Hello! Today, I’d like to discuss diversity and change within the media. This is an area that’s fairly prevalent in today’s culture, notably with recent events regarding such cases as the death of Sandra Bland, Viola Davis’ Emmy win, and the upcoming Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman and Cyborg movies.
First, we should consider the statistics behind the media. Who’s watching? What are the viewing patterns?
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| Source – BFI |
Taking into consideration that diverse audiences consume the media much more heavily than the norm, we have to wonder why there is so little representation of these audiences within it. This isn’t to say there is a complete ignorance for diverse characters in the media; Mindy Lahiri (The Mindy Project), Gloria and Manny Pritchett (Modern Family), Melinda May (Agents of SHIELD). Yet, considering these, diverse characters still fall to stereotypes. Modern Family, one of my favourite TV shows as of current, features Gloria, a Latino ‘bombshell’ dating an older man. Stereotype. With Modern Family, though, Gloria especially has developed considerably in character, and while many of her stories focus on her ethnicity, it’s often overlooked and she’s now seen as, simply, Gloria. Continuing with Modern Family, there is slight deviance with Cam and Mitchell, who are a gay couple who adopted a Vietnamese girl at the start of the first season. Hooray for diversity.
At the time of writing, I noticed a hashtag on Twitter floating around – #allmalepanel
At a Tory Party Conference, there were 16 all male panels, less than two days into the conference. I thought I’d reference this because, again, it simply symbolises the need for diversity and change, not only in the media, but in politics also. Check out Buzzfeed’s post about it here.
Examples of diversity
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| DC Comics; John Constantine (bisexual, Liverpudlian magic wielding hero), Katana (Japanese superhero), Cyborg (half-man half-mechanical hero genius) |
As a DC fan myself, admittedly it is hard to find diverse characters in the comics. DC Comics themselves have said that the lack of proper representation of minorities is an industry-wide problem, despite an increase from different racial backgrounds taking interest in its contents.
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| Doctor Who; Mickey Smith, Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint (inter-species wives), Martha Jones |
Doctor Who, a show about a time-travelling Time Lord and their companion(s) going around the universe saving the day. Yet, we got our first non-white companion (Martha Jones) in 2007, 44 years after the debut of the show on 23rd November 1963. Following Martha’s departure at the end of series 3 (of the revived Doctor Who), we’ve yet to go back to a diverse companion, with Donna, Amy, Rory and Clara following. With Clara set to leave at the end of the current series. could we be getting another diverse companion?
On the topic of Doctor Who, episodes in recent years have confirmed that a Time ‘person’ can change genders. As seen with The Master:
Michelle Gomez’s incarnation of The Master, namely Missy, is my favourite, and also the current incarnation. Seeing the character change into a Time Lady feels no different to how the character was before, the character is still as insane and evil as ever, which is pleasant. The character is defined by her actual persona, not gender. Which is why it’s such a concern that so many people seem to despise the idea of The Doctor becoming a woman. Doctor Who features aliens and historical characters, we’ve seen moving statues and living fat, but the idea of a gender switch is ‘awful’. I personally would love to see a female Doctor, accompanied by a male companion, or female, heck, women power!. Hayley Atwell has expressed interest in playing The Doctor, as have many other women.
This would be awesome, and in no way would harm the success of the show. In fact, a regeneration into a woman would draw much more attention for the show. Wouldn’t harm the ratings, and would provide another needed role model for young girls in today’s society. Such a change would be good for the show, one can only get so bored of a white man travelling around in a blue box for 51 years.
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| Harry Potter; Dean Thomas, Padma and Parvati Patil |
Harry Potter (the films) featured 12 minority characters in all eight films. Each character speaks on an average of as little as 28 seconds. While the film series does well in glorifying the strength of Emma Watson’s Hermione Granger, giving young girls a role model, the diverse minority characters make up 5 minutes of the entire film series, meaning a lack of role models for people of different races and cultures. See here for more details.
Fortunately, in the extended universe of Harry Potter we’ll be able to see actors like Gemma Chan star in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, hopefully providing some role models for young people in the upcoming trilogy of films.
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| Marvel; Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Hulkling and Wiccan |
Miles Morales, a Black Hispanic teenager that takes on the Spider-Man mantle. With Spider-Man being such a huge character, known by pretty much everyone, it was a very important move for Marvel to create a role model like Miles Morales. Even Stan Lee, the co-creator of Spider-Man, has some love for Morales – “Doing our bit to try to make our nation, and the world, color blind is definitely the right thing.” Check out more here. Kamala Khan took on the Ms. Marvel name after Carol Danvers became Captain Marvel, Khan is a teenage Pakistani American from New Jersey, the character was met with huge acclaim for being a Muslim character headlining her own comic book, winning quite a considerable amount of awards. Wiccan and Hulkling are assumed to be Marvel’s most prominent gay couple and have been applauded for showing diversity and progression in comics. See here for further reference about Hulkling and Wiccan.
Further discussion
Having looked at the nominees for the NTA’s (National Television Awards), I noticed that only 2 in the 58 nominees for ‘Drama Performance’ were of colour. This is slightly concerning considering that actually, the diverse audience are much more prominent than the other, yet are again, under-represented and uncelebrated in the media. Which leads me to my final point, Viola Davis, who plays Amanda Waller in the upcoming Suicide Squad movie (featuring the aforementioned Katana), recently won an Emmy, being the first African-American actress to win for best actress in a drama, gave a moving and stirring speech. As seen below, Viola highlights that actually, women of colour cannot win awards if there are no roles available for them in the first place.
This idea is similar for all forms of diversity, a young Muslim girl cannot have a role model if a role model for her is simply not created, thus the creation of Kamala Khan. Martha Jones, a trainee Doctor turned UNIT soldier/badass/doctor, Cyborg, the African-American founder of the New-52 Justice League, and many more, providing role models and positive representation for diverse characters within the media. Hopefully, stirring further progression of diverse characters, albeit race, sexuality, gender and more.
That’s all for now.
Bye!
Totally Culture
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