->''"How do they do it? I think by remembering that we go to a'' Franchise/StarTrek ''movie to spend time with likeable characters who obviously like each other. Rather than, with most outer space pictures, seeing a whole bunch of cardboard characters fighting all sorts of technological creatures."''
-->-- '''Creator/GeneSiskel''' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO-4cQwjLiU reviewing]] ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome''

Often in media, the creator wants to tell a story about people who aren't like the majority of the target audience, but worries that said audience won't be able to relate to those different people. So they will put in a protagonist or point of view character who ''is'' like the presumed audience, and therefore "relatable". The hope is that the audience will then transfer their ability to care for the protagonist to the group of people the story is actually about.

In a mainstream Hollywood film, for example, the protagonist is likely to be a [[WhiteMaleLead white male, middle-class, heterosexual/heteroromantic, cisgender, able-bodied, high-school and college educated person]], while the majority of the characters are anything but those categories. A film aimed primarily at black people will substitute "black", etc for "white", a Japanese film would have a Japanese person as the point of view character, and so forth. Sometimes this can be stretched a bit; a mainstream Hollywood film might have a middle-class able-bodied black man as the protagonist in a story about wheelchair-using urban youth, for example.

While this storytelling device is often used in situations involving discrimination, it is not confined to those by any means.

Usually, the audience-like character has their own subplot within the story, overcoming their prejudice or romancing a member of the unlike-audience group. If handled poorly, this can become a PlotTumor that takes time away from the film's supposed focus story.

However, handled well and in moderation it can be a good thing. It's true that many people relate better to a protagonist/point of view character they can identify with on some level. But it can also come across as insulting both to the target audience (if the story assumes the audience knows absolutely nothing about the outside group) or to members of the outside group (suggesting that that group would not be able to handle their own problems without the intervention of an in-group person, especially irritating if the POV character is either completely made up or a "normalized version" of an outside group member.)

Common subtropes of this are HomegrownHero (where a 'representative' for the makers' (or audience's) culture or country fills some screentime for no other reason than familiarity), ForeignCorrespondent (where a person from "our country" goes to "their country" and gets involved in local affairs and issues), WhiteMansBurden (where the protagonist (usually white) works to uplift disadvantaged people of the outside group) and BlackLikeMe (where a member of the audience's group goes undercover as a member of a different group to discover what life is like for the other group). Examples that are purely one of these subtropes should go on those pages.

Compare VanillaProtagonist (which is about the more general use of ancillary characters who are more interesting than the lead), FirstPersonPeripheralNarrator (which is built on some of the same logic as this trope and also involves focusing on a character who isn't actually the protagonist), AudienceSurrogate (where one character is designated to ask the sort of questions the audience would logically be asking during the story), EscapistCharacter (where the protagonist differs from the audience, but in positive, wish-fulfilling ways that the presumed audience finds relatable), ReaderInsertFic (where the protagonist literally is supposed to be the reader, and the writer often makes implicit assumptions about who the most common reader is), and ThisLoserIsYou (when the executives believe that a character with major flaws will be easier for the audience to identify with, because the audience members themselves are similarly flawed). Also compare with TheWatson (whose job in the narrative is to ask the questions that the audience is likely to have so that another character can explain them) and contrast TheEveryman (where the main character is so bland they have no character). See also ButNotTooForeign and ButNotTooGay (or ButNotTooBi), where a character is part of a demographic that's not the same as the majority of the audience, but is still pretty close to being in their demographic.

