Representation in the media

[Rio]

I agree that diversity doesn't need to be sh0ehorned in exclusively for the sake of adding diversity of a cast, but a problem is that people are very quick to dismiss any character that isn't straight for instance as pandering or whatever. If you make it a central point of a character, people say it's pandering. If it's a non-vital aside to a side character, people say it's pandering. Even when it's an NPC with like 3 lines shoved in a corner of some game somewhere people will decry it as being pandering.

My point is that I agree that forced diversity tends to be pretty dumb, but people need to stop decrying every single non-straight character as being SJW pandering or tokenism. That's just as annoying.

 

[Lensherr]

What's interesting to me is how unique cries for diversity are to white countries. Take movies for example: Bollywood films and Japanese cinema largely consist of Indian and Japanese people, the ethnic majorities of those industries respective countries. Yet I've never heard calls to make those countries' films more diverse like I have with Hollywood films, which are a product of a largely white society.

My theory is that this ties into the larger issue of white guilt that is found in western nations: it allows demands for more diversity to dominate the conversation and shames anyone who thinks differently into silence. The people who push it believe that it will have some sort of trickle-down effect on society: since pretty much everyone consumes some form of media, if more [insert marginalized group here] are represented in it, it will improve the standing of [insert marginalized group here] by giving them more exposure to many different kinds of people that allows society as a whole to gain a more positive outlook on them that makes up for whatever past injustices were inflicted upon them, thus sating the white guilt of the people pushing for it in the first place. Of course, it's an asinine and ridiculous idea, but I don't expect logic from SJWs.

 

[Audit]

Tbh, I wish the media would either give up on writing mentally ill characters or hand over the reins to someone that has even the faintest understanding of them. I found Monk to be an insulting caricature of OCD and the never ending insistence of portraying effective serial killers as being insane doesn't really help anything. Insane serial killers are stopped by sofas; they don't go on multi-state killing sprees and parody the seven deadly sins.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

Tbh, I wish the media would either give up on writing mentally ill characters or hand over the reins to someone that has even the faintest understanding of them. I found Monk to be an insulting caricature of OCD and the never ending insistence of portraying effective serial killers as being insane doesn't really help anything. Insane serial killers are stopped by sofas; they don't go on multi-state killing sprees and parody the seven deadly sins.

i liked monk tho

 

[heymate]

God, Jesus and Satan don't exist... eom.

Hey!

 

[Bassomatic]

Tbh, I wish the media would either give up on writing mentally ill characters or hand over the reins to someone that has even the faintest understanding of them. I found Monk to be an insulting caricature of OCD and the never ending insistence of portraying effective serial killers as being insane doesn't really help anything. Insane serial killers are stopped by sofas; they don't go on multi-state killing sprees and parody the seven deadly sins.

I was with Mrs. Bassomatic the other night and nothing to do, so we tried that new show about Dr. Autism, if Monk bothered you, this will be hair tearing.

It's lazy as hell, he's a young adult, out of med school and has the rain man skills of medial info but, the plots? It's fucking Doogie Houser, they aren't wrong saying an autismo behaves like a 11 year old but holy shit I can't not see Neil Patrick Harris when I watched it. No seriously, it's the exact damn same, really good at their field but social pressures are the struggle and main focus.

Mrs. Bass got sick of me saying, how I wanted to bully him and changed to boxing reruns. So in the end it worked out.

 

[A Beached Whale]

It's a lose lose situation. When media DOES introduce well thought out, diverse characters, Tumblrites REEEEE endlessly that it's not good enough or flat out offensive. Case in point, I saw bitching about Finn and Rose in The Last Jedi being relegated to a comedic side plot, which...it wasn't really at all. And apparently a biracial couple doesn't matter cause, "NOT MAKIN FINN AND POE BOYFRIENDZ IZ HOMOPHOBIAAA!!//!"

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

I've actually seen little girls start to study for STEM fields partly because they wanted to be like their favorite characters on children's shows. Children are still forming their identities, and ideas of "who is intelligent?" "who is beautiful?" "what do people who look like me do in life?" I don't mind seeing "tokenism" if it helps children see themselves doing productive work or feel good about their appearance.

Adults forcing pandering crap into nerd media is a different issue really.

This kind of tokenism is absolutely valuable in media aimed at toddlers because they cannot understand more complex nuances and as you say, their minds are still being shaped by black-and-white messages. We all already know why SJWs want toddler-level messaging aimed at (supposedly) grown adults.

You can't fucking please the SJWs who scream about diversity. They move the goalposts every time. Then they get mad at you if you suggest they go take acting classes and be the representative they want to see so bad in media. There is your proof of their laziness and expecting it handed to them on a silver platter without them having to do any real work. Slactivism at its finest.

Never, ever try to give SJWs what they say they want because it is invariably a lie and they will punish you twice as hard for making them do any amount of effort required to cover it up after your olive branch accidentally shines light on it.

