Diversity and Representation in Media

Yeah, Luther has a lot of issues (as a person, not in the "issues with this character" way). He's cut off from just about everyone. Race doesn't actually have much if anything to do with it.

If anything you could point at him being a scary, angry Black man but again from the way he's presented his race is not particularly intrinsic to that side of him - again, this is someone with lots more issues mentally.

Edited by jakobitis on Apr 15th 2021 at 10:06:03 AM

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Luther's casting was colour blind btw. Idris was picked because be was the best Person for the job which is what we should aim for in everything.

Cartoon Network is reviving its classic Cartoon Cartoons brand name, with an equally familiar push to use it as a collection of different shorts from various diverse voices.

Notable mentors include women animators Katie Rice (Animaniacs (2020), The Mighty B!) and Aminder Dhaliwal (The Owl House, Close Enough), along with Hispanic-American Manny Hernández (We Bare Bears, Drop'd).

Additionally, they're teaming up with two organizations to specific goals at bringing in Black and Autistic creatives into the program:

‘In the Heights’ garners overwhelmingly positive first reactions from critics.

The film is adapted from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, about a Latinx neighborhood in New York City. It is directed by Jon M. Chu.

I think the Luther/Idris Elba thing was a pretty alright criticism to make tbh. Putting a Black British person in your show, but not showing at least some of the broader black community he almost certainly would have been part of in some way, is not actually that great as representation? It feels like Luther was written as an assumed-white-as-default character, but it just so happened to be a black actor who got the role.

As for the Caribbean thing and not all Black Brits being of that descent, I just assumed that she meant it as an example, I hardly think she would be opposed to eg West African food and culture being represented instead, and tbh I don't know why people fixate on that point so much - seems very much like a "well akshually" aspect to pick on.

Mortal Kombat's Stars Believe the Film's Diversity Gives It Added Resonance

Hes doesn't even have friends period. The whole point of his character is that he's dysfunctional and can't Connect to people. Why should they be their ? Do we complain about Sherlock holmes who he's based on being antisocial as well.

The later point also blatantly assumes all Jamaican people eat Jamaican food for some reason and Thats supposed to be a mark of him being authentic. Which is horrifying stereotyping.

Edited by miraculous on Apr 19th 2021 at 10:53:53 AM

Getting into the weeds with "but he has no family/friends to show and anyway he likes burgers" or whatever in-universe Thermian argument adjacent reasons you want to give is missing the forest for the trees.

At the end of the day, Luther was written as a race-neutral (read: presumed white) role, and the fact that a black dude ended up in the role is at best the most minimal representation they could have mustered - especially compared to eg a character that did interact with the broader black community.

And constantly nitpicking at how imperfectly that person got that point across really just makes everyone look petty.

Does him being black need to matter ? Is not the whole point where aiming for is that we can get colour blind casting where someone gets on merit rather then having their race define their entire role. Like we don't have ask that of white actors so why must people of Co Lour have to be defined by that in every role they take.

Genuine question. Though if someone stated that it wasn't authentic that an Indian man wants eating curry or am Asian mean eating noodles. Would that be really racist and stereotyping so why are you ignoring the weird connotations of that.

Edited by miraculous on Apr 19th 2021 at 12:21:20 PM

Yeah, the idea that a character isn't "really" black unless they behave in a certain way seems kinda iffy. As is getting on their case for not casting a white actor.

I could understand the complaint if Luther was the only type of black character we were getting but that isn't the case at all.

This also seems to imply that an anti-social or dysfunctional character is a default white role which uh....

No it doesn't, and the more you speak the less I'm convinced you're arguing in good faith if I'm honest. That is such a reach that it really makes me wonder if you're being disingenuous.

No-one claimed that, or anything adjacent to that.

I think it's a valid criticism of the current representation of black people in British media that it barely covers black culture/society and many black characters are portrayed disconnected from that. I think that's a valid criticism.

This Part

This basically assumes that someone like Luther is default played by a white actor. It also assumes theirs something weird if he's played by any other race.

Again why does his race need to define who he is? Is this not the opposite of what we should be aiming for.

