Diversity and Representation in Media

I'm not sure about seeing less gays than lesbians, but I feel like I definitely see more lesbian couples than gay ones.

I definitely feel like I see more gay characters than lesbian characters, but more lesbian couples than gay couples.

Edited by king15 on Apr 30th 2024 at 7:57:20 PM

Pretty often, it feels like they are acting in Confirmation Bias, really.

Which is why actual hard stats are important. What we feel like we're seeing is influenced by all sorts of things.

Definitely.

It can also be a major/minor character thing.

I do think it's influenced by the backlash against queer characters, and the bans on queer media for kids in some states.

I think so too.

While they might be more gay characters than lesbians, the lesbian characters feel more prominent in stories than their male counterparts.

The problem with the personal perception of these things is, that none of us watch every TV show with LGBT characters. Say there might be more major gay male couples in soap operas, but if you don't watch soap operas, you might think there are no gay male couples on TV. Or trans and non-binary characters being more common in youth-orientated shows.

Yeah, your perception is probably going to be more skewed by the types of shows you watch, in western animation queer female characters are definitely more common, I don’t know if I’d say the same about live action shows. I think I’m seeing something similar with books depending on genre. Although it’s be nice to see some stats, personally I see more fantasy novels with queer female characters, while romance novels more often focus on queer men. Not as sure about sci-fi/mystery/literary fiction.

A few interesting things from the report:
- Bisexual characters are much more likely to be female, I think possibly because of existing stereotypes (women are ‘only doing it to get men’s attention,’ men are ‘actually gay but don’t want to admit it’ and somehow these silly interpretations always seem to centre men)
- There’s very few older queer characters, which is disappointing for a lot of reasons but especially because it’s not showing queer kids that they have a future, although some of that is probably related to general ageism. The last prominent characters I remember seeing are Holt and Kevin in Brooklyn Nine-Nine (RIP Andre Braugher), and Robert and Sol on Grace and Frankie, and both of those shows have been over for years
- Apparently they found 0 asexual characters? I’m sorry ace folks, that’s wildly unfair and I hope we see an improvement next year

Edited by Pseudopartition on May 3rd 2024 at 12:19:24 PM

Ideally, the data should be properly sorted so that we can zero in on these things. "Okay, there are about equal gay and lesbians, but what if we're only talking about main characters? What about this specific genre?" So on and so on.

Maybe whoever is actually looking at this stuff critically can sort the data like that. But we, reading second and third-hand sources, can't.

Did the report not count One Piece? The live-action show aired last year, and Luffy is asexual. And that show is returning, they're filming Season 2 right now.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 4th 2024 at 3:59:04 AM

Sorry, in a case of ‘don’t post with Covid brain fog’ I was looking at the broadcast TV numbers from the 2022-2023 report (reports are for the beginning of June to the end of May), there’s 0 for both years on broadcast but 8 for 2022-2023 and 4 in the 2023-2024 report for all platforms. All four this year were apparently on Netflix, so they could be counting him. There’s also more bisexual men this time around, although the numbers still aren’t even.

Also, in my defense it’s clearly not the end of May yet.

However it may be difficult for someone making these statistics to determine which characters are main characters and which are not. In every show.

To take One Piece as an example: is Luffy the only one main character? Is every member of his crew main characters?

There's also the fact that ace rep is tricky. We know from Word of God that Luffy is ace in the manga, and with that in mind you can see nods to the fact in the live-action show. But given that we only know because the author told us, does he really count as ace on-page given that Early-Installment Weirdness had him join other dudes in perving on ladies? And the live action show is still so early on in the runtime that he hasn't even had a real chance to demonstrate his orientation, I can see why it might not stick out. But on the other other hand, how can you really demonstrate being ace without needing to put a big sign on it, given that it's the absence of attraction? If a Chaste Hero ignores the advances of both genders without a point being made of it, at what point can we call them probably canonically ace?

In short, rep is complicated and reports like these can only indicate so much.

"Main characters", at least in live-action tv, are defined less by the plot and more by their actual production status.

