To-do list:
- Remove Real Life examples, characters that have a defined but fictional race, and examples that are just "actor has brown skin." Progress for wicks is being kept track of using Sandbox.Ambiguously Brown Wick Cleaning, and the description and on-page examples are being cleaned up using Sandbox.Ambiguously Brown.
Original post
So—-I know this has been to TRS, several times previously, but I have a specific thing I would like to discuss
I'm not going to touch the definition for drawing and cartoon characters, but the live action and real life sections are a mess. Real people are not ambiguously brown. My suggestion is to add a strict standard for characters played by real life people—
Characters in Live Action media are assumed to be the same race as the actor unless there is reason to think otherwise. Some possible reasons include:
- Two actors of different races play blood relatives
- A character's name, accent or clothing strongly indicates a different ethnicity than the actor
- The actors race would be impossible or highly implausible for the character (such as a Native American actor in ancient Rome)
- The actor is wearing some kind of Brownface or otherwise changing their features, but it's not clear what they're changing them to.
A character could also be ambiguously brown In-Universe if the other characters cannot tell what race they are
While I have this up for discussion, I would also like to suggest rewriting the definition, as it's currently 9 paragraphs long and has a lot of "note, this is actually..." "but don't forget..." which all kinda indicates being added on piece by piece. I think it could be a lot more concise and easier to follow with a rewrite, (not actually a definition change just a rewording)
Wick Check for Live Action TV and Film
- Dance Moms Kalani and Kira definitely aren't white, but they're not exactly black ether...
- Token Trio: Fenwick (sole black kid), CJ (Ambiguously Brown sole girl of the group), and Crispo (white kid)
- Ambiguously Brown: * The mugger (and implied rapist) whom Catwoman cuts up with her claws in the alley.
- The Series 3 finale introduces Zaf, an Ambiguously Brown Token Minority. The same episode kills off Danny, who was the show's dark-skinned Token Minority. In the Series 6 premiere, Zaf is injuried and Put on a Bus. Halfway into the same series, Ben Kaplan, an Ambiguously Brown journalist, is introduced.
- Ambiguously Brown: Laura, played by Amelia Warner who curiously has white parents but is quite dark skinned herself.
- Spicy Latina: Penny, although she's more Ambiguously Brown. probably? low context
- Ambiguously Brown: Kim, the picture of her father is black and white, never zoomed in, and his name is never said so one never knows what his ethnicity is. again... probably?
- Ambiguously Brown: Anja has dark skin and seems like she might be part Black from her features. Her mother is White and we don't see her father, leaving it unknown if he's Black or not.
- Ambiguously Brown: Typical for a rich school in the Philippines, there are a lot of mixed and/or racially ambiguous and/or light-skinned students. Chuck Santos is played by a half-white actor with an Anglo surname, Markus Paterson.
- Adaptational Diversity: The first incarnation of the Angels where all three of them are minorities: Jane is black, Elena is Ambiguously Brown (both Ella Balinska and Naomi Scott are biracial), and Sabina (the only white woman in the trio) is Ambiguously Bi.
- He promptly instructs a blond boy to fake an Australian accent and agree with him no matter what he says, an Ambiguously Brown passenger to disagree with him, and a female passenger to be morally outraged, filling (what he perceives are) the roles of Chase, Foreman and Cameron respectively.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: The bad guys are led by a Tunisian, with an albino (according to the Bey) as the second in command, with a German woman (though Conrad claims she's faking it), three black guys, two gay lovers, an eastern European, and several white and Ambiguously Brown men.
- Ambiguously Brown: Beck. His actor, Avan Jogia, is half Indian, but the only thing we know about Beck's heritage is that he's part Canadian.
- Token Minority Couple: Paula, who's Ambiguously Brown, is secretly with Native Hawaiian Kai.
- Minority Police Officer: Gueacutedira is of north African descent, and Belkacem is Ambiguously Brown (the actress, Shirine Boutella, is from Algeria).
