Diversity and Representation in Media

"That's why all the best stories are about ageless, faceless, gender-neutral, culturally-ambiguous adventure persons."

Zork ftw.

You're obviously joking, but that's pretty much how it works. Popular hero stories tend to be those that a large portion of the audience finds it easy to project themselves into. Details that alienate large portions of the audience make that harder.

And most people want what's safe and familiar to them. They don't want their beliefs challenged, they want to be told their beliefs are correct and they're correct for holding them. It's why Superman stands for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" even though one of those things is not like the other.

Between 'target audiences', wish-fulfillment, the need to simplify stuff not directly related to the story being told, demands to present people and groups in various lights, the classic advice to "write what you know", and people being offended because they don't like portrayals, creators just can't win. It's like the old Aesop's Fable about the father and son taking a donkey to market, and trying to please everyone along the way who criticizes what they're doing.

Seen how so many protagonists in modern settings are cops? Police are fewer than 1% of people.

But police are great characters. Or at least they were before the last few years of public opinion turning against them, leading to the cancellation and/or removal of quite a few shows about 'em.

But most cops will still be fairly similar to the target demographic. Character like Elisa Maza, who was half black and half Native American, are the rare exception.

Still, that's an arbitrary barrier used to justify bigoted beliefs.

So, what if the target demographic includes *everyone*? A cast of all straight white people isn’t going to be much of a draw for, say, anyone who isn’t that, and the idea that stuff with diverse casts doesn’t sell doesn’t hold up at all. It turns out that most people are, at worst, vaguely indifferent.

x5 You're missing the point of my making that joke, and eliding over a large number of your own assumptions in the process.

Your biggest one is that the easiest hero to project yourself into is a blandly attractive white male in his twenties. Remember, the largest possible portion of the audience is Han Chinese, middle-aged, and varies in gender from year to year. Everyone should find it easiest to project themselves into Evelyn Wang, right? But somehow that isn't accurately reflected in popular media the way you hypothesise, so clearly there's more going on than mere crowd-pleasing.

(I'll also point out that chasing the largest possible demographic is bad storytelling. It leads to telling the same stories over and over without saying something new, because anything new is potentially offensive.)

The average person doesn't really exist, so most people have very little in common with them.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:44:13 AM

"A cast of all straight white people isn’t going to be much of a draw for, say, anyone who isn’t that,"

Yeah. So? Population and socio-economic status are more important. "Friends" wasn't a show that accurately represented the population of New York City, or what life is actually like for the vast majority of people there. It was a major success despite that — or, probably, *because* of that. There weren't a lot of white folk on "Martin" for some mysterious reason, either.

Shows, films, and books aren't going to go out of their way to narrow their appeal unless they're specifically targeting a niche market. Sometimes that means not bothering with niche traits, sometimes that means trying to appeal to demands for inclusiveness with token minorities — just 'dropping them in'.

My point about how "how a work can have fantastic race and gender representation, but non-existent or bad LGBTQ+ representation." could have been elaborated better. I meant more so that a work can have fantastic representation of, say, black people, but then could show homophobic values or have only stereotypical women.

Not every work needs to have diversity because some understandably wouldn't: a work about real people (all of whom are, say for example, white men, or alternatively if all of whom are black women), a work about only 1 person, a work set in a historical period where there wouldn't be much diversity (not that I think you can't be historically inaccurate with casting, as long as you don't pretend you're work is trying to be historically accurate - nobody watches Bridgerton to learn about the Georgian era - I just also don't think it's wrong to cast historically accurate) etc. And of course, a work not having good diversity doesn't make it racist/sexist/homophobic/abelist etc or bad, but having good diversity is something that I think works (where appropriate, obviously) should strive for because it means that more people can have works in which they feel represented by.

