Though that’s not really that hard when you think that UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report for 2023 said that the film, TV, and surrounding industries had reverted to their typical ways (a.k.a. before Black Lives Matter and just after #MeToo.
But then, it could also be the fact that Kristen Bell just doesn’t surround herself with diversity, a fact that was present when she wrote and promoted the very important book The World Needs More Purple People. A weird, ‘color-blind’ book that just doesn’t make any sense. And yes, she got absolutely ripped on Twitter for that one too.
In an interview about the book with USA Today, she said that Purple People are “someone who just wants to be a little bit better tomorrow than they were today,” and the reason she decided on purple was that “We needed a label. But a label is tricky in and of itself because a label means certain people are included and certain people are excluded.“
The whole thing is just bizarre but the internet is having fun and maybe this will make Kristen see she needs to go make some new friends, even if her industry is a sea of white.
(featured image: Netflix)
