Diversity and Representation in Media

Oh that's nice.

What's the nationality tho?

Lousy page topper!

Edited by LoneCourier0 on May 24th 2022 at 4:59:05 PM

I think they were from Afghanistan.

@Lone That’s a fitting topic but it seems...a little vague? “War refugee with significant characterization but isn’t from a war drama” is the core of your question, correct?

Well, a bit of that, but mostly, "Also showing dimensions other than giving something for the non-refugee protagonist(s) to care for."

Like, something that doesn't make the narrative go "Aw, look at these poor little people, they just need home! Oh, what else do they have you say? Nothing, they're just poor people that need love, that's all!"

Edited by LoneCourier0 on May 24th 2022 at 7:18:57 PM

Superstore has a Syrian refugee as a minor character, but being from Syria is not played for tragedy, it's another facet of the quirky work environment. I recall the distinction between refugee/undocumented immigrant came up as a plot point, but I think that was the most important it ever got.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 24th 2022 at 12:27:02 PM

Now that's something I never expected to see.

He's being very generous to Matt Damon.

~Hey, guys and gals and those beyond and between~

It's half-past three in the morning so just before I try to go to sleep by relying on my natural exhaustion, let's talk about RACE WARS! Specifically, Prison Break and it's use of the race war in it's narrative.

Now, when I first found out about this, it was from an unconventional source: namely, a playthrough of the Prison Break video by Two Best Friends Play. Here is the apropos video, embedded here because this thread decided to screw the usual embedding process.

Based on the Fox show Prison Break, which ran for four seasons 2005 to 2009 (then given a special and called "The Final Break" in 2009 and suddenly gets a season five in...bloody 2017, finding that out was a surprise for me), you play as Tom Paxton, an OC agent from The Company, who is sent to the same prison as the protagonist, seen before he found the glory of making ice rays, Micheal Scofield, to ensure the legal execution of Micheal's brother, Lincoln Burrow, before he found his passion in fiery arson and time travel, for the murder of the Vice President of the United State's...brother.

Micheal is a brilliant structural engineer who was responsible for the building of the prison Burrow is in and plans to utilize that information to get him out. It's your job to find out what Scofield is planning and make sure nothing stops Burrow from meeting his fate in the electric chair, foaming at the mouth and writhing before he finally lets his head fall down and joins the prison gang above. Will you succeed?!

(Spoiler: Have you not actually watched the show before? If you haven't, stop at this point. You still reading? Alright, it's on your head. No, Paxton does not succeed. There is, indeed, a prison break. You fight your boss who has an Irish accent heavy enough to sink Ireland into the ocean, I'm not joking, and escape in the aftermath of the real prison break.)

Now, this isn't totally relevant...but this game is seriously janky and the LP is hilarious, watching these shmucks try to negotiate the inconsistent stealth system and the basic fighting system while having to sneak and accomplish a series of tasks all over the prison while you're following the first season's events as they play out. Getting drugs, stealing uniforms, climbing into the mental ward and over the pipes and roofs of the buildings, rolling into place behind big boxes, talking into your obvious recorder in front of everybody with no willingness to be even the slightest bit stealthy, etc. This game gives you a lot of objectives to complete so I was left with the impression that some of the plot points that the game deals with were invented for Paxton to do since I didn't watch the show when I first saw the LP.

Now, here's the fun part: as one of the quotes from this video sum up, "I need to get anti-insulin drugs to stop the race war." I eventually did decide to watch the first season of the show.

What's the quote in reference to, since it sounds so bizarre and random? Well, it turns out that Scofield is pretending to be diabetic so as to scout out the infirmary as part of his plan to escape and he needs PUGNAC, an anti-insulin drug, to counter the insulin shots he's getting. This is set up in episode one of the show.

Episode two...well, it's amazing. Within the first ten minutes, we're treated to a scene where C-Note, the prisoner and "pharmacist" of the prison supplying the PUGNAC to Scofield, talk to Scofield about how there's going to be a big race war coming up, you better get ready because it's going to be real rough! Watch that single black man over there shove that single white guy in a hostile manner to show you what we mean! And if you ain't on the side of black people, we'll steal your PUGNAC from you! Which they do.

I was surprised that my laughter didn't break any of the windows in my house, it was so loud and sudden. I must have laughed my throat raw for minutes on end. I didn't think that the race war was an actual thing in the show, I had thought that it was an invention for the game because it comes so suddenly and out of left-field! But, no, it actually comes out of as left-field in the show as it did in the game! There were no hints of a race war in the previous episode or the previous runtime until C-Note showed up!

The race war does boil over into a riot and conclude in the same episode so it starts and leaves consistently, that can be said about it.

It leaves me curious about how race wars, especially prison race wars, are usually employed in many stories. Here, it serves as a riotous obstacle that throws a wrench in Scofield's plan to escape temporarily but is cleared up in the same episode and violent racial tensions...aren't really much of a thing in the season, afterwards?

It's weird.

Edited by fredhot16 on May 25th 2022 at 2:04:10 AM

I may watch Prison Break just to see this. Though your video link appears to be broken.

