Diversity and Representation in Media

@Finn: At first, I'd argue it's safe to say that Finn is a coward-mind you, he gets over that flaw by the time he fights the shock baton guy. He doesn't act like someone who's undergone military training from birth (I'd expect someone like him to be The Comically Serious), though the way he does act is pretty entertaining. He's like if a Stormtrooper was blessed with Genre Saviness and decided to become a main character in order to not die.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

The comics doesn't have a time limit of one / two hours for one thing.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!

actually is the other way, he is genre savy to said "oh shit im star wars story, better to run away" and the plot said "lol nope"

Finn is coward in SW perpective that he dosent have heroic beliefs, even when he save Rey is more a duty to save people he care that stand against the first order, in a way Finn seen being e hero as the same as being a stromtroper, when the job call you shut up and do your duty, them complain afterwards

Also for me the TRAITOR meme is hilarius, but I come from warhammer fandom where that is the norm

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

"Finn doesn't have heroic beliefs." I vehemently disagree.

He refuses to kill innocent civilians in cold blood. He rushes out to help a person he doesn't even know yet, who is being attack by goons, before he sees that she's actually got a good handle on the situation.He goes back to the bad guys, whom he ran away from, just to save his friend. That's pretty damn heroic in my book.

Those are heroic action, not belief, he dosent want to atack the first order but run away, in fact he is surprise of why Poe is getting back jakku after all the trouble the have to escape.

Finn heroic action happen in the moment and he dosent have any "lets fight evil" but instead want to have nothing with it, this contrast Rey who do want to be part of the resistance.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Rey doesn't want to be part of the Resistance at first either; she wants to go back to Jakku because she wants to wait for the person (her family?) who left her on Jakku to come back for her.

In fact, both Rey and Finn have a Refusal of the Call in the movie at first. Both eventually get over it.

Can we leave the in-universe discussions of Star Wars for the respective threads? I haven't seen anything related to (out-universe) diversity about Star Wars (and if there was something in-universe related to diversity and representation, it's probably within some posts a few pages ago).

edited 20th Jul '16 4:52:17 PM by Quag15

Hell, even Han has that moment in TFA. It's subtler but it's there.

Aren't we still talking about how Finn's race may have affected fan response to his character? That's the impression I got.

I feel like this has turned more into a debate about Finn's personal morality/belief system, which would be better placed in one of the existing Star Wars threads if we want to move it over there. How Finn being black affects the way people view and react to him is definitely something to talk about (and I'm up for a conversation about that), but that's not really what's going on here.

In other Star Wars-related diversity news - Kelly Marie Tran is hinted to have a fairly pivotal role in Episode VIII. John Boyega has previously referred to her as Episode VIII's "new lead" (and gushed fairly unabashedly about working with her). While I'm keeping hold of my reservations - there are still any number of reasons this could end up not being what we're hoping for - if we have a new, heroic woman of color as a lead character in a Star Wars saga film, that would be fantastic.

And if you think about it, with a number of Asian characters in speaking roles in The Force Awakens, three Asian lead characters in Rogue One, and Kelly Marie Tran also apparently having a lead role in Episode VIII, Star Wars is single-handedly doing more for Asian representation in the space of three films than most franchises do over the space of decades. They've certainly put the MCU to shame in a few scant years, in more respects than one.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

Also worth noting is the fact that they cast an actress that isn't "Hollywood skinny." I just hope they don't cop out and make her an alien...

I'll heartily second that. If they have her mo-capping as an alien or a droid or whatever - or smother her in makeup, as Hollywood is so fond of doing - I will be extremely disappointed. Hell, forget about the implications of having an Asian person literally be an alien/emotionless robot. Right now, we need an actual woman of color in a Star Wars film. There has never been one.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

To add to this, I'm pretty sure Kelly Marie Tran may be the chubbiest Asian woman I've ever seen cast in any movie (outside of characters that were fat for the purpose of mockery). Like, including indie Asian-American movies. It's true that "Hollywood skinny" is a thing for all women, but I feel like there's an extremely narrow (heh) view of what an Asian woman is supposed to look like that's compounded by the fact that we only get to see one on screen every five years.

edited 20th Jul '16 7:38:39 PM by czhang

You know, I hadn't even thought about that, but that's very true as well.

So basically, Star Wars? Please give her a good role - and please let her be herself for it. Because I genuinely think that could be pretty huge.

edited 20th Jul '16 7:44:04 PM by RBluefish

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

Margaret Cho's been in some movies hasn't she?