Diversity is a good way of getting towards normalcy in society because it makes it harder to avoid confronting that there are different types of people. There's also the practical benefit that, generally, a variety of characters helps. There's a reason few stories have casts where every character is white, with black hair, a square jaw, blue eyes, are 5 foot and have lips the same size, especially visual stories. More of a variety of characters means that it is simply easier to differentiate the different characters.

The thing with fiction, is that the characters themselves aren't always fully relatable. I doubt many people are fully like characters from medieval or fantasy dramas, or sci-fi shows, or films about the mega-rich. What is (most of the time) key, is making a character have aspects that are relatable. If you're a middle-class person, for example, you might not relate fully to a working-class character. However, you might relate to their relationship woes, or feelings of inadequacy, or fears, or loves, or aspirations. You relate to aspects of them and what they go through. Making a character a different race/gender/sexuality might make them slightly less relatable overall, but you can still relate to aspects of them, or even them as a person. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was, and still is, very famous and popular, and I doubt that popularity came entirely from black Americans. Hell, I live in Britain and therefore most of the TV and films I watch are American, and yet I can still relate despite cultural differences. And, when it comes down to it, if you relate very much to a character's personality and life situation, then their race/nationality/gender shouldn't impede that much.

I'm aware it might seem contradictory that I'm saying that I think that characters can be relatable regardless of how different they are to you, wouldn't that mean that logically diversity doesn't matter? But diversity means that more people feel represented and can help bring normalcy to groups that deal with prejudice. It's also a way of bringing variety to a cast. And if anything, shouldn't diversity broaden the relatability instead of reducing it? In Britain, for example, people who are white and/or straight do make up most of the population, but not to the extent that having black, Asian, gay, or trans leads wouldn't also represent large proportions of the population.

Edit: I mean, the highest grossing film of all time is Avatar. I don't think most people are blue (obviously there are human main characters, but a lot of the film, and the marketing, focuses on the blue people). The second most is Avengers Endgame, a work with a fair amount (if not tons given it's huge cast) of diversity. Clearly, both works that don't represent much of the population (or any in the case of Avatar) and works that focus on a large diversity of different people can still do well. Yes, both films had advantages (Avatar with the 3D and the Auteur director, Endgame for being the culmination of a plotline spanning dozens of films), but the lack of characters that represent the average viewer in the former and the diversity in the latter certainly didn't stop audiences from enjoying either.

Edited by king15 on Mar 28th 2024 at 11:36:39 AM

It certainly seems to me that a good way to handle things would be to simply try to portray the distribution of people as they are in reality.

The problem is that people don't actually want that. Consider movies or TV shows about physicians working in a hospital, or just scenes in hospitals. What should the doctors look like?

https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/data/figure-18-percentage-all-active-physicians-race/ethnicity-2018

But I've absolutely never seen any show or film where that distribution was followed. There's almost always at least one black physician, for example, even though only a little more than one-in-twenty doctors is black. With those odds, the chances that a core cast of seven has no black characters is approximately 66%, but are 2/3rds of the films you see going to have no black doctors? Oh, I don't think so!

And there are never enough Asians, especially Indians.

... Uh... So did I get this correctly? Having black doctors is unrealistic and therefore not kosher? I think this is a terrible way to think.

But why does fiction have to be a completely 1:1 reflection of reality? Besides, averages don't mean that there aren't any hospitals where, say, 40% of the doctors are black and/or 70% are women. Or that there couldn't be hospitals like that.

I think it would be very limiting for fiction, regarding diversity, casting good actors, and telling the stories you want to tell, if you had to reflect the average make-up of people 1:1. Especially since it's just the average. There aren't many stories, for example, that focus on every single hospital in a country.

Edited by king15 on Mar 28th 2024 at 11:52:37 AM

Not only that, but there are not many doctors because the Medical Education System is racist and not only that, black people have SO MANY REASONS not to trust the Medical System. From forceful neutering to EVERYTHING surrounding the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, they REALLY have a reason to be wary. In fact, one of the great things about Doc Mac Stuffins is that black doctors got more visibility IRL and more black people got into the Medical system.

