Diversity and Representation in Media

Something to also consider is that equal representation doesn't mean an improvement in quality of roles. Sturgeon's Law still applies. Even if not stereotypes they are not necessarily going to be well written productions.

Possibly true, but the argument has been made that more people of color involved in acting or producing or directing means that writing and presentation of their characters will improve for their respective races based on their mutual participation.

Sturgeon's Law is almost an inevitability anyway, so I don't see much point in worrying about it as long as the 10% is visible to most of the population.

edited 12th May '16 11:27:38 AM by Tuckerscreator

I get that, and I do like where she ends up at the end of the series, even if it feels like her character arc took a little too long to get to that point. However, then you have the Supermax episode, the cliched "horrible plan that proves the hero needs some kind of intervention".....except she manages to convince everyone to go along with it and is only stopped when Kilgrave decides to step in himself.

The biggest thing that hurts JJ for me is time commitment. As bad as Iron Man 2 and Incredible Hulk are (I actually really like Thor), they're still a couple hours in the theater and then I move on. Jessica Jones is a 13-episode series, each one close to a solid hour. And for a good amount of it I felt like I was slogging through.

Also it wasn't just Jessica on the silly moves. Jessica makes somewhat sense, but a lot of the time other characters, again especially regarding some of Killgrave's later endeavors, make really, really stupid decisions that screw over everyone. Like, everything with Killgrave's capture was done in the worst possible manner. And there's the whole little thing that Killgrave as an inherent concept is really stupid. If this were before Battle of New York and superheroes were still somewhat obscure, sure I could buy it, but this is at a point in time where superhumans are a known, measurable entity. If Killgrave exists, then he would have been on Shield's radar. And this idea that no one would convict Killgrave is equally stupid, because if he was doing risky shit at even half the rate that he was going on in the show itself half the city would have Killgrave stories to tell, and good fucking luck fighting against all those testimonies.

Like, the fucking police are involved. And his powers are established as unable to erase memories. If the entire police force says that they were attacked by an extremely dangerous metahuman, someone's going to step in. Someone has to step in.

How would Kilgrave be on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar? They don't have a Cerebra to tell them that a mutant just popped up and they need to send someone to bring him or her in. Kilgrave's powerset is perfect for flying under the radar because it's impossible to prove that it exists. That his power is unprovable is actually a pretty major plot point.

The police weren't attacked by a dangerous metahuman. He told them to decide that this was a hilarious joke, so they did.

edited 12th May '16 12:50:53 PM by TobiasDrake

I don't think I was ever as bored with JJ as I was with TIH and Thor(which outside of Loki has no redeeming factors imho) so I can't really agree with this even if there were parts that left me miffed.

To put it another way, JJ has lows, but it reaches highs that none of those movies even come close to and they pretty much don't offer anything particularly compelling in general.

edited 12th May '16 1:00:08 PM by wehrmacht

Yeah, Jessica Jones (both the character and the show) is awesome.

edited 12th May '16 1:00:55 PM by higherbrainpattern

But his powers have an established time limit. After a certain amount of time they'd be free to talk about it. All he did was functionally gag them, he didn't change their perception of the events. They just continued to go along with it. What I can't buy is the idea that no one said anything. His power isn't unrealistic to believe, and if a lot of high profile testimonies were to come out then something would have to be brought up. If he only worked on one or two isolated people here and there, I could believe that no one would speak up. No one knows who's with who, and they're too scared of Killgrave to do anything.

But he repeatedly will do something where he'll control an entire public area filled with people, a la police scene. And when they have something where Killgrave has proven that he would pose a threat to a large group of people, it's hard to believe that an entire police force would agree to not do anything about it. Killgrave can't put locks on everyone, unless he wants to spend every day checking up on hundreds of victims. And you know what? That's exactly what happens. Only it's only something that happens way later than it should have logically. The story should have ended at the police scene with a large report about a sociopathic metahuman threatening an entire police station. If that doesn't get Killgrave caught, the resulting attention it would drive from agencies like SHIELD, who would definitely notice large scale reports like this, would.

Around the time Jessica was dealing with Killgrave, Coulson was pretty busy with REAL shield and the Inhumans. Otherwise shield would have picked up on it at the latest when Hope was talking in the radio about it.

edited 12th May '16 1:05:23 PM by Swanpride

After twelve hours, they wouldn't be thinking much of it. He didn't tell them to do something. He told them to believe something. It's established in the show that when Kilgrave tells someone to do something, it makes them want to do it on some level. When the task is done or when his control has expired, they can look back and realize they weren't acting under their own control, but that's in the immediate term.

Kilgrave told them to make a decision. That means every person in the room is going to rationalize for him or herself why it happened. His control expires in 12 hours but after 12 hours of believing their own reason they came up with for what transpired, it won't matter. People don't constantly audit their memories to look for anything out-of-place. Memory doesn't work that way.

Uh... I'm sure this is an interesting conversation... but is this discussion relevant? Jessica Jones is a Netflix series, not a movie, and I haven't seen any discussion about diversity and representation in these past couple of pages, only the in-universe stuff that happened.

I think it's an off-topic one. And isn't there a thread for that series in the Live-Action TV subforum?

edited 12th May '16 1:31:45 PM by Quag15

Okay, on another subject, I'm looking at the Hollywood diversity charts Tuckerscreator posted the link to. The main takeaway points:

- People of colour are ludicrous underrepresented among Academy members and among Oscar and Emmy winners. Ditto for women as Academy members and in the writing and directing categories.

