Saved by the Bell, the 2020 revival of the hit 1980s teen sitcom of the same name, betrayed the original show by making a controversial joke at the expense of Selena Gomez. The 28-year old actress and musician has been open on social media about her health struggles with lupus (an autoimmune disorder) and her life-saving kidney transplant in 2017. Gomez has also spoken out about her mental health, particularly her anxiety, depression, and – as she revealed in April of this year – bipolar disorder. After becoming the most followed person on Instagram for a period of time, Gomez spoke about how negative comments had impacted her wellbeing, and she withdrew from social media for a time due to those negative comments.
Considering how publicly Selena Gomez has commented on being affected by the indiscriminate negativity on social media, it’s surprising that Saved by the Bell would choose to include a joke at her expense. In the NBC revival, Saved by the Bell, season 1, episode 6, “Teen-Line,” two students are shown arguing over the identity of Selena Gomez’s kidney donor. One insists it was Justin Bieber’s mom while the other argues it was Demi Lovato. Both Lovato and Bieber have personal connections with Gomez, but these two guesses are meant to be wildly inaccurate for comedic effect. Later, graffiti can be seen on the wall in the background that says, “Does Selena Gomez even have a kidney?” Neither of these jokes sat well with audiences, who took to social media and demanded that NBCUniversal, Peacock, and Saved by the Bell apologize.
On top of being a tasteless and unnecessary joke, the two scenes reveal a problem within the Saved by the Bell revival: it betrays the heart of the original series. The original Saved by the Bell knew its moral obligation to viewers, exploring important social issues like drug use, trauma, loss, and drunk driving with sensitivity and seriousness. The show managed to regularly delve into some heavy topics while remaining, first and foremost, a comedy. Because the original show set up this precedent of balancing comedy with conscience, the revival’s joke about Selena Gomez is out of place and jarring.
NBC has issued an apology to Selena Gomez and has planned a donation to her lupus charity, but Francia Raísa has called on the show to do better and acknowledge the kidney donors who were hurt by the joke as well. Raísa – an actress, friend of Selena Gomez, and Gomez’s actual kidney donor – spoke out about how Saved by the Bell’s joke was offensive to kidney donors by erasing them from the narrative. Raísa is right; the show makes as much of a joke of kidney donors (herself included) as it does of Selena Gomez.
As with most “harmless” jokes, the intent was not to hurt Gomez, Raísa, or kidney donors, but the truth is that it did – and that matters more than what the showrunners intended. It was a cheap, throwaway gag at the expense of a real person and her real trauma that could have easily been left out or replaced. Instead, the joke was included without considering the consequences and that’s something the show will have to reckon with in any future seasons. But if the Saved by the Bell revival writers had only looked to its predecessor, they might have recognized how the show chose to lean toward sensitivity – even when making a joke.
Originally from https://screenrant.com/saved-bell-revival-selena-gomez-controversy-betrayal/