Edited by AegisP on Mar 28th 2024 at 4:53:41 AM

I would respect complaints about historically inaccurate casting a touch more if... any other kind of anachronism or inaccuracy got nearly that much attention. Nobody gives this much of a shit that 99.99% of fantasy doesn't know how blacksmithing actually works, or how many details biopics fudge, or about what dinosaurs had feathers, but suddenly everyone's an expert on the ethnic breakdown of Ancient Carthage.

I also think that, ultimately, fiction is fiction. If a work is purporting itself as historically accurate, especially if it is a documentary (looking at you Cleopatra documentary), it should certainly reflect the races of the time. However, I don't think it's wrong if a work that isn't attempting to be accurate undergoes colour blind casting, like the Bridgerton example I gave. I understand if it takes you out of the story, but I don't think that it is any more wrong than any other historical inaccuracy. And my general views of historical inaccuracies is: nice to avoid, but sometimes they help the story/presentation/pacing of a work and, regardless, part of the point of historical fiction is that it's historical fiction.

Edited by king15 on Mar 28th 2024 at 12:00:28 PM

"Not only that, but there are not many doctors because the Medical Education System is racist"

Well, no, it isn't. They go out of their way to fight over the black candidates they get. But it's pretty difficult to discuss the nature of our problems when people insist that even accurate descriptions of the problem are bigoted.

A repeated use of altered historical fiction often ends up influencing the general public's views on historic fact. There is a lot of fictional tropes that the society has grown to accept as 'fact' about our past even if they are historically inaccurate.

I think this is mixing Historical Fiction with Historical Fantasy (though the former is a sub-genre of the latter)

The Fiction part  in Historical Fiction, usually appear as  "felling the gaps,"  segments.

For example, we know that Cleopatra and Mark Antony lost the battle of Actium, but we don't know what exactly did Mark Antony said to his officers during the battle, or what was Cleopatra's facial expression was when she decided that the battle was lost.

So fiction here serves to give us dialogues, monologues, facial expressions, and even inner thoughts, that may or may not have happened in reality ( and in 99% of cases, they didn't) in order to link the historical facts together.

Fiction doesn't mean that you have Carte Blanch to add or invent things that logically could never have happend, like you can't make Octavian's forces win by using airplanes and missiles for examples, then just say " So what? It is historical fiction)

...................

On the other hand, in Historical Fantasy, you can do just that, likein Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which is exactly Exactly What It Says on the Tin, or in those " Aliens visited Earth in Ramses's time" or " the battle of Waterloo was actually a conflict between time travelers," etc.

Edited by jawal on Mar 28th 2024 at 12:36:26 PM

Are you telling me that Octavian didn't use missiles to defeat Mark Antony?

But I certainly understand you're viewpoint. I just personally don't mind if works of historical fiction have historical inaccuracies (unless those inaccuracies are less interesting then something more accurate, which, to be fair, is often). I think it's more on the viewer for just accepting what they see in a fictional show as fact. Personally, if something is based on a true story/history, I like to look up what is inaccurate; not only is it interesting to learn about the true story, but it can also help you learn about the process for making the work (why they changed things). In fact, historical fiction can be useful for getting people interested in a subject, and therefore giving an even better understanding of a subject then if the work had never been created. While, of course, if a work is fully accurate it'll be even more useful, I just think inaccurate works can be useful for this as well. For example, Rome is one of my favourite TV shows. It's also very, very historically inaccurate. However, it got me interested in Roman history, an interest that developed further when I looked up what was and wasn't accurate.

Now, there will always be some people who take historical fiction at face value, and I suppose it isn't too unreasonable to assume that historical fiction (especially big-budget affairs) will be mostly accurate. And, as a result, several misconceptions of history (some that have had fairly large negative effects) have become common. That's why I think that historical fiction should probably have disclaimers saying that they aren't fully accurate. Frankly, I think this should be a moral obligation of shows like The Crown which are based on still living people and certainly don't attempt to be accurate.

