YellowKing wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 8:07 pm
And it only really ever bothers me when it's forced into IPs where that diversity isn't reflected in the source material.
See, even that doesn't bother me. I don't care if they add diversity where it isn't in the source - I'm just bothered when they add it when it is
contraindicated by the source, especially when there are other options for showing that diversity, or where it is diversity for diversity's sake (at which point it edges toward tokenism.) If they rebooted firefly and made the entire crew Hispanic, or Asian, that wouldn't bother me in the least.
At the same time, as was mentioned, when the main cast is blatantly composed of one Black person, one Asian person, one Indian person, one Hispanic person, and one white person, where each person also fills one social role (there's the one gay person, the one non-binary person, etc), it doesn't feel like representation. It feels like advertising.
I read something somewhere once that said that when it comes to diversity, the approach matters, that the diversity has to be authentic to be representation rather than tokenism. Often, the kind of diversity we're talking about isn't
authentic. The diversity is there to show the audience that the show is diverse, nothing more. It's there to draw viewers, or show that the show is right-thinking, not because they're good choices for the parts, or because it is about what makes them unique. They're Asian because they want to show that they have someone Asian. They're gay so that they can show that they have someone gay. Or worse, they're Black and their only reason for being Black is so that the bad guy can establish his badness by targeting him for it. It's symbolic, not meaningful. Not authentic. It is the illusion of fairness.
Going back to
Wheel of Time (because it is recent, and a good example), they gave Lan an Asian actor, but they also gave him a culture to go with it, a background, a story. He looks the way he does because it matters, and that's good representation. It's authentic, and his difference become meaningful. They then added in one Indigenous Australian, one Black woman, one Black man, and two white men as the main characters, all of whom came from the same small gene pool in the same small, isolated rural mountain town. They didn't have diverse backgrounds to go with it - they were all of the same generic western European background (I always thought Wales.) They look that way because...
a wizard did it. They were (visually) diverse only to show that they were visually diverse, to check the boxes, and that isn't being respectful or thoughtful to anyone - it's using them for an agenda, and even if I agree with the agenda (which I do), that isn't positive diversity. To put it another way, it wasn't Black or Indigenous Australian characters - all of those characters were white, and all of them remained white with PoC playing those white roles written for white audiences by white writers who didn't acknowledge their diversity in any way.
Do you want to show diversity in
Wheel of Time? Build the Shienarans off of Lan. Bring in Faile early, who is an excellent character and incredibly strong and effective (and Egwene's actress would have been a great choice for her.) Introduce Tuon early, who suffers from being a bit of a villain, but is undoubtedly strong. Make Lan a bigger, more central character (IE - have a non-white leading man.)
Great example of representation? Go watch Ms Marvel. She's Pakistani and it
matters to the show, to her character, to her development, and to the story. She's neither a victim nor a stereotype. Her culture isn't portrayed as a sideshow. There isn't a white hero to save her. She's her, she's who she is, and that's that.
(I have direct associates that work nationally with corporations and universities on their DEI initiatives, so I have a bit of insight on the range of these departments)
