As an indian, I find this politically fascinating. As Noam Chomsky's Manufactured Consent pointed out, the US has always used its media to influence politics and culture both in its own country and outside. It appears the US now believes that it can "mainstream" the acceptance of certain vulnerable group by showing them more on TV and movies. (I do think this will work with the next generation in a decade or so). However, the way it is being done forcefully, and in a poorly executed fashion while ignoring the backlash being generated, I fear it will only lead to "tolerance" and not their acceptance in society. And I wonder if this is deliberate too?
The poor, and sometimes forced and contrived execution of an LGBT or female or a non-white character does really seem unnecessary. To me as an indian, sometimes it looks like the white man's guilt is showing when they even rewrite historical characters and insert such characters doing things that they would never have been able to do (e.g. the enjoyable but oh so historically inaccurate heroine of Miss Scarlet and the Duke - in her period, she would have probably been committed to a mental institute for the things she does in the show. Or the deliberate ignorance of "victorian" values in British society in some recent "historical" dramas, just to show some character doing things that would be really out of character for them in their period - Indeed, one wonders why such obvious white-washing of history in such a crude manner?).
As a someone who is not an American but enjoys American tv, sometimes I feel that the reason such characters are deliberately shown poorly (with lousy acting or writing), is because even show makers resent being forced to include such character. Obviously this doesn't help.
If a story requires an LGBT character go for it. If it requires a person of colour, great. But they do need to get a good actor and make sure the writing and the direction all add value to that character in the show without any blatant sermonising (show, not tell, at least on shows for grownups). It's not as if the American media doesn't know how to do this - there have been so many good characters, even main characters from such vulnerable group portrayed beautifully in past TV shows.
(Or perhaps, I am wrong - all this has nothing to do with inclusive politics and is just a way to manufacture outrage and keep the American public distracted from the real political issues).
"If a story requires an LGBT character go for it." every story requires one then, because we exist everywhere. Stories never necessarily require certain traits like that (sometimes) but I'd say it's more that a story requires a character with certain personality traits/backstory and that character can also happen to be a man/woman, gay/straight, any ethnicity as long as it relates to the time period/area.
It does remind me of when Resident Evil 5 came out; it had the usual characters but because it was set in Africa and therefore most of the zombies were African, cries of racism were abound.
If it's a historical retelling, then it should be as accurate as much as possible, within reason. If it's fiction/myth/fantasy etc then it doesn't really matter; who cares if Hansel & Gretel is a German fairytale, cast someone who's whatever non-white to play one of them in a new retelling of it. But tbh I think people just get antsy because Hollywood/West is literally the only industry having fingers pointed at for this. I don't think Bollywood, for example, has to worry about diversity/non-Indian representation at all.
Coincidentally came across a comment by Neil Gaiman today, related to this topic on Reddit: I don't write much about gay sex, as people who have read my book would know. But oddly, I don't read tweet like this and feel to convert. Instead I read it and vaguely wish I'd actually written more about gay sex. (Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/me_irlgbt/comments/x79303/me_irlgbt... ).
Isn't it an interesting perspective from a writer? Inspiration and creativity comes from such moments, and tomorrow if this writer creates a gay character for some story, you can feel the author will do a good job of characterisation and making such character feel real. When the writing is good, an actor feels connected to it and the director and show-maker too are inspired to do justice it. Right now it doesn't often feel like that. sometimes when I see some of the awful effort of some of these LGBT / person of colour (PoC) / powerful women scenes, out of boredom I often find myself imagining how such a scene was shot - someone at the production unit suddenly remembers, "Ok, who is playing the token LGBT / PoC / Women? Let's get on with it. What's the scene about - Is it about them facing humiliation 'cos of their identity, showing them being accepted, a sex scene with them, or them finding their own voice or power?" ... (And later in the editing room some director instructing some intern) "OK, trim these hour long footage of the LGBT / PoC / woman character into 1 to 5 minutes snippets and insert it somewhere in episode 1, 5, 7 and wrap it up!" ...
As for every story requiring an LGBT character because they "exist everywhere", can't many other vulnerable / minority group too lay a claim on that? For example, I am sure there are more muslims in the USA than there are LGBTs - should every American TV show now start including muslim, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Indian-American, Chinese-Americans characters etc., etc? Obviously, you realistically can't. (And note that all these groups too face bigotry and hatred just because of who they are).
As a non-american, I prefer the previous format of American television where good story didn't have such contrived caricaturisation and only relevant characters that added to the stories. Will and Grace or Modern Family come to mind when I think of how LGBT characters were relevant, well integrated and portrayed well in the story. Recently I finished watching Atlanta and really love the show, especially due to the insights on black culture (in the US) it offered. Shows like "The Good Wife" and "The Good Fight" show women empowerment so naturally and elegantly that you don't even notice it while enjoying the drama. I feel such dramas do more justice to an LGBT / PoC / woman character than some token characters inserted forcefully.
Point made. That was interesting - I wasn't aware that the US had so many people who identified as LGBT. Note though that media representation wouldn't have changed that erroneous view of mine because that is a common assumption made out of ignorance. The media showing more LBTQ characters is not going to suddenly enlighten many that there are so many of them.
I think one of the things that makes this contrived diversification poor, is that producers are hell bent on taking existing characters and stories and changing it up in a way that's somehow more permanent that just a simple reinterpretation. I'm sure there's plenty of productions of Shakespeare plays where they mixed up the casting.
Old things are going to be a product of their times and there's an easy solution to all of this: Write new material.
Yes, it looks like Hollywood has got an order from above that every TV show made henceforth must have one prominent LGBT / person of colour / empowered women character (preferably all 3) and this condition creates a creative hurdle for writers, especially with old popular tales. And they are left with no recourse but to convert one of the existing characters to meet this requirement. However, I feel that Hollywood also doesn't mind the outrage it creates, and even feeds it, to generate free publicity for its show (as an old PR adage states, "All publicity is good publicity" - https://www.businessinsider.com/there-2011-2?IR=T ).
Op here. I enjoyed your comment. This was the kind of discussion I was hoping to generate. There is a lot of nuance in this area, but is often filled with a lot of anger (from both sides) that makes discussion difficult.
The poor, and sometimes forced and contrived execution of an LGBT or female or a non-white character does really seem unnecessary. To me as an indian, sometimes it looks like the white man's guilt is showing when they even rewrite historical characters and insert such characters doing things that they would never have been able to do (e.g. the enjoyable but oh so historically inaccurate heroine of Miss Scarlet and the Duke - in her period, she would have probably been committed to a mental institute for the things she does in the show. Or the deliberate ignorance of "victorian" values in British society in some recent "historical" dramas, just to show some character doing things that would be really out of character for them in their period - Indeed, one wonders why such obvious white-washing of history in such a crude manner?).
As a someone who is not an American but enjoys American tv, sometimes I feel that the reason such characters are deliberately shown poorly (with lousy acting or writing), is because even show makers resent being forced to include such character. Obviously this doesn't help.
If a story requires an LGBT character go for it. If it requires a person of colour, great. But they do need to get a good actor and make sure the writing and the direction all add value to that character in the show without any blatant sermonising (show, not tell, at least on shows for grownups). It's not as if the American media doesn't know how to do this - there have been so many good characters, even main characters from such vulnerable group portrayed beautifully in past TV shows.
(Or perhaps, I am wrong - all this has nothing to do with inclusive politics and is just a way to manufacture outrage and keep the American public distracted from the real political issues).