I recall someone on this thread once mentioned an episode of Criminal Minds which revolved around white serial killers trying to start a race war by framing an Apache tribe for several murders they committed.

"The Tribe". That guy's a Complete Monster

Edited by magnumtropus on May 25th 2022 at 9:51:33 AM

Ricky Gervais Supernature special is as bad as expected I hear.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 25th 2022 at 5:14:37 AM

I am never going to watch it but I read the nbcnews article about it and it is much worse than expected. And his bit at the end is the most insulting of them all. He makes the Russian government sound honest in comparison.

Edited by KRider on May 25th 2022 at 6:27:08 AM

Um, would you like to explain what you heard or confirmed with your eyes? Is it relevant to the race war topic I started or with wind's talk about criminal shows and their usage of race?

I remember Ambar and Gaon having some interesting conversations here about the treatment of the Romani in police shows.

x2 Yeah much like Chappelles surprise visit in Mulaneys, Gervais other jokes are just as crude and low hanging like one will expect I hear.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 25th 2022 at 3:18:55 AM

Laverne Cox is getting her own Barbie doll.

Edited by windleopard on May 26th 2022 at 10:12:41 AM

Uh,your linking to this topic!

Here's something that I wonder, in regards to some POC/non-hetero/non-Christian/etc characters, would the best ones tend to be ones who just happen to be part of either group but not being the sole trait identifying said characters? Or it can depend on the kind of story?

In regards to how to make a good representation of minorities, I think the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a pretty interesting insight of what she called "the danger of a single story". She told how her parents used to help an impoverished family, and since the only thing she knew about them was that they were poor, that was about the only thing she thought of them. However, one day she visited them and was surprised at seeing they created art like vases and other things, because she never stopped to think about them being anything else that she'd imagined; when she moved to the USA, she realized many Americans thought the same of her, thinking her family was poor and wondering how she learned to speak English so well, even though her family was middle-class and English is Nigeria's national language, in the same way that Chimamanda only saw the impoverished family as nothing but impoverished, not because Chimamanda or the Americans who asked her such things were being malicious, but because those were the only versions they knew. That doesn't mean that the family Adichie's parents helped wasn't poor, or that Africa doesn't have tragic events, only that those aren't the only things defining them.

Long story short, I think Chimamanda's commentary is a great example of how to escape from stereotypes — learning about the cultures you are going to represent. Giving accurate, authentic and tri-dimensional portrayals that show that minorities aren't stereotypes. How to do such thing wildly varies in each case, of course; I believe that having people from such culture to work on the project isn't necessary to make good representation, but it is undeniable that it at the very least greatly helps in making them. Of course, it is necessary to have priorities in regard to who you ask for information — I believe most Latin-Americans would be understandably very frustrated at an American movie set in Latin America whose only source of information was, let's say, third generation American immigrants who aren't specialists in their ancestors cultures (and don't really have the obligation to be).

Edited by good-morning on May 27th 2022 at 10:34:35 AM

I’d say the best method, ideally, would be...both. Quantity and quality.

Simple answer but it’s true. Take, say, the example of people arguing for Asian-American Iron Fist, which was pretty prominent in the beginning of this thread, which was once limited to film, or even bloody “Shang Chi” (though I’ll admit, I’m working off second-Hans interest because I’ve not see it myself yet.)

An Asian protagonist who practices Asian-inspired martial arts would not be a stereotype if they were developed beyond “They Who Punch and Kick” because a stereotype is nothing BUT that cliche while they would not have to carry the burden of representation if there were more Asians in the story outside of that role.

Ah, more or less point.

But I also meant cases in which ethnicities aren't tied to something based on their culture, and instead can be other things. Like, a dark-skinned martial arts master, an Asian gunslinger, a Latin American knight, etc.

I think that there's something to be said for not entirely shying away from familiar elements of a given group, too (when those elements aren't inaccurate and offensive, of course). After all, is it better to never at all portray, for example, East-Asian people knowing martial arts?

Rather, I would say similarly to fredhot16, above: it's variety that's more important—it's having characters from a given group that are depicted in a multitude of ways. (And it's having at least some of those ways be non-shallow, too.)

Ultimately, it's a matter not of one work, or even a few, but of depiction in aggregate: one East-Asian character knowing martial arts in a single story is likely unproblematic; the majority of East-Asian characters all knowing martial arts across a great many stories is arguably otherwise.

But in the end, if I may extend this into advice, what I might suggest is simply to look at all characters, of whatever group, primarily as people; to not approach them primarily as "<Insert Ethnicity Here>".

(Which is not to say that their cultural context need be ignored—but rather that no person, I daresay, is their cultural context.)

That was mostly my point, yeah. Have nationalities be different people.

There was an earlier discussion about that upthread, linking an earlier post of mine here.

Anti-SJW You Tuber called Mecha Random 42 is underfire for calling calling Reva from Kenobi (by extension, other black people) a racial slur in her thumbnail.

Honestly, I think the Reva character is getting a lot of hate, with nuanced analysis being not given to her, because she's a black woman, who's portrayed as being angry. Frankly, she was doomed to such venom, as not only is she an angry woman, but because she's she's black.

Edited by Bornstellar on May 29th 2022 at 9:28:14 AM