Linking this back to diversity and representation, I don't think historical fiction (especially about people long-dead, with people still alive it's much more dodgy) should have to be historically accurate in regards to diversity (though I don't think it's a problem if it is accurate either). Especially if, like I suggested, there were disclaimers about accuracy. Of course, historical inaccuracies can go both ways in regards to diversity. If a work changes historical facts so as to make one group of people seem more moral than the other (as 300 was accused of doing with the Spartans and the Persians, though I haven't watched that film so can't judge), then obviously that can be a bad thing for representation as it can fuel negative views about certain groups. In those cases, regardless of any disclaimer, maybe changing the plot a bit to at least avoid using historical inaccuracies to vilify the other group would probably be for the best.

Sorry if I derailed the topic a bit.

Edited by king15 on Mar 28th 2024 at 1:37:32 PM

Ah, the “muh historical accuracy” excuse.

I think we are done here.

Part of the issue is how much media impacts people's views of an era, especially when casual viewers or little kids don't tend to look things up. See the view of the Wild West and cowboys versus reality. It also lends to things like people knowing about the Nazis burning books, but only more recently do people know about them burning Dr. Hirschfield's works in particular.

Also, I agree with the idea people hyperfocus on a character having similar demographics for relateability, or that relateability is key. I very much was not black, male, and did not live in the heart of a city but Virgil Hawkins was my favorite character as a kid.

I know because as someone who LOVES Saturday Morning Cartoons, Static Shock was everything anyone could want in a cartoon. A cool, awesome hero, extremely bold and daring writing that pushed the envelope and then some. And it has EVERYTHING the anti woke crowd INSISTS is profit poison, be it Box Office or ratings wise. Extremely progressive writing, representation everywhere, portrayals of mental illness that do not come off as awful or explotative, portrayals of homelessness, racism, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS, Gang Violence, Bullying. And no the show was not a flop. At its biggest it had Over 3 million kids in a solid demographic and who knows how many actual total viewers. The only reason it got cancelled was because despite its ratings the license for Static sadly became too expensive.

Edited by AegisP on Mar 28th 2024 at 7:07:06 AM

Well, he did use ballistas, which technically are missile launchers.

I should have said rockets instead.

........................

This was not the sole problem with 300, the movie and the comic book that inspired it portrayed Persians as some weird and grotesque semi-alien beings, that are hardly recognized as humans, and their ugliness was contrasted with the normal looking (if fit and muscular) Spartans

That one was an offensive representation visually, before even getting to the characters roles and dialogues, and obviously also inaccurate historically and biologically.

Edited by jawal on Mar 28th 2024 at 5:16:25 PM

So, if we're being pedantic, my joke about missiles was actually correct? Cool.

Yeah, from what I've heard (like I said I haven't seen it), 300 is an example of how historical inaccuracies can be bad for Diversity and Representation in Media.

Edited by king15 on Mar 28th 2024 at 2:50:01 PM

The movie 300 was just plain inaccurate in every possible way, except possibly in its portrayal of the original comic.

It didn't even correctly portray what would happen with a sudden decapitation - the arterial pressure is considerable to get fresh blood to the brain, there ought to be a veritable fountain of blood. Instead, there was... nothing. If you're going to go to the extreme of actually showing someone's head being cut off (with special effects, I mean, not a snuff shoot) you ought to get it right.

The film and comic had only the faintest relationship to the recorded historical events, and was more of a surrealistic but banal fever dream than any depiction of even a fantasy world. It doesn't help matters that the Spartans weren't just incompatible with modern ideas of morality but weirded out lots of people in the ancient world as well; the film doesn't present their own beliefs about their society, it doesn't examine it at all.

It just... wasn't good.

That part is irrelevant to the thread topic, though.