Diversity and representation. Two seemingly innocent words which are now the cause for anything from insults to death threats. This has become one of the most passionately talked about and most divisive issues of our time in the realm of popular culture. But why?
First, I think it’s important to explore both sides of this as fairly as possible, so I’ll do my best to represent the ‘pro-diversity side’ as kindly as I can, even though I’m squarely on the opposite end of it.
For those who push for more diversity in film, tv, theatre etc. one of the main arguments is representation. Those who grew up as an ethnic minority in a mostly-white country, for example, will have noticed that people who looked like them and their family etc. were either non-existent, tokenised or villanised.
Friends, for example, a sit-com that took place in ‘90s New York City, one of the most culturally and racially diverse places in the world, featured six white main characters, and only a smattering of non-white supporting characters across its 10 season run. Many minority viewers felt that they couldn’t engage with the show as they weren’t represented i.e. no-one of any substance looked like them. It made these viewers feel invisible, as if nobody cared about people like them.
On the other hand, this was likely quite representative of a group of white friends, and many ethnic minority people would have enjoyed the show on its own terms, much like how The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air attracted many white viewers who wouldn’t feel represented in the show.
In the end, I understand, though I have never experienced this, that if you live in a world where people who look like you are scarcely represented, or represented soley as criminals or are overly sexualised etc., it can have a negactive impact, and this is certainly a valid criticism of the culture.
On the other hand, I think that this feeling is partly dependant on how much your own sense of identity is entrenched in your race. When I watch Mad Men, for example, despite the fact that I am a white man in my thirties, I do not feel represented by Don Draper, Peter Campbell, Ken Kosgrove etc. - these are men who are nothing like me, though of course I can relate to those characters’ joy, pain, grief etc.
I think that the anguished cry to see people who look like you represented is an immature desire. I don’t think stories are there to reflect you, the viewer. Storytelling is to explore human truths, and the characters are there to serve the story (but I may go into this in another article).
However, unlike representation, diversity in and of itself is actually something I fully support and am happy to champion. Different stories representing different people of different races and backgrounds, I believe will lead to an enrichment of art as a whole, and has in fact already done so. If every film or show’s cast looked the same, it would be boring.
And I’m sure those on the pro-diversity side wouldn’t object to the fact that Kingdom, an Asian zombie thriller show on Netflix, features an entirely Asian cast. Nor that the 2019 Aladdin movie, set in the fantastical Arab state of Agrabah, featured entirely Arab/South Asian actors (with the exception of two characters who are specifically meant to look like foreigners).
If there had been unexplained white or black characters in either of these, they would have been undoubtedly worse. Why? Because the immersion of the worlds would have been broken. A character who looks like he doesn’t belong takes the audience out of the world of the story and back into the modern world.
The argument against this is of course: OK, in historically accurate pieces, this matters a lot, but in fantasy? In a world where there are elves and trolls and wizards? How is a black person more immersion-breaking than a dragon?
It’s a good question, on the surface at least. Works like The Lord of the Rings are not historically accurate stories set in Ye Olde England. Middle Earth isn’t actually a real place. Surely, as we’re exiting the world of realism and going into Fantasy, we can let go of this attachment of authenticity, and with the added bonus of opening up casting to more people - this will mean we can truly get the best actors for the job, yes?
Well, no. And the reason is that part of what makes someone the best actor for the job is there appearance. A young character must look young, a warrior character must look strong etc. - and yes, a character who is native to a Northern European climate, which Middle Earth most certainly is, should have the skin colour to show that.
Here’s the thing. Dragons aren’t real. We have no frame of reference to them. No-one’s going to criticise the dragon for having the wrong colour scales, or the wrong number of teeth. But elves, dwarves and hobbits are clearly a divergence from human. And there’s a reason that humans who are native to a Northern European climate have light skin.
In fact, Tolkien has described the inhabitents of Middle Earth, which is almost exclusively far above the equator, as having skin tones ranging from very pale to ‘browner’ - and he used this word specifically. ‘Browner’ implies that you’re still in the same range of ethnicity, but have a more tanned appearance . Only a few men from the very south are described as having ‘dark’ skin.
Some people see this as nit-picking - they say ‘why do you care? The story doesn’t deal with race - having a diverse cast, although not canonically accurate, doesn’t affect the story’. But not everything important to the story is explicity mentioned within it. Having ethnic diversity where there shouldn’t be is as immersion-breaking as having an elf wearing a Casio watch. It just shouldn’t be there. And caring about this puts people in the awkward position of arguing that a show should almost exclusively cast white people. And I understand why that’s an offensive notion for many.
But I would argue this is only an issue because of the bigger problem, which is that companies like Amazon aren’t willing to take a risk in funding an adaptation of a beloved African Fantasy series like, for example, The Inheritence Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin. If they did, they would be able to say proudly that they were ahead of the curve in bringing Black Fantasy to the mainstream (something I am hoping happens soon). Instead, they want to take an existing property like The Lord of The Rings and then make the characters ethnically diverse.
It’s an inherently less risky move, and of course it has the added benefit of being able to call your detractors racists and bigots stuck in the past. Quite clever. We’ll see how it pans out. Of course it could also be due to a fear of not casting diversely, as there would have been a backlash from that front had they gone in a different direction.
In the end I am hopeful that this is merely a phase we go through as part of our culutral evolution. In the future I see a plethora of shows - some cast very homogenous, some very diverse, all of them obeying their own internal laws and most importantly telling great stories. I hope you’ll join me there.