- Twofer Token Minority: Pilar is the only woman of color in the cast, as a supporting character. She's Ambiguously Brown, with a name that's also ambiguous (played by a British Indian actress).
- Ambiguously Brown: Ryan has very dark features, slightly tanned skin and green eyes. His actor Thomas Fitzgerald is Irish with some English and Italian roots.
- Ambiguously Brown: The real O'Brien is white and Irish, but is played in the show by a British actor of partial Indian and Tunisian descent (though the character, in childhood flashbacks, is also from Callan, Ireland, and those sequences are conveniently desaturated or color-shifted so we can't quite tell his parents' skin colors). In the second episode, we learn about his sister Megan, who is portrayed as an adult by Camille Guaty, an olive-skinned Cuban/Puerto Rican actress. However, in Season 2 we finally see their parents, who are white.
- Ambiguously Brown: Rainin Wild, who was played by a black American in-costume in his debut episode, but was replaced by a tanned Japanese man in subsequent appearances.
- Ambiguously Brown: Mads, her actress' heritage is a mess of ethnicities/races, which is confusing as her father and brother are white.
- Ambiguously Brown: Jezzie Pipkin is played by Cuban-American actress Elizabeth Peña. It's unclear whether Jezzie was meant to be Hispanic despite her surname.
- Ambiguously Brown: Billie is played by Sarah Shahi, who's of Iranian and Spanish descent. Though the actor who plays Billie's dad appears vaguely Middle Eastern and also has an accent, while her character's mother's White, what ethnicity she was meant to be isn't clear. Their last name, Mann, is no help.
- Ambiguously Brown: Bakuto. He has a Japanese-sounding name, but Ramon Rodriguez, who plays him, is Puerto Rican. His childhood boogeyman being the Sack Man
implies Latino or Brazilian heritage. In the comics, Bakuto runs a South American faction of the Hand. Of course, as The Defenders reveals, he, like Davos, hails from K'un-L'un.
- Ground Floor People assume Threepeat is Chinese, but he's actually Filipinonote .
- Spun Out Ambiguously Brown: Beckett invokes this about Nelson while they yell insults at each other.
"I'd make a joke about your nationality, but I don't know what it is!"
- Ambiguously Brown: There's a scene where Precious and Miss Weiss are talking, and Precious can't tell what ethnicity she is, and asks if she's "Italian, or black, or some type of Spanish." Not to mention that "Weiss" is usually an Ashkenazic Jewish surname and Jews of mixed race descent aren't completely unheard of. If Miss Weiss is anything like her actress, she should be bi-racial.
- Ambiguously Brown: Jamie. Justified as her mother cannot remember what ethnicity her absentee father was; possibilities include Greek, Russian, Hispanic and Middle-Eastern. note
- Ambiguously Brown: Woody uses his vague ethnicity to pretend to be people from all over the world (Kayvan Novak is of mixed British and Iranian decent).
- Ambiguously Brown: Key, who is biracial. He uses it to his advantage, just like he did on MADtv. In fact, both Key and Peele were born from biracial families (half-black, half-white), but generally Peele tends to just play black characters, while Key has a wider range.note
- Ambiguously Brown: Zan, the internet personality trolling Paper Boi. Lampshading this becomes a Running Gag in the episode "The Streisand Effect"; every time he's mentioned, characters ask something along the lines of "Isn't he Dominican?", "Is he Asian?", or (after he casually uses the N-word) "Are you even black?"
- Ambiguously Brown: Stu at first assumes that Vic is white, then hazards a number of guesses at his ethnicity, including Puerto Rican and Chinese. Vic shakes his head at all of Stu's guesses. In real life, Dave Bautista is Greek and Filipino.
- Ambiguously Brown: Nichols has brown skin and dark curly hair. This allows him to pass himself off as Jesus (Middle Eastern) and the real Brandon Nichols (Native American).