Edited by miraculous on Apr 19th 2021 at 1:11:25 AM

The article did, what with the whole "doesn't eat Caribbean food". I eat Caribbean food, and I'm so white I'm basically translucent.

Now, if they want to make a case about how British TV doesn't represent the British black communities, then that's entirely fair. But to single out Luther as "doing it wrong" is counter-productive, as it tells the producers that casting a black actor for a character that doesn't has to be black is more trouble than it's worth.

The entire point of colourblind casting is to allow non-white actors to compete evenly for roles, even if the character in question isn't necessarily non-white. Otherwise you'll be locking out skilled actors out of entire genres because of the colour of their skin.

Edited by Kayeka on Apr 19th 2021 at 10:23:39 AM

Again this implies that an Actors race should be pivotal and to the forefront of every role they play. Which is just so wrong idea. It also says that colour blind castings on merit like this which is again what we should aim are just default white roles which feels patronizing.

It was written in a white majority country which has been one of the main proponents and exporters of white hegemony for centuries, of course the default is white. That's basically self-evident.

Again, I took the Caribbean food comment to be basically an (evidently clumsy) example on the lack of cultural representation, not a "if he doesn't act this way he can't be black" which I think is a fairly uncharitable intepretation.

No, it absolutely doesn't. It means that more roles should be written that show the broader culture of minority groups - specifically black british in this case.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Apr 19th 2021 at 1:28:12 AM

So you don't see anything at all patronizing about saying colour blind castings are just default white roles?

That's such a devaluing to actors like Idris who earned it

Apologies if this is out of line or something, but I don't understand why a single character has to represent an entire culture. That seems really counterproductive.

It's also a bit odd, considering Idris Elba himself isn't Jaimacan either - his parents are from Ghana and Sierre Leone.

the problem is that there usually isn't anyone else to represent the other facets of that culture, same issue with The Smurfette Principle really. Its a representation issue.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 19th 2021 at 2:43:52 AM

, No-one is claiming that all characters of colour have to be representative of the entirety of their culture, and neither is the original person claiming that Idris Elba is Caribbean - they were using Luther as an example of a role that didn't do what she wants to see more of. Y'all need to get past this hangup about Luther/Idris Elba specifically when she was using it as an example to illustrate a broader point.

Lol, no? The Men Are Generic, Women Are Special trope also applies to ethnicity to a large degree, where (in pretty much all "Western" countries) White is treated as the generic, the default, the "normal" and all other ethnicities as special. This isn't really a contentious claim to make as a descriptive statement.

Is eating Jamaican food and having lots of black friends supposed to be proof your Jamaican or something as well. I don't get that. It seems to be saying someone is "not black enough" if they don't abide by that.

So adding a bunch of stereotypes to him is supposed to be better ?

Edited by miraculous on Apr 19th 2021 at 3:11:16 AM

I wasn't paying a lot of attention to British TV diversity in 2010 and I've never seen a single episode of Luther, so this is a sincere question: would it be fair to say Luther was Fair for Its Day in featuring a black man as the lead? Sure he wasn't written by black people, but neither were a lot of black characters in non-"black shows" in the 'aughts.

I think I have a middle ground take; it rubs me the wrong way to say all characters from marginalized groups should be immersed in their culture, but at the same time you can tell when the creator of a minority group didn't bother learning about said minority culture. As others have said, it's a representation issue: the solution is not to rag on preexisting individual characters but to push for more diverse opportunities behind the scenes and to push privileged creators to educate themselves before writing someone from a culture they're not familiar with.

This piece compares the Latino cultures in Jane the Virgin (created by a non-Latina woman, Jennie Snyder Urman) and One Day At A Time (created by the Cuban-American Gloria Calderon Kellett). JTV apparently reads more like "pan-Latin" representation, while ODAAT has a lot of specific Cuban-American touchstones. Should the JTV writers have tried harder to write them as Venezuelan-American? Yeah. But it still feels fair to say that JTV (the Luther in this analogy) did more good for Latino representation than bad.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 19th 2021 at 5:16:39 AM