 

[Feline Darkmage]

Insane serial killers are stopped by sofas; they don't go on multi-state killing sprees and parody the seven deadly sins

Insanity isn't necessarily the same as being retarded, Retarded serial killers get stopped by sofas.

 

[HG 400]

Tbh, I wish the media would either give up on writing mentally ill characters.

I wish society would give up on tolerating them.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

You can't fucking please the SJWs who scream about diversity. They move the goalposts every time. Then they get mad at you if you suggest they go take acting classes and be the representative they want to see so bad in media. There is your proof of their laziness and expecting it handed to them on a silver platter without them having to do any real work. Slactivism at its finest.

Marvel comics is a good example of what happens when you let SJW's do what they want, first then they need to have minority characters who are very 'woke' and are generally really boring and don't have much personality other than 'I'm Gay', 'I'm a strong black woman' or 'I'm Trans' (Often replacing the poplular white male versions with 'diverse' alternatives) then they need minorities to WRITE minorty characters (Christopher Priest who was one of the first popular black comic writers actually stopped writing because he was sick of getting asked to only write black characters after writing successful for Spiderman and Batman comics in the 80s and 90s) and with people getting hired on tokenism instead of talent (Who for some reason constantly insult and block the customers on social media and generally treat their job as a hobby) coupled with SJW's not actually buying comics that are tailor made for them the sales drop so they call the customers bigots before moving on to call comic stores bigots because they're upset they are going out of business with low sales and finally they call Marvel bigots for daring to cancel series by minority comic writers because they are losing money and have sales figures for some series in the low thousands.

 

[weirdMcGee]

Like everyone else, representation should allow for more characters with depth then just the black kid or the gay gal. I have this talk with myself a lot especially when it came as being a writer.

Personally, I just think of a character idea then think of the trivial ideas afterwards. A person's race is rarely the main highlight of the character as well as their gender and sexuality. If that's all furnace then they're boring at best to outright offensive at worst.

As an example, I have character named john, he's the town's delivery boy who does delivery as means to support his family (who's just his dad). He's more interested in insects than he is people and tends to be extremely anti-social. One of the main conflicts he deal with his stepping out of his role of being an introvert and more willing to work with people, especially now that he's the assigned team leader of a group of elemental guardians (Basically power rangers).

Notice how I barely mentioned his race because it doesn't matter. Now, sometimes there's nothing wrong with bringing up a person's culture and differences but if the story doesn't call for it, don't do it.

 

[RockVolnutt]

Reposting from the MovieBob thread. I don't understand why people have this much of a hard on for this stuff.

 

[Old Wizard]

Forced diversity feels forced, especially if you are part of the demographic represented. It's not flattering. I don't appreciate it. The only things more annoying than characters that exist solely for diversity are probably the smug authors patting themselves on the back. It's bad writing and it shows.

See also: Tumblr diversifying characters by making them similar to racist WWII propaganda

Spoiler: Like so

 

[AnOminous]

So because they're Americans, they have to turn Japanese people into fat, disgusting pigs even though that's an American thing.

 

[RockVolnutt]

So because they're Americans, they have to turn Japanese people into fat, disgusting pigs even though that's an American thing.

Usually they argue that because Japanese artists like big eyes that it's "easy to see them as white". So their idea is to "make them more Japanese" or raceswap.

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

A little :powerlevel: but I'm Italian-American. Most people (especially SJW's) say that counts as white but that's actually incredibly recent a phenomenon. Fifty years ago I wouldn't have been considered "white", I'd have been considered "Italian".

I'm pretty sure that even today there's no Italian-American characters in any media that isn't either a classic pasta-slinging thick-accented fresh-off-the-boat-from-Italy ethnic stereotype a la Mario, or a member of the mafia, you know, a criminal.

And I turned out all right.

 

[Henry Bemis]

There are certainly strong reasons for representation. As for what we tend to pick apart...

It's almost like how the Internet has become both the greatest blessing and the most wicked curse. We have never lived in a time that has had as much information at our disposal, nor when the means of media production have been so affordable, and with such immediate results. However, that hasn't necessarily led to greater understanding and self-representative art; it's created a sense of daunting overload.

 

[George Oscar Bluth Jr]

Reposting from the MovieBob thread. I don't understand why people have this much of a hard on for this stuff.

I can't wait until Disney is dismantled and equally distributed to the masses. I hope I get a piece of Splash Mountain and the copyright to that rooster from The Three Caballeros.

 

[BountifulFeast]

I hate how "diverse" characters are often so flat and boring. I like diversity in stories because it allows me to see how different kinds of people are affected by the plot. It can be turn a mundane situation into a very interesting one.

People are so scared of the stereotype boogeyman that minority characters aren't allowed to have character anymore. If I'm reading a story about a gay guy, I'm expecting that to at least partially affect his character interactions. I don't want him to be just another character except rainbow. And I'm sick and tired of mentally ill characters being either perfect little angels or theatrical mass murderers. If you want an interesting and memorable autistic character, I'd say take inspiration from one of the dozens of clowns featured on this site. I'd read that.