A series main has a distinction from other characters that is usually expressed in screen time and lines (though not always). It's a fact that can actually be verified (for other kinds of shows, the distinction can be a bit trickier).

In specific answer, Luffy and all of his crew are main characters. Koby is also a main character, and while the character was originally written as cis, Koby's performer is trans, which most people incluing myself would count as positive trans representation even if it isn't part of the show's actual narrative.

Avantika Says Bridgerton Stars Charithra Chandran & Simone Ashley Made Her Feel “Seen”

I admire the representation. Just wish the show itself didn't act like it solved racism. (Not to mention it being aggressively heterosexual.)

How do you mean?

In Bridgerton lore, the British royal family did not realize George III’s new fiancee/future queen was black, so to save face they ennobled wealthy people of color already in London. Everyone is more or less cool with this and George and Charlotte go on to have the relatively good and productive marriage they had in real life, though the classist heteropatriarchy is still strongly in place and other things that would of course have plenty of effects on race relations like slavery, the colonies and the Napoleonic Wars are rarely mentioned. This also does not stop the characters from saying things like “love ended racism” (paraphrasing).

It’s best taken as a hand wave to let people see BIPOC in regency dress. That part is enjoyable, think too hard about the implications and it breaks immersion.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 12th 2024 at 8:21:57 AM

‘Dune: Prophecy’ Casts Indian Superstar Tabu

So, I'm in London today and just saw this and... yeah... still processing.

"The English Moor, or the Mock Marriage" is a 17th century play by Richard Brome. Exceedingly popular back then. Hasn't been staged for decades, possibly centuries.

It uses blackface. It plays learning disabilities for comedy. It's misogynistic. It's antisemitic. It also throws in a bit of misogynoir, not least with the conceit that two white women in blackface are indistinguishable from each other.

So what do a Black director and multiracial cast do with that material?

They perform excerpts and bridge the gap with a commentary that shatters the fourth wall, with actors stepping out of character to challenge the material and add 21st century references - one actor points out that blackface is horrible and racist, another points out that well, Justin Trudeau can do it. The misogyny of minor characters (basically rapists, due to their "forceful seduction") gets neatly summarised with references to Russell Brand and Andrew Tate.

For me, the really interesting thing was the Q&A at the end. They talked a bit about the thought process and options when remaking old works with bigotry baked in.

• You can simply perform it as it was, perpetuating the problems. Not good.

• You can edit it out, but that gives the work a free pass it doesn't deserve.

• You can treat those elements with gravitas and use it - the Merchant of Venice and Othello approach. But if the original work doesn't do that (this one doesn't dwell on them and simply uses them for comedy and plot fuel), you're also giving it more respect than it deserves.

• Or you actively call it out on its bullshit, in one way or another. They made a conscious decision — which was not communicated to the audience in advance — they it would be wrong to perform the whole play.

Interesting.

(Also, a great cast - absolutely owned the stage, especially when stepping "out of character" and pretending to be unscripted)

Alright, that sounds like a glorious parody.

It sounds like a huge tightrope because there's a reason the play isn't preformed anymore

Absolutely. The decision not to perform in full makes a lot of sense in context. And I think performing it in any way with an entirely white cast and creative team would have been... different. And not better.

And although the fourth wall stuff was amusing, it was also scathing.

It still leaves the question: why revisit such a flawed, problematic work at all?

And the answer seems to be that it was a hit that concentrates all this stuff in one place. The same humour echoes through British theatre, literature and tv for a very long time - I'm old enough to remember blackface and brownface on half a dozen TV shows.

Hauling it out this way is an opportunity to interrogate that and acknowledge just how long it was acceptable. Although one comment at the end pointed out that some modern stand-up comedians are still in this territory (they didn't mention Roy "Chubby" Brown or the late Bernard Manning by name, but I'm willing to bet most of the British audience immediately thought of them...).

> It still leaves the question: why revisit such a flawed, problematic work at all?

Because they can,there's no law they can't,and if they're the ones doing it they get to be critical of the play while they're doing it instead of someone doing it and embracing its problems unironically