Contrast MightyWhitey, in which a person from the presumed audience's culture goes somewhere and is better at what the natives are good at than the natives themselves, and ExoticBackdropSetting which is what happens when someone from the audience's culture goes somewhere, and the exotic people/culture there only serves as a backdrop to the protagonist's actions, with local affairs and issues largely irrelevant to the plot.
----
!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* Yuu Haruna of ''Manga/{{Fuuka}}'' is a black-haired, middle-class, high school Japanese boy with an average build and an unremarkable reputation, surrounded by more exuberant and distinguished individuals. He also appeals to modern audiences by being more interested in social networks than in the real world and has no idea where to take his life after he finishes high school.
* ''Real'': While the later manga volumes widen the focus to be more about the team members themselves, the initial viewpoint character is an able-bodied high school dropout who becomes involved with the world of wheelchair basketball after a chance encounter. Also has a parallel storyline about a "normal" athlete becoming handicapped and having to learn about being in a wheelchair.
* While he isn't the main character, Yami Sukehiro of ''Manga/{{BlackClover}}'' is a Japanese-styled man living in a western-styled country. This gives the (originally Japanese) audience a relatable character. In addition, his mentor relationship with Asta and the way he teaches him Ki heavily influences Asta. Actually, much of the training Asta was doing on his own resemble Japanese techniques.
* ''Manga/SuperdreadnoughtGirl4946'' is about a CuteGiant named Mana (''4946'' is her height in centimeters) who fights monsters of a similar size. Because it's a {{shonen|demographic}} manga, though, Mana's page time is split with her love interest, the TinySchoolboy Tobita.
* ''Anime/SonicX'': Presumably, this is the reason why the human kid Chris Thorndyke was added to the main cast. Unfortunately, most real-life kids don't live in {{big fancy house}}s, nor do they have personal butlers or maids, so it didn't really work.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/TheLastSamurai'': A white American army officer is sent to Japan to modernize their military and comes to admire samurai culture. (In RealLife, the equivalent person was ''French,'' but the movie was made for Americans.)
* [[http://www.racebending.com/v4/featured/47-ronin-hollywood-outcast/ Writer Marissa Lee]] noted that this practice is extremely common for Hollywood works set in Asian locales. The white lead actor is usually justified by having the character be adopted (''White Devil''), an exchange student or visiting foreigner (''Film/LostInTranslation'', ''Film/TheFastAndTheFuriousTokyoDrift''), or just FakeMixedRace (Kyo in ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters'' movie, Kai in ''Film/FortySevenRonin'').
* ''Film/TheHelp'': A white woman interviews black women working as maids in the DeepSouth in TheSixties and becomes involved with their personal lives and struggles.
* ''Film/BlindSide'': The story of a young black man who overcame poverty to become a successful professional football player--told from the perspective of the white family that helped him.
* ''Film/RainMan'' is purportedly about autistic Raymond, but is told from the POV of his non-autistic brother.
* ''Film/RedTails'' notably averts this trope; Creator/GeorgeLucas had trouble getting funding for years because he had the radical notion that a film about the heroic Tuskegee Airmen should be about the Tuskegee Airmen being heroic, rather than the noble but conflicted white officer who teaches them how to be heroic.
* ''Film/DancesWithWolves'' tells of the plight of Native Americans through a white male lead.
* ''Film/TheRamenGirl'': An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. She ends up in a ramen shop.
* Many documentaries use this device: the interviewer or narrator is from the audience's culture, introducing and examining the lives of more "exotic" people.
* This is exactly the reason why Creator/RaymondBurr's scenes as a ForeignCorrespondent were added to ''[[Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters1956 Godzilla: King of the Monsters!]]''.
* 2013 movie ''Film/TheImpossible'' has an English family struggling to survive after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The real people the story is based on were Spanish, but British people were thought to be more relatable to the target audience.
* ''Film/DjangoUnchained'' is supposedly about Django and the struggles slaves in the American South had, but as Creator/WillSmith commented, "Django wasn't the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead. The other character was the lead!" (The other character being the white guy.)
** Part of the problem there is Smith was going by the original script, which had a more generic ending and a truncated third act. After that ending was shot, Tarantino et al. realized it wasn't enough in light of everything that had gone before, so a new ending was conceived and the third act greatly extended, this time focusing almost entirely on Django.
* ''Film/TwelveYearsASlave'' is the story of slavery told, not from the perspective of those born into it, or of those kidnapped from Africa and forcibly shipped to the Americas, but of a free, educated black man from the north.
* ''Film/TheForest2016'' is a horror movie about the famous Aokigahara Forest in Japan, but the principle characters are white Americans.
* Even though many of the real people involved in the Stonewall riots were black or Latino and a number of them were UsefulNotes/{{transgender}} women, ''Film/{{Stonewall|2015}}'' focuses on a fictional cisgender white teen from Indiana. The specific justification given was that a WhiteMaleLead from the American heartland would be more relatable to the audience. [[AudienceAlienatingPremise Unfortunately, audience reaction (and thus box office reaction) to this justification was... shall we say...]] [[BoxOfficeBomb poor.]]
