Diversity and Representation in Media

So Young Justice has been getting some criticism regarding the character Halo aka Violet Harper.

Halo is the spirit/AI of a machine called a Mother Box inhabiting the body of a dead Muslim girl named Gabrielle Doe. One of her powers is the ability to heal and revive from death which has resulted in a lot of uncomfortable scenes where she is killed in very graphic ways. And of course, there's the issue of a non-white girl's body being inhabited by an alien. Then it is learned that Gabrielle, the girl whose body Halo is using played an unwitting part in the assassination of the Markovs, the parents of her boyfriend Brian.

And now we get the recent episode "Early Warning". First we learn that due to the number of times she's been killed and resurrected, Violet's body is deteriorating. So she decides to blow off some steam with her friend Harper Row during which they shoot at bottles, consume alcohol and make out.

Firstly, Violet says that she isn't Muslim but she is still wearing a hijab. Then there's Harper kissing Violet. The first kiss is done without Violet's consent and it should be noted that both girls have boyfriends which leans into the cheating bisexuals stereotype. Also, as someone else pointed out to me, by having the kissing take place after shooting guns and underage drinking, you’re equating two women kissing as a reckless and stupid decision. Something to do for the shits and giggles of feeling rebellious, rather than an exploration into serious feelings and desires.

So yeah, not a good look.

Edited by windleopard on Jul 17th 2019 at 2:41:41 AM

They just keep piling it on this character, don't they.

It's especially frustrating because Weissman can and has done better with minority representation in the past. Hell, he's done better with it in this very show which makes the tone-deafness with Halo all the more glaring. I really hope he or someone else on the writing team is listening to the criticisms and are planning to course correct soon.

Don't forget that Violet is also non-binary, making it an even more egregious case of not ideal representation.

(x4) You lost me at "Halo is the spirit/AI of a machine called a Mother Box inhabiting the body of a dead Muslim girl". It just sounds so weird. You're talking about the cartoon, right? Is any of this from comic canon?

Nope. It's not from the comics. The show changed her drastically.

...why even do that?

It's also my understanding that Halo was white for a lot of her comics history.

I guess it's one of those cases where you ask: "what's worse, bad representation or no representation?"

As someone of Han Chinese descent, this is a question I've asked myself many times.

I've already voiced my displeasure at people having to settle just because they can't get it anywhere else.

Race lifting alone is not a one-size-fits-all solution despite what some writers believe. Even if the goal was to be more diverse, you can’t put a square peg in a round hole. You have to look at the character, their traits, their relationships, etc.

Without naming examples - “We made this character black, but then we made her fall into tons of black woman stereotypes” is replacing one problem with another IMO.

Edited by Beatman1 on Jul 17th 2019 at 9:38:22 AM

> Halo is the spirit/AI of a machine called a Mother Box

Wasn't the Mother Box the thing in Justice League ?It seems like they were taking ideas from elsewhere,I have a feeling something so blatant was done in full knowledge of how ridiculous it sounded

Edited by Ultimatum on Jul 17th 2019 at 1:43:44 PM

The Mother Boxes are from the New Gods part of the DC universe. It's a very important part of its history. It's not just from the movies.

Did I say it was a one-size-fits-all solution?

And as an East Asian person who grew up watching movies and television in the USA, I am painfully aware of that.

Edited by M84 on Jul 17th 2019 at 9:49:08 PM

No, I just feel like a lot of writers assume it is. That they can’t come up with or ignore the nuances that would inform a character otherwise. It’s disheartening.

> The Mother Boxes are from the New Gods part of the DC universe. It's a very important part of its history. It's not just from the movies.

Right,I'm unfamiliar with that side of the comics

Also Mother Boxes have already shown up in Young Justice... back in S1 when the Forever People showed up, they had and used a Mother Box. It was explicitly named.

Not super relevant, but just sayin'.

Mother Boxes sounds like something you give on Mother's day

Should point out that hijab technically isn't strictly an Islamic thing so much as a pre-Islamic Arab and North African custom that became codified after Islam's ascent, and was carried to non-Arab parts of the world along with Islam itself. I don't think this is the case for Gabriel/Violet so much as sheer ignorance, but it is possible to be a non-Muslim and wear hijab for ethnic reasons, although they likely wouldn't call it by that.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 17th 2019 at 3:24:08 PM

Thing is, Violet has been trying to distance herself from Gabrielle so her continuing to wear the hijab still makes no real sense.

I figured it was probably something like that. "I'm wearing the hijab nonreligiously as an expression of my female Arab/North African identity, the way Palestinians might wear a keffiyeh, or nonreligious Indonesian males would wear the traditionally Muslim-associated kopiah" is not the kind of nuance I'd expect from someone who isn't specifically from one of those groups or in regular communication with them.

So, Harry Styles of One Direction fame is in talks to play Prince Eric in Disney's live action Little Mermaid remake.

However, some have pointed out that while Disney has yet to make a movie where the couple is all black and styles being cast as Eric isn't all that progressive even if the Ariel he will be sharing screen time with is black. The only couple where both characters are non-white are Mulan and Shang and they don't get together on screen.

... Aladdin and Jasmine?

And Tiana and Naveen.

Right. Forgot that.

Naveen is Ambiguously Brown so hard to tell if he's non-white.

It's hard to tell what race Naveen is supposed to be, but whatever it is, he's definitely not white European, and it's a case where you can legitimately invoke coding as evidence for it.

The points in favor of him being a particularly dark-skinned European would be the vaguely Italic language he speaks and the European-style clothing he wears, but they're relatively weak and could easily be explained as the result of cultural exchange (or colonialism, but his parents seem to have retained hegemony). Whereas his name, the shape of his facial features, choice of voice actor, and the darkness of his skintone were deliberate choices that strongly hint at an ambiguous but distinctly non-European ethnic origin.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 17th 2019 at 1:54:14 PM