I’ve been thinking about this for a while and the other thread we’re having on race and talking to our kids about race kind of prompted me.
So often you hear people saying that putting in a black character or Asian or Hispanic to a cast of all whites is tokenism and so forth, or pandering. And I’ve also heard people express that they want to write a movie or TV show or play about a nonwhite character but they’re afraid of stereotyping, or worse, making it about a white person who happens to have a different skin color. I’m not so sure what’s so bad about the latter–I mean, aren’t we all fundamentally the same people under skin color? Is there something about race that makes it hard to write for someone who isn’t that race? Culture, yes, but just skin color? I mean, there’s so many different experiences that any of us can have, even leaving aside skin color.
Can we really say that a character isn’t believable based on their race? How much of an issue is race in a TV show/film? Can it just be something looked upon as an aesthetic (i.e., this person happens to be Asian, this one’s white, etc.) or does it have to convey meaning? Is looking at just as color and nothing more what leads to tokenism?
I’m not sure the tokenism complaint holds much water any more.
Look at the diverse casts of shows like Lost, Heroes, 24, the various CSIs and the various Law and Orders. Can you point to any non-white character from those shows and say they don’t belong because of their skin color? Nope.
While comedies are mostly still segregated (Scrubs being a huge, yet true-to-life, exception), non-white characters are a non-event in practically every dramatic series.
It’s the character being forced that makes it an issue. That’s why tokenism tends to be obvious even if it’s sometimes hard to quantify; when art is forced into a mold due to external factors it generally just feels…off. When a character was put there just to be The Black Guy, it never quite feels right. When he’s a character who just happens to be black, it works.
Really a discussion more relevant a couple of decades ago than today. I’m old enough to remember when it was unusual to see a black guy in a movie or TV show (and anyone else remember when Bruce Lee had to wear a mask because he looked…wait for it…Asian?!?). I also remember when I was a kid and grousing that there were no Hispanics on popular TV shows who weren’t Ricky from I Love Lucy-like.
Today, I don’t even notice anymore unless, as Der says, it’s obviously artificial that they put in a ‘minority’ of some kind or another just to fill a slot or check a box. But you almost never see that kind of things anymore, IMHO, at least not in American movies or TV (though, I must admit, my experience with TV these days is generally the Science Channel or History…though consider how little ripple there is with Grant from Mythbusters, for example).
There are two artistic approaches to this subject that are absolutely certain to generate criticism:
The first is never, ever to use non-white characters.
The second is to use non-white characters.
Depend on the circumstances. There are plenty of reasons not to like the movie The Wild, Wild West, but one of them is surely the casting of Will Smith as West. He’s proven his ability as a comedy-action star and is genuinely likable. And his presence allowed the writers to give Dr. Loveless a racist motivation atop his other ones. But it’s a tremendous stretch for me to imagine a black federal agent operating so freely in the American West so soon after the Civil War. And I say this in full knowledge that I’m talking about a film in which a giant mechanical spider (among other absurdities) features prominently. It’s kind of like having the main character being purple, but nobody ever mentions or explains the fact.
In written Sci-Fi, Heinlein and Clarke (and loads of others, I’m sure) have had non-white and non-male lead or very important characters.
Duncan Makenzie of Clarke’s Imperial Earth was Black, and we weren’t even told that til about halfway thru the story.
Manuel Garcia “Mannie” O’Kelly-Davis from Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was apparently at least part Hispanic, and in Farnham’s Freehold, Black people (of the future) were in control of the major world governments, tho it wasn’t really presented as altogether positive.
Another famous example is that Juan “Johnny” Rico from Starship Troopers is Filipino, and his native language is Tagalog (talk about a movie getting it wrong – completely changed not only his race and language but his country, too), and this isn’t revealed until the end.
I don’t think Heinlein “seemed to enjoy” making his future world repugnant. I don’t think Heinlein was particularly racist, and he was going for the weird and reality-jolting in his created future, not (I’m convinced) any sort of racial slander.
None what so ever. I have no real objection to the fact that, afaik, he’s never been portrayed by a Jewish actor either. Personally, I think that he should be portrayed by an obviously Slavic male with a heavy Russian accent and a large bushy beard wearing a heavily embroidered pink tutu, but that’s just MHO…
Actually, Hitler (or, technically, a Hitler caricature) was portrayed by Moe Howard in a few Three Stooges shorts, the first one being 1940’s “You Nazty Spy”, which was the first fictional portrayal of Hitler on film.
The main character in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy, Ged Sparrowhawk is supposed to a red-brown skinned guy.
The horrible TV-movie they made of the first two books portrays him as a white guy.
I understand Ms. Le Guin was quite wroth at the change. CITE
FWIW, I wasn’t implying any racism on his part. The “seem to enjoy” was about his jarring the reader with the change from what they might expect. I guess I should have been more specific. (On 2nd look, it does indeed look like I was implying racism. Oh well, lots of ahem different stuff came from his Brother WP-600.)
Father Emilio Sandoz from Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow also comes to mind. And talk about ‘enjoying’ the shock factor! (Tho, really, you could see it coming.)
Good point, though I was thinking more along the lines of dramatic performance, not comedy. I’d be surprised if in a comedy at some point or another there hasn’t been a black Hitler as well.
I love this board! You toss off a throw away line and are almost immediately informed that in fact it wasn’t such a throw away line after all, and that in fact here are multiple instances where you were wrong or ignorant about it. At any rate, thank you and Nemo too…I had forgotten about Mel, and didn’t know about the Three Stooges rendition, and I appreciate spinning me up on that.
At any rate, thank you and Nemo too…I had forgotten about Mel, and didn’t know about the Three Stooges rendition, and I appreciate spinning me up on that.