Race & Ethnicity On TV

[ribboninthesky1]

1 hour ago, Kromm said:

I actually wonder why Empire hasn't spawned more clones. You'd think the other networks would have taken a shot at cloning it. I guess there was that Power show even before that, but that was on Starz, not network TV.

Probably the same reason there are no clones of the Fast and Furious franchise in film, despite the insane amount of money it's made: the industry largely prefers to make, distribute, and promote stories around people who look like them, even when there's little profit.  

It's why I've come to understand that who is behind the camera is more important than who is in front of it. Controlling the story - who writes it, who produces it, who brings it to life via direction, who decides the casting, how the cast is treated, having the proper studio allies behind your work - is everything.

[Kromm]

1 hour ago, ribboninthesky1 said:

Probably the same reason there are no clones of the Fast and Furious franchise in film, despite the insane amount of money it's made: the industry largely prefers to make, distribute, and promote stories around people who look like them, even when there's little profit.  

It's why I've come to understand that who is behind the camera is more important than who is in front of it. Controlling the story - who writes it, who produces it, who brings it to life via direction, who decides the casting, how the cast is treated, having the proper studio allies behind your work - is everything.

Sure there have been other attempts at similar movies--at least movies featuring prominent stunt driving as the main action beat. Gone in Sixty Seconds. The Transporter. The Italian Job. There was a movie called "Faster". I think in general nobody else got the formula right enough that anyone wanted to see more than one of them (well, there were a bunch of Transporter movies, I guess). 

Edited May 20, 2016 by Kromm

[possibilities]

I"m waiting for the day a new show fails and the network theorizes that it was because it was too white.

[jhlipton]

4 hours ago, Kromm said:

I actually wonder why Empire hasn't spawned more clones. You'd think the other networks would have taken a shot at cloning it. I guess there was that Power show even before that, but that was on Starz, not network TV.

Lee Daniels is essentially cloning it into Star.

2 minutes ago, possibilities said:

I"m waiting for the day a new show fails and the network theorizes that it was because it was too white.

Good luck with that.

[Raja]

4 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

LL Cool J is co-lead on NCIS: Los Angeles.  The rest do seem to be more supporting characters.

He always seemed the lead's partner like Philip Michael Thomas, Rico of  Miami Vice was to Don Johnson's Sonny, with the big story arc mystery being allocated to Chris O'Donnel's G Callen, but then I only watched the first season

[possibilities]

Elementary managed to change both the gender and the ethnicity of Watson, and the Annie revival cast a girl of color for the lead role recently. I think the idea that just because Hawaii 5-0 was a revival it had to keep a white lead is not really true. Change is always possible and often can be good.

[Kromm]

4 hours ago, possibilities said:

Elementary managed to change both the gender and the ethnicity of Watson, and the Annie revival cast a girl of color for the lead role recently. I think the idea that just because Hawaii 5-0 was a revival it had to keep a white lead is not really true. Change is always possible and often can be good.

Are those good examples though? The Annie movie was almost universally panned (and did moderate box office at best). And Elementary has it's share of dislike (and very bad ratings) to boot too. Clearly the actual quality of these things is wide open to debate, but the larger point is that in some sense both faced some form of failure. 

It would be a disturbing thing to attribute these failures to the casting choices, but you could also spin it in part as lack of audience acceptance of those choices. Hopefully that's not true either, but it might be.

And just my own peeve, again it's reboots. In this case reboots that didn't use those ethnicities in the first place, but man it's still not the same thing as seeing networks step up and take a bigger risk on something completely original with non-white leads.  Which Fox, NBC and ABC admittedly now seem to do, but CBS is a tad behind the curve on that.

4 hours ago, Raja said:

He always seemed the lead's partner like Philip Michael Thomas, Rico of  Miami Vice was to Don Johnson's Sonny, with the big story arc mystery being allocated to Chris O'Donnel's G Callen, but then I only watched the first season

Yeah. Again I didn't see that much of this show, but that's the impression I got too. He was like "lead minus", with the other guy being lead plus.