* Averted with ''Literature/CrazyRichAsians'', but not without some arguing. Early on, there was a push to get a white actress to play Rachel (the film's lead), as some of the prospective producers were worried that having an entirely-Asian cast would alienate white audiences.
* ''Film/TheForbiddenKingdom'' is unabashedly about Creator/JetLi and Creator/JackieChan running around in mythological ancient China, but the actual protagonist is some ordinary white kid who was [[BillingDisplacement barely even mentioned]] in the marketing materials.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''A Walk with Ian'', a children's book about a non-autistic girl named Julia taking a walk with her autistic brother Ian.
* The book ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'' is an inversion. The story is about how a "normal" person changes the lives of a group of mentally disturbed people, but the point of view character and UnreliableNarrator is one of the group being affected. TheFilmOfTheBook uses this storytelling device straight.
* Archie Goodwin, TheWatson and narrator of the Literature/NeroWolfe mystery stories. Compared to Wolfe, who is a veritable smorgasbord of eccentricities, quirks and intellectual pursuits in a manner fitting for a GreatDetective, Archie is basically an average working stiff who happens to work as the Great Detective's personal assistant, and tends to puncture his grandiosity with sarcastic comments.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* ''The Creator/TyraBanks Show'': Tyra would often disguise herself and go undercover for a day to see what life was like for non-supermodels. She put on a FatSuit, she dressed as a man, she went homeless, and was a stripper.
* ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack'' has a very diverse cast that reflects the realities of its prison setting, but the protagonist is as stereotypical a middle-class white girl as you could come by minus her bisexuality, and her crime was a more 'understandable' minor offense committed 10 years before her arrest. The creators have confirmed that the show couldn't have been made unless they had a protagonist like her. Although in this case it's just a happy coincidence that the real-life person she's based on happens to be this way too.
* ''Series/{{Leverage}}'': Nate Ford is an honest man who runs a crew of thieves. He talks about living a normal life and having a normal job throughout the show.
* ''Series/OnceUponATime'': Emma Swan grew up in our world and is introduced to the fairy tale world alongside the viewers.
* ''Series/{{Eureka}}'': Marshal Jack Carter and his daughter are average people living in a town of super geniuses.
* ''Series/DispatchesFromElsewhere'': The four protagonists are very different people, but the show makes very clear that anyone can empathize with them to some small extent. The narrator outright exhorts the audience to put themselves in the characters' shoes.
* ''Series/TheOfficeUS'': Jim is a laid-back, sensible young man in a firm populated by lunatics, fascists, and buffoons.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* It would be a safe bet to suggest that every fighting game in existence has an American fighter in it, mostly to ensure that a huge portion of the game market have one character that represents them. The ''VideoGame/SoulSeries'' posits a unique challenge because it is set in the 16th Century and the USA doesn't exist yet. The solution? Rock Adams, an Englishman stranded in the new world as a boy and raised by Native Americans, so he fits nicely into the role of the "American" character.
* ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresIII'' has the Black family, reflecting the Anglo-American lens through which the events of the game are viewed.
** Morgan, a Scottish Hospitaller Knight, [[SecretHistory in a secret mission]] to the New World at a time when there weren't English colonies there (the Hospitallers are only playable in campaign mode).
** John, a Colonial American frontiersman during the UsefulNotes/FrenchAndIndianWar.
** Nathaniel, John's half-Iroquois son fighting in UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution (his campaign is the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee civ's one).
** Amelia, Nathaniel's daughter, an early American railroad developer in the US and South America.
** Chayton, Amelia's half-Lakota son during the Great Sioux War (Sioux/Lakota civ campaign).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Visual Novel]]
* ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo'': Hisao, a "normal" boy, develops an "invisible" physical handicap and must attend a school for the physically disabled, learning about their issues and struggles. Downplayed in that his arrhythmia[[note]]irregular heartbeat[[/note]] does factor into the plot and ''some''times limits what he - and by extension the player - can do.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Examined in [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-realizations-that-will-ruin-science-fiction-you/ this]] Cracked.com article, specifically the item titled, "Sci-Fi Needs a Straight Man Like a Laurel and Hardy Routine".
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* This is why most ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' shows have the giant alien robots hanging out with human kids.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': Set in a delivery company in 3000 AD New York owned by a senile 160 year-old scientist that employs a one-eyed female alien, a jerkass robot, a Jamaican manager, a Chinese-Martian ValleyGirl-like student, a {{Space Jew|s}} alien lobster-thing and the protagonist, an unfrozen 20th century {{White Male|Lead}} [[ThisLoserIsYou School Dropout]].
[[/folder]]
----