- Ambiguously Brown: Leslie often remarks on Ann's unclear ethnicity, which is never revealed in the show, though Rashida Jones is herself half African-American and half Ashkenazi Jew.
- Ambiguously Brown: Zach asks Rashida Jones what race she is.
- Ambiguously Brown: This is a plot point. Daphne is revealed to be mixed race, "a creole mother and white father" which lets her pass as white. She has a black half brother who's familial connection she hides.
- Ambiguously Brown: Karen, to Michael at least ("Wow, you look very exotic. Was your dad a GI?"). Her last name (Filipelli) and dialogue suggest she is Italian-American. Rashida Jones is half-Black, half-Jewish.
- Ambiguously Brown: Rex notes Lori's ambiguous ethnicity, hazarding that she's Baltic or Czech. Kunis was born in Ukraine to Jewish parents.
- Ambiguously Brown: Schmidt's impression of Cece, before she states that her parents are Indian. Hannah Simone, who plays her, is a mixture of Indian, German, Italian, Cypriot, and Greek.
- Jerkass: The Senator who gets his car stolen by Xander near the beginning. We even get his racism demonstrated when he assumes Xander is Mexican, so we know he's a jerk.
- Ambiguously Brown: Lauren. She's brought up an uncle in Syria and being in the Middle East when she was younger. Everyone had different theories.
Lauren: I'm from Long Island!Simon: But you're our diversity hire! If anyone asks, just say you're "other." *
- Ambiguously Brown: So Elena is supposed to be Russian??
- Ambiguously Brown - Ray, and Tina, but their child together is clearly white.
- Ambiguously Brown: Bryce, Tyler, and Taryn.
- At this point in the show, every named character who's black or Ambiguously Brown (except for Anthony, Anne, and Diego,) has been killed. Being black on this show is like wearing a Red Shirt.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first season was trying to find its legs. Florence wasn't initially a Servile Snarker (but thanks to Louise's permission, she became one), and Allan went from being Ambiguously Brown to straight up Caucasian.
- Ambiguously White: The nun named Janet, as far as her features go.
- Subverted with Nataly Green. An implicitly French nun as seen from the montage that implied she gets off from an Air France airplane and her name (though she bears an English surname), but the actress that played her didn't look rather convincing. The actress that played Janet (who is even credited as Marie-Antoinette) would've pulled it off better. this example is confusing and probably outright misuse
- Ambiguously Brown: Averted with siblings Sue and Johnny Storm, played by Caucasian actress Kate Mara and actor Michael B Jordan. Justified since they are adoptive siblings. do we really need averted examples?
- Ambiguously Brown: Many characters are some form of mestizo, which is Truth in Television, given how Filipinos generally tend to be mixed to various degrees. Antonio Luna himself was apparently one of the less mixed ones (a point of contention with his older brother, Juan, the artist, who was acquitted of the murders of his wife and mother-in-law in Paris on effectively racist grounds—i.e., that his indio (native) race was predisposed to such anyway). if they are specifically mixed in universe theyre not ambiguous...
- Jesus, however, looks incredibly Caucasian, thought He may have a tan or be Ambiguously Brown. It's hard to tell with the lighting. im not sur where to put this
Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 29th 2022 at 6:40:51 AM
I have several disagreements with the Pokémon examples.
- Maybe include the detail from the Anime and Manga page about Iris's ethnicity.
- Emma is definitely NOT a Southern European (or a White person for that matter). White people can be tan (like Professor Sada, a Spaniard), but Emma is visibly brown.
- Nessa should be removed. The artist who designed her confirmed she is Black. Also the Alolan comment is unnecessary because she is darker than the average Alolan. (There is also no way she is Greek or Okinawan.)
- I highly doubt that Dahlia counts as "ambiguous" if she is Mexican-coded.
- I don't understand why Goh is listed as an example only for it to say that he might be a darker-skinned Japanese person.