[Rick Kitchen]

I watched the pilot episode of Elementary and vowed never to watch it again, because of the horrible way Holmes treated Watson.  I don't care if they're all friends now, he was a horrible piece of shit and I don't watch shows where the lead is a horrible piece of shit.

[pivot]

I watched the first 2 seasons of Elementary but gave up part way through the 3rd season when they started pushing Lucy Liu's character out for an annoying white chick. Not sure what was going on behind-the-scenes but Lucy made the show watchable and cutting her screentime down for some annoying white character made me tune out.

[Kromm]

5 hours ago, jhlipton said:

Lee Daniels is essentially cloning it into Star.

Good luck with that.

Star does puzzle me. It's like they're trying to bring the (rest) of the white audience in the Empire, basically. I suppose it's possible they created the show around that lead actress, but a lot of folks are probably going to assume the exact opposite (that they shoehorned the white girl in to what's otherwise Empire combined with the Destiny's Child story). 

[jhlipton]

40 minutes ago, Rick Kitchen said:

I watched the pilot episode of Elementary and vowed never to watch it again, because of the horrible way Holmes treated Watson.  I don't care if they're all friends now, he was a horrible piece of shit and I don't watch shows where the lead is a horrible piece of shit.

Have you read the stories?  Holmes really is a dick to Watson, but Watson goes along to get the great stories.

[xaxat]

13 hours ago, possibilities said:

I"m waiting for the day a new show fails and the network theorizes that it was because it was too white.

 

13 hours ago, jhlipton said:

Good luck with that.

I don't see it happening with an individual show. But, if CBS as a network starts to slip in the ratings (I have know idea if or when that would happen) then I suspect a lot of blame will be pinned in its lack of diversity.

[Pollock]

8 hours ago, pivot said:

I watched the first 2 seasons of Elementary but gave up part way through the 3rd season when they started pushing Lucy Liu's character out for an annoying white chick. Not sure what was going on behind-the-scenes but Lucy made the show watchable and cutting her screentime down for some annoying white character made me tune out.

I may be mistaken because I don't follow behind the scenes all that much but Isn't that the season Lucy Liu needed more time home because she had a child or something like that? 

[possibilities]

Elementary was renewed for a 5th season. I don't know how successful a show has to be to be considered successful, but any show with 5 seasons seems to me to be doing pretty well. Also, how many people watch other versions of the Sherlock Holmes story? I haven't done a side by side comparison, but usually a "small" CBS audience is larger than a "huge" audience on public television (PBS, BBC). If the argument is that people watch, but the show is shitty, I can't make an objective argument pro or con, but I can say I personally disagree with that. It's not the best show I've ever seen, but I like it better than a lot of the procedurals that air.

I can't speak to Annie's quality, as I didn't see it. Were the reviews bad on the basis of the lead, or was it just a shitty production overall? I admit I haven't looked into any of the details on that one.

[jhlipton]

1 hour ago, possibilities said:

Elementary was renewed for a 5th season. I don't know how successful a show has to be to be considered successful, but any show with 5 seasons seems to me to be doing pretty well. Also, how many people watch other versions of the Sherlock Holmes story? I haven't done a side by side comparison, but usually a "small" CBS audience is larger than a "huge" audience on public television (PBS, BBC). If the argument is that people watch, but the show is shitty, I can't make an objective argument pro or con, but I can say I personally disagree with that. It's not the best show I've ever seen, but I like it better than a lot of the procedurals that air.

I can't speak to Annie's quality, as I didn't see it. Were the reviews bad on the basis of the lead, or was it just a shitty production overall? I admit I haven't looked into any of the details on that one.

I like Elementary -- it has some of the best developed secondary and tertiary characters on TV.

