Diversity and Representation in Media

Which is how it should be. Things like race, gender, sexuality, etc. are supposed to inform a character, not define them.

Culture can define.

Yes characters shouldn't be defined by their sexuality blah blah because that's not what motivates behaviour forms personalities gives desires and necessities etc... sounds like common sense but not everyone gets it. Especially with American Indians oh gosh. Do you see that burger they're eating in such an Indian way = new writer

edited 19th Jun '16 4:17:55 PM by FictionWriterKing

Amerindians don't have it all bad, if you consider most Latinos have Amerindian blood.

edited 21st Jun '16 4:20:26 AM by IndirectActiveTransport

It depends, some people are define by their culture,religion,etc and other is just a passing thing, is not easy how much it would be and is mostly a day by day cases

with minority it get worst by the embassy efect where by having one chararter wth X trait make them represent ALL people with such X trail, so a black chararter is not JUST a black chararter but a representantion of all of it, which make thing really annoying

Culture shapes, not necessarily defines. You may buck the norms and conventions of your past, you may burn your bridges entirely, but ultimately you are still a product of your upbringing. That doesn't mean you have to be a copy of some stock cultural mold, it's not like a insert upbringing ==> obtain person sort of slot machine, but it means that there's an impact on you.

Personally, I see that as more reason to improve diversity in creators. There are so many different backgrounds to draw stories from. And I'm not saying it's BAD to have male and/or white writers (as a male aspiring writer I might be biased in that a bit), because for all the thousands of years that white guys have been making and telling stories about other white guys, we still haven't even begun to exhaust the potential stories you can tell with that, or the insights you can draw into the human condition with that. But then, is it not tragic that there are so many more stories untold in more backgrounds?

Granted, a lot of media are decently diverse, there are female showrunners and directors and writers, though perhaps not in the numbers that they should be, which at least shows more of an effort than in other areas.

In the case of white men, they are use because their ancestry means nothing, white men is use as placeholder or even generic, so a chararter can be JUST a chararter, there only moment when background count is country thing(like being american/british) or their interaction with race

With minority it feel the idea that if their background is not important them there is not reason to include, is pretty much an Utilitarian point of view in their logical extreme

Although the ratio of minority vs majority is stupidly uneven, there are minroties writing innovative stories about minorities like Nnedi Okorafor. You're just not going to know them because they don't get the exposure they deserve even though many are no less talented than their majority counterparts.

In our society we have to research for "other" stories because obviously the amount out there aren't represented on store shelves. Oh an African woman wrote an epic, high fantasy based on African culture, what? Oh a native american man flimmed a crime drama based on native american folklore, what? Yea your not going to receive that acknowledgment from the press. We should but we don't. We are mainly exposed to the majority

edited 21st Jun '16 9:19:26 AM by FictionWriterKing

But I'm not even talking about culture here. It's not like being white means you have to write solely about white culture, though many do share their experiences, and many of those experiences turn out to be among the greatest works of literature.

But you were shaped by your experiences (which were shaped by culture), and you can share those experiences. I'm not so much interested in the "black woman writes a book based on african folklore", though other cultures outside of the West are criminally underexposed within the West, but rather "black woman writes a book based on her experiences". Maybe she grew up in the bad part of town, or maybe she spent her childhood in summer homes and exotic vacation locales, either way she has a unique set of experiences, many of them shaped by how other people react to who she is, gender and skin color included, and those experiences are what makes her stand out from, say, a white guy, be it that he grew up in poverty or prosperity.

Hollywood's Dream of a Faceless Rumi.

edited 20th Jun '16 8:21:34 PM by RBluefish

how does hiring a white person to play a persian break stereotypes..?

Movie Bob on the possible "Big Trouble In Little China" remake

http://moviebob.blogspot.com.ng/2016/06/in-bob-we-trust-lets-not-remake-this.html

the issue here is that unlike their experience are consider them the idea is dismiss, white people arent chose for their white experience but because the LACK of it.

... now there's a movie that does not need a remake. At all.

Yeah, that movie have his charm in how kug fu B-movie it is and that is the only reason it dosen feel racist, it would get more hate that ghostbusters

I was responding to "But then, is it not tragic that there are so many more stories untold in more backgrounds?"

Untold stories = "other". We need more stories written from people in different backgrounds about people in those backgrounds more so than the majority writing them, which often doesn't connect well with the people from said backgrounds. However for the minority writers who do exist they don't get the exposure required to know who they truly are.

There are less Tony Hillermans out there, who although white (majority), wrote a story about the world of the Navajo reservation and the struggle to keep up with traditions. This is why when a Cheyenne adapted his film that concept became even clearer. We normally don't receive such a thing.

When Nnedi wrote Binki she already saw everything from a magical point of view. Her imagination ran rampant even without a pen in her head though aspects of her Nigerian heritage always showed up. The beliefs, the people, the environment and so on are all different from what we would normally receive from a white writer, which gave birth to a unique brand of science fiction and fantasy. She did what all the Token wannabes couldn't because she wasn't experienced in the conventional. It never interested the writer.

I think we need these people. They are important. In Yaounde, Cameroon there is a company called Kiro's Games that develops RP Gs. Its native origins play a key role in the content they make because they don't see themselves part of the Euro-centric and Asian fantasy that dominated the genre since it first arrived. The myths, settings, and popular narratives aren't among the monopolized majority this time around, which makes their games so damn refreshing. The African roots give Aurion a distinct feel I find difficult to obtain elsewhere.

3 Yes white is just the default race

edited 21st Jun '16 10:25:32 AM by FictionWriterKing

So for Captain America's 75th anniversary, Marvel is releasing several video games starring different versions of the Star Spangler. Two of them feature female Captain Americas, one being Peggy Carter in a timeline where Steve was assassinated, and one being their daughter Sharon Rogers in another AU.

edited 27th Jun '16 8:54:09 PM by Tuckerscreator

Not to sound picky/unappreciative, but I'm both surprised and a teeny bit disappointed they didn't bring in American Dream.

Would've been nice, at least. MC 2 has a bad tendency to get short-ended.

They're not releasing games, they're releasing characters in their various existing Free-To-Play games. Titles like Future Fight, Avengers Academy, Puzzle Quest, etc. are each getting their own special Captain America variant.

Isn't there already a female Cap and Fal Cap costume in Future Fight ?

I know she's got the look of the British Peggy but is she still American in this version? Otherwise it's weird to have a British person as Captain America.

Fucking colonialists.

Star Wars fan Drew Leinonen and his boyfriend Juan Guerrero were among the victims who died in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Now, Drew's best friend is petitioning Lucasfilm to use Drew as an inspiration to create the first ever LGBT Star Wars character that would appear in a movie.

Mark Hamill even retweeted it.

edited 29th Jun '16 10:38:42 AM by higherbrainpattern

Sad. Well if they're going to put a gay character in any fututre films they may as well make it look like this guy.

It is pretty excellent of Hamill to pass this along. We'll see how far it goes.

It shouldn't have had to come to this for it to happen, but they should definitely take them up on it.