And honestly, Tran doesn't even strike me as chubby. Maybe her face is a little wider-set than what people are used to, but in terms of her overall body mass she's downright average. Shows how messed up things are.

edited 20th Jul '16 8:01:19 PM by AlleyOop

I'm not hugely familiar with Margaret Cho, but it looks like she's mostly had smaller roles in the 90s, I'll have to check them out.

Oh yeah, it's definitely a sad state of things. Like, she's still a lot smaller than me, but she's the closest to my size that I've ever seen. I'm also built more on the "muscled" side than the "chubby" side, but I still haven't seen any muscular Asian women on screen either so... maybe episode 9? You'd think with all the stereotyping of Asians as martial artist ninjas they'd cast Asians that actually look physically tough but no.

Unfortunately, the stereotyping of Asians as martial artists tends to be conflated with the stereotyping of Asians being small and physically unimpressive. Which, to be fair, is not entirely without its basis in reality (many ethnicities of East Asian people are indeed smaller on average than Westerners), but all too often it's portrayed as a joke. "Lookit the tiny Asian! Haw haw!"

And I have the impression that the "Asians are small" thing is likely to become far less true when you start looking at Asian-Americans and other Asian people living outside of Asia. While I'm sure there may still be a genetic predisposition for comparatively reduced size (can't say I know for sure, though), my father is a good six feet tall, and I'm noticeably over that.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

My brother and I (raised in Canada) are taller than all of our cousins (raised in China). I wonder if there have been any actual studies to see if there's a difference or not. Even so, there are still a lot of fat/muscular Asians who live in Asia, so it's not really an excuse.

I wonder if maybe better nutrition on average accounts for the height difference? But either way, that's purely a matter of height - as you say, it's no excuse for the lack of diversity in actual body types.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

Most of my family is still on the small side (the tallest person in my family counting all my grandparents' and their siblings' descendants is my 5'8" cousin), but it might be a regional thing? I've been told that southern Chinese tend to be shorter, darker skinned, and wider-set than Chinese from the northern parts on average, like with Mexico apparently. But again it may be a dietary/cultural thing.

edited 20th Jul '16 9:58:39 PM by AlleyOop

I've heard the same except that Northerners tend to be the wider ones, (or have wider faces)? I mean, my family does fit the some of the stereotype - we're all relatively shorter and darker, but my non-farmer cousins are all pretty skinny (that may just be the societal pressure in China though, still lots of fatphobia there). But then, most early Chinese-to-North America migration was from the South, so really the Chinese stereotype should be that we're all short and fat and not pale-skinned.

Actually, size is a matter of genetics and directly related to Darwin's theories. To put it simple: A smaller, more compact body has an easier time to preserve heat and therefore an easier time to survive cold winters. I wouldn't expect people who live in really cold regions like Nepal or Greenland to be particularly big for exactly that reason, while it isn't surprising at all that that Africans tend to be more on the big side. As one can see in the Europeans, those distinctions mean less in areas where a lot of different people mix....then you end up somewhere in the middle (though humans in general have become bigger with every generation).

Which is kind of weird when you see that Asian tend to be on the petite side when they're living in the tropic region.

It's the other way round. Thanks to the Square-Cube Law, larger bodies have less surface in regards to volume and lose less heat. That's why the penguins in Antarctica are the biggest ones.

This is threatening to veer off-topic again, so to bring things back around with a bit of news that's at least loosely related to the topic of this thread: Apparently they're planning to make a TV series based on the 1984 film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Who wants to bet that they'll cast another white guy as the supposedly half-Japanese Buckaroo Banzai? (And incidentally, I don't think "Banzai" is a legit Japanese family name.)

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

Generally speaking, I think increasing diversity is a great idea. Art reflects life, and vice versa. But I have a problem with the chocolate raisin metaphor. Yes, there are far too few minority characters. I agree with that wholeheartedly. To continue the metaphor, couldn't everyone just share the same bowl? I'm a straight, white male. I don't only enjoy characters like me. Being raised Jewish and being on the autistic spectrum, it's often a minor pleasure to see Jewish or autistic characters. So I do understand the point about seeing characters like yourself. But I don't need characters to be like me to enjoy them. Again, I wholeheartedly agree that there are far too few minority characters, but I just don't get the bowl of raisins metaphor. Anybody should be able to enjoy any character regardless of what they look like. Just something I wanted to talk about.

edited 21st Jul '16 4:54:38 PM by FoxBoxKid

Make mine Marvel.