- In the 500 top-grossing films from 2007-2012, 12.4% of speaking characters were portrayed by black actors, compared to 75.8% by white actors. Considering that (as of 2010) 12.6% of Americans were black (including black Latinos) and 72.4% were white (63.7% were non-Hispanic white), that's actually seems pretty proportional - much better than I expected. Though the proportion of black people in leading roles is much smaller. Going by the other charts, it's Hispanic people who are the most underrepresented.

- Asian actors make up 6.2% of actors on primetime scripted shows on the major TV networks. Since the US is about 5% Asian, this is fairly proportional.

- Cable TV has more racial diversity, but broadcast TV is much closer to gender equality in its distribution of roles. I'm not entirely clear on the difference between cable and broadcast TV.

- Women are extremely underrepresented in film as both writers (13% women) and directors (6% women)

edited 12th May '16 2:20:52 PM by Galadriel

Broadcast TV is the free channels, with the bare bones of big name networks like ABC, CBS, FOX, etc. Cable TV is more channels for a monthly fee, and premium cable is usually specific channels like HBO or Showtime with their own fees.

The charts again from the last page.

edited 12th May '16 2:24:42 PM by Tuckerscreator

Thanks. Then the stats make sense. Cable TV had The Wire.

Sort of want to continue the JJ discussion in the JJ topic over on the TV board, because I do have some things to say about that whole deal still.

Anywho, under representation in the industry, under representation in writing, a Hollywood that is the most risk-averse that it's been in decades, not really a good combination here. Sooner or later something's gotta give, but the question of when that'll be, and whether the aftermath will be good or not, is still up for debate.

They're learning ever-so-slowly, but the fact that diver$e ca$ting has been $hown to be highly profitable in and of it$elf is something you'd think the Hollywood execs who only care about profits would have pinged onto faster.

Diverse casting has not been proven profitable "in and of itself." Individual examples like The Fast and the Furious franchise are considered anomalies. And the casting in the recent Star Wars was successful because it's Star Wars, they could have literally put anyone in those roles and it would have made money.

It's a catch-22, as there are few bankable minorities because minorities are not offered the necessary roles to become bankable. The only way to break through that paradigm is probably a solid decade of pushing "diverse" casting into the mainstream from several major studios, but that involves a lot of potentially lost profits and Hollywood tends to only think two - three years ahead.

Executives (especially entertainment executives) are nothing if not hilariously out-of-touch, though - which is especially ironic when you consider how much time and money they spend trying to figure out what the hell it is that young people like these days. It is getting better, slowly, but as the recent and ongoing controversies prove - to say nothing of those stats - there are plenty of shot-callers and studios who seem to be resisting the transition with all their might.

Also, Assassin's Creed trailer hit. Looks all right - I'm hardly a fan of the franchise, but doing a bit of brief Google-Fu on the film...well, at least Fassbender's character isn't supposed to be Altair. We've had quite enough of that in recent years.

Maybe it's time to start hiring younger executives? Or maybe the ones we have now just ask young people what they wanna see?

It's probably not that easy, the same reason why voting in a new outsider President doesn't immediately clean up all the other red tape of Washington. It's an entire industry that needs new faces, not just the top seats.

(Although on the topic of top seats, Disney's apparently heading for a crown-passing soon.)

edited 12th May '16 6:11:49 PM by Tuckerscreator

In a similar vein to the article I linked a page or two back, an in-depth breakdown of all the women of color present in modern films (superhero adaptations in particular). Hint: it's not good.

There are, that I can think of, a whopping total of two women of color who have ever had speaking roles in an MCU film: Helen Cho (who didn't matter) and Martina (who also didn't matter, to the point that almost nobody remembers her, and who also played up somes fairly harmful Latinx stereotypes). If we expand that the encompass the TV shows as well, then there's Chloe Bennet and Ming-Na Wen in Agents of Shield and Claire in Daredevil. And, despite that, both shows still have significant problems (especially Daredevil) when it comes to their portrayal of people of color.

They had the opportunity to make a woman of color a major mentor figure - and one of the smartest, most powerful figures in the MCU - with the Ancient One. But hey, look how that turned out.

Eh, I'll let the article say the rest.

See, this is why Carol Danvers should be nonwhite in the MCU - assuming they ever get around to making her movie.

edited 12th May '16 7:43:14 PM by RBluefish

...And Elektra.

edited 12th May '16 7:46:15 PM by Gaon

Yes, I forgot about Elektra, since I haven't watched Season 2 of Daredevil. The article mentions her, though - and links to another article which points out some of the pretty problematic elements inherent to this version of her character.

Eh, yeah, "diversity" in the CW universe

The CW verse might be lacking but there is Supergirl and iZombie, two female lead comic book shows. And Supergirl even racebent Jimmy 'I'm not calling you James' Olsen and has J'onn.. who's technically an alien but spends most of his time on screen in the form of a black man.

Which is darkly ironic since his race was genocided by the WHITE Martians.

Re: women of color. In 2018 the MCU films will be up to three. I hope I'm wrong.

Came across this today and thought it was cute◊. (From Alex Schlitz)

edited 12th May '16 9:38:46 PM by Tuckerscreator