Edited by chatot30 on Aug 8th 2023 at 10:35:33 AM
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
This Is a Wiki. You can remove misuse yourself.
I just made changes both to the Video Games and Anime and Manga subpages.
One-Track Mind (he/him)
Bumping to raise awareness of this trope's wick cleaning project, as it's been almost 5 months since this thread's last post.
This is Idol Tap. (My Troper Wall)
Very Spooky
Considering helping with the wick cleaning, but what examples should I cut? We’ve ruled out “actors has brown skin”, Real Life examples, and of course examples in which the character has a confirmed race.
However, I’m planning on tackling the W namespaces, which includes WebAnimation/, Webcomic, and WesternAnimation/—all illustrated mediums. Are simple “character has brown skin and an ambiguous race/ethnicity” examples still valid as long as they’re properly contextualized? There also seems to be quite a few “character isn’t human, but has traits that can be seen as implying that they’re meant to be equivalent to an African-American”. What should be done about those?
(And while I’m aware that WMG/ and similar subpages [Fridge/, Headscratchers/] are bit less formal than the rest of the wiki, we should still clean those, right?)
Edited by jandn2014 on Jan 10th 2024 at 1:50:30 PM
back lol
I feel like this trope could be generalized to ambiguous race/ethnicity/nationality, regardless of skin color.
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Way too late. A decision has long since been made. Please come in when the TRS thread is still deciding on something; try hanging around the threads to see what tropes we are currently talking about and see if you want to bring your own thoughts on them.
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.
dave bowman but worse
for your first question, if there's some context to why it's ambiguous, those should be okay to keep. for the second, if a non-human character is coded as a specific group (african-american to use your example), then i wouldn't say they fit under this trope because they're coded for something.. well, not ambiguous.
Edited by fullmusicbard on Feb 2nd 2024 at 5:19:29 AM
Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph
Should Ambiguously Brown still be listed on Truth in Television? Its current listing says:
- Ambiguously Brown: Racial divisions are not (and never have been) clearly defined. People exist at every point along the spectrum of skin tones and other characteristics. Whether due to mixed ethnicity, geographical origins, or simply their own personal appearance, many people are hard to easy categorize, in terms of race.
Edited by Lymantria on Mar 24th 2024 at 7:05:31 AM
Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!
Captain of USS Bajor
Yeah, no. That's complete misuse.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I agree.
Captain of USS Bajor
Removed.
Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph
Yeah, everyone in real life has some origin.
Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!
Speaking of obvious misuse, I deleted this entry from Spying with Lana because the main character is clearly not brown, and it was added back without explanation.
Original:
- Ambiguously Brown: Lana's ethnicity is never mentioned, and her skin tone is definitely brown.
New entry:
- Ambiguously Brown: Lana has a notably darker skin tone than most of the 'white' characters we encounter, but not very dark. It's never made clear whether this is the result of ethnicity, tanning, or some other form of skin colouration (the latter two being notable possibilities given the frequent nature of her work).
I would delete it again, but I'm not sure if that would constitute an edit war.
Captain of USS Bajor
It's been subject to Art Evolution. The comic started in black-and-white, then when Sean Harrington switched to full-color the lighter-skinned characters all got the same bronzey skin tone. More recently, Lana has kept the bronze tone while, for example, her Pointy-Haired Boss has been drawn with a more identifiably Anglo-American skin tone.
I suspect Lana is intended to be a Latina but her ethnicity has indeed never been mentioned.
Ehh, I'm not really seeing it. In an ATT I posted, someone suggested it sounded speculative.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
IDK. She looks brown to me.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Does Ballister Boldheart from NIMONA (2023) fit the current scope of the trope? He's a dark-skinned man with black hair, resembling his ethnically Indo-Pakistani voice actor Riz Ahmed, but his ethnicity is not explicitly stated in the movie, which takes place in a fantasy world where the human ethnicities don't necessarily correspond to our world.