Re Annie's earnings, from Wikipedia:

Quote

[Annie] earned $5,289,149 on its opening day. In the first weekend, the film made $15,861,939, ranking third in the domestic box office behind other new releases The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.[39] The film grossed $85.9 million in North America and $48.7 million overseas for a worldwide total of $134.6 million

The movie got pretty bad reviews (see Wikipedia here).  But critics praised Quvenzhané Wallis, and most of the rest of the cast, except Cameron Diaz,.

[ribboninthesky1]

18 hours ago, Kromm said:

Sure there have been other attempts at similar movies--at least movies featuring prominent stunt driving as the main action beat. Gone in Sixty Seconds. The Transporter. The Italian Job. There was a movie called "Faster". I think in general nobody else got the formula right enough that anyone wanted to see more than one of them (well, there were a bunch of Transporter movies, I guess). 

I wouldn't consider any of those films clones of Fast and Furious.  But even if they are...all of the aforementioned films, save one, were centered around white people, which reinforces my opinion about the industry.

As for Empire and Star, I thought Empire was really Danny Strong's baby.  Maybe Star is Lee's, though.  I gave up on Empire pretty quickly, and don't keep up with any of the media.         

[Rick Kitchen]

12 hours ago, jhlipton said:

Have you read the stories?  Holmes really is a dick to Watson, but Watson goes along to get the great stories.

 

I've read all the stories.  The pilot episode wasn't anything like them.

[CoderLady]

14 hours ago, jhlipton said:

Have you read the stories?  Holmes really is a dick to Watson, but Watson goes along to get the great stories.

What I got out of their book relationship was a brilliant, lifelong loner trying to include his first real friend in activities he loved but occasionally failing at it. But Holmes was never deliberately mean or disrespectful to Watson -- that would definitely have been dickish. I think they both understood and enjoyed each others' differences despite their occasional good-natured grousing. Other writers since then have been stripping that nice balance out of the relationship because conflict makes better drama, I guess, but it didn't start out that way at all.

Sorry -- book nerd rant. Not really TV related.

Edited May 21, 2016 by CoderLady

[DearEvette]

As a fellow book nerd, rant on!

Sorry.  Carry on with tv talk!

[jhlipton]

2 hours ago, CoderLady said:

Other writers since then have been stripping that nice balance out of the relationship because conflict makes better drama, I guess, but it didn't start out that way at all.

With Elementary, they've been adding the "nice balance".  I guess I'm more or less used to the male star being dickish to the female star, and thought they turned the corner on that fairly quickly.  As always, YMMV.

[DearEvette]

CBS just geenlit the spin off of The Good Wife to co-star Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo.  But apparently it is gonna be on their All Access channel, the one you can subscribe to.  I don't watch CBS so I am not sure what the deal is with the shows they are putting on their All Access channel first or if they plan to ever actually show them on Broadcast.  They are doing the same thing with their Star Trek reboot.

Also I am not sure if this was mentioned already here, but on AMC's Preacher (airing tonight) they've race bent the main female character Tulip, from the comics.  One the tv show she is being portrayed by Ruth Negga.  I've tried to comic but am not a fan.  But I've read Alan Sepinwall's review and I am intrigued by his take on it, so I'll give it a try.  Also i like Ruth Negga -- in my head I have her cast as River Tyburn if they ever really do turn Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series into a tv show.

[Trini]

On 5/21/2016 at 8:15 PM, Raja said:

He always seemed the lead's partner like Philip Michael Thomas, Rico of  Miami Vice was to Don Johnson's Sonny, with the big story arc mystery being allocated to Chris O'Donnel's G Callen, but then I only watched the first season

I can't compare it to Miami Vice (any more recent examples?), but LL's Sam Hanna has been fleshed out a lot more, and gotten his own ongoing arcs throughout the seasons. Just saying that he's got more going on than just "Callen's partner."

Edited May 23, 2016 by Trini

[Raja]

42 minutes ago, Trini said:

I can't compare it to Miami Vice (any more recent examples?), but LL's Sam Hanna has been fleshed out a lot more, and gotten his own ongoing arcs throughout the se

My first thought would be the first season of NYPD Blue where all the characters of a large cast were related to David Caruso's Det Kelly, Sipowicz, the breakout charcater was his partner, an ADA his ex, the uniformed cop his girlfriend, the young detective his protege he was mentoring and his boss.

[maraleia]

Check out this really good chart of all the deaths this past season http://www.vox.com/a/tv-deaths-lgbt-diversity

[topanga]

On 6/1/2016 at 4:38 PM, maraleia said:

Check out this really good chart of all the deaths this past season http://www.vox.com/a/tv-deaths-lgbt-diversity

Interesting article. Confusing chart aside, the authors did quantify the fact that female, LGBTQ, and characters of color were disproportionately killed off when you consider their representation on TV.

[Kromm]

1 hour ago, topanga said:

Interesting article. Confusing chart aside, the authors did quantify the fact that female, LGBTQ, and characters of color were disproportionately killed off when you consider their representation on TV.

Yes. It's not that more of them died than other kinds of people, because clearly the most deaths were straight white men. But there ARE the most straight white men ON the shows in the first place, by a huge factor, so that's what makes the number of people not meeting that description so icky.

Just gender:

105 women / 242 total. Which is 43.39 %. 

Not so bad. Held again the percentage of women in the real world, it actually favors them on TV. Held against the number of characters on TV, it's harder to say, because I don't think anyone has likely ever calculated a gender break down of all people on TV (remember: this would be of everyone appearing, not just starring characters).

Race: (well, at least "white vs. non-white" as an overall meter--and I'm sure there's likely some interpretation involved in what counts as "white")

65 non-white / 242 total. Which is 26.86 %. 

Now if you could show that one out of every four characters on TV was non-white, then this figure wouldn't be that bad. But there's no way that's true. Shockingly, in theory, this percentage theoretically is not that far off real world demographics. White people in the US (if you include white Hispanics) are apparently currently around 72.4%. Leaving 27.6%.  But... is that number accurately represented by non-white faces on TV?  I dunno.  That said, rememeber we're talking about all characters on TV and not just the stars, so... maybe. Or maybe not.

LGBTQ:

29 LGBTQ / 242 total would be 11.98 %.  Now if 12% of so of all characters appearing on TV, period, were LGBTQ, then that would be generous compared to the real world, where admittedly a lot of guesswork is involved since so many people don't disclose, but best guesses still generally set it at about half that or less. But... keep in mind that this 11.98% is of deaths, not of total representation. Again, I doubt anyone's crunched the numbers, but what IF TV reflected the real world guestimates that 5 or 6% might be LGBTQ?  Is it fair that twice that number died on TV? Probably not. 

The really strange one for me is this combo: female LGBTQ.

THAT one combo is vastly over-represented. Current TV seems to LOVE killing the Lesbian and/or female bisexuals. 22 of the 29 LGBTQ deaths are that subcategory. That means that over 3/4 of LGBTQ deaths shown on that chart are women.

[BoogieBurns]

Quote

Im waiting for the day a new show fails and the network theorizes that it was because it was too white.

There's a possibility that's what happened with The Grinder. It came on FOX during a block with 3 super diverse shows. They added Natalie Morales for a bit of diversity, but it was the "whitest" show in the comedy block. The other three shows were Grandfathered (more people of color than white), New Girl (2 of 5 leads are POC), and Brooklyn 99 which is so diverse, I am not positive any characters are considered white.

I know I supported the three shows because of their casting choices. The Grinder felt a little behind the times. It was the lowest rated of the four and not due to a lack of star power.

[fishcakes]

The Grinder is cancelled? Damn, I loved that show. I doubt it's due to a lack of diversity, though, since Grandfathered is gone too. It's probably due to the time slot, but I can't remember now what it was up against.

[BoogieBurns]

Right, but The Grinder was almost guaranteed cancellation as far back as November. Granfathered had a 60% chance over Grinder's 15% on TV by the numbers. I'm not saying it's the only reason, but it was the one thing that didn't fit as well in the comedy block.

[jhlipton]

On 6/9/2016 at 7:17 AM, BoogieBurns said:

Brooklyn 99 which is so diverse, I am not positive any characters are considered white.

I'm thinking you're engaging in hyperbole but Jake, Gina, Charles, Scully and Hitchcock are white; Rosa, Amy, Terry and Captain Holt are not.  (This show is one of my favorites, but it does follow the pattern of light women of color and black men of color.)

[jhlipton]

I watched a few minutes of the Maya and Martin Show.  Dear Ms Rudolph, just because your mother was black doesn't mean you are.  Stop portraying Oprah.  Please!

[BoogieBurns]

Quote

I watched a few minutes of the Maya and Martin Show.  Dear Ms Rudolph, just because your mother was black doesn't mean you are.  Stop portraying Oprah.  Please!

Fully disagree with you on this one. Her mom was black, so it literally makes her black. If she darkened her skin to play Oprah, it would be seen as offensive. So, it's fine with me that they don't match shades.

[Neurochick]

On 6/13/2016 at 2:50 AM, jhlipton said:

I watched a few minutes of the Maya and Martin Show.  Dear Ms Rudolph, just because your mother was black doesn't mean you are.  Stop portraying Oprah.  Please!

See, I don't get this comment.  Maya Rudolph is darker than some black women I know who had two black parents.  I don't believe that we should take a paper bag test to decide who's black and who isn't, wasn't that what Apartheid was, looking at skin color and deciding?

[atomationage]

Maya Rudolph's mum was so great.  At the time, she was thought of as a successor to Mahalia Jackson, but she only lived for seven more years than Mahalia, who was 36 years older than Minnie Ripperton.

Edited June 14, 2016 by atomationage

[BoogieBurns]

41 minutes ago, Neurochick said:

Maya Rudolph is darker than some black women I know who had two black parents.

Yep. She's darker than me, and I'm full black. 

4 minutes ago, atomationage said:

she was thought of as a successor to Mahalia Jackson

We loved Mahalia Jackson in my house growing up. What a voice!

[Rick Kitchen]

I could see somebody complaining if Rashida Jones was trying to play a black character.  Am I out of line there?

[jhlipton]

I've always put Maya in with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as comics who are Just Not Funny.  Her sketches are always so bland, and a lot of them seem to be based on her color (but NBC or Lorne Michaels won't cast a dark woman...)  I kind of see it as a "paper bag test" -- no woman darker than a paper bag can work for Lorne Michaels.  Your mileage obviously varies.

[Rick Kitchen]

1 minute ago, jhlipton said:

I've always put Maya in with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as comics who are Just Not Funny.  Her sketches are always so bland, and a lot of them seem to be based on her color (but NBC or Lorne Michaels won't cast a dark woman...)  I kind of see it as a "paper bag test" -- no woman darker than a paper bag can work for Lorne Michaels.  Your mileage obviously varies.

 

Leslie Jones is a dark woman on SNL.

[jhlipton]

1 minute ago, Rick Kitchen said:

 

Leslie Jones is a dark woman on SNL.

We'll see how long she lasts....

[Rick Kitchen]

She's been on two years now.

[Neurochick]

10 minutes ago, jhlipton said:

I've always put Maya in with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as comics who are Just Not Funny.  Her sketches are always so bland, and a lot of them seem to be based on her color (but NBC or Lorne Michaels won't cast a dark woman...)  I kind of see it as a "paper bag test" -- no woman darker than a paper bag can work for Lorne Michaels.  Your mileage obviously varies.

So you're only "really black" if you're darker than a paper bag, I get it now.

[jhlipton]

Just now, Neurochick said:

So you're only "really black" if you're darker than a paper bag, I get it now.

Not what I said.  I'm not saying that Maya isn't black.  I'm saying that there is a dearth of black actresses across the board and SNL in particular has a history of not having any.  If they have one now, I'm happy for that, But in 40 years, how many have they had? 

And Maya looks as much like Oprah as Zoe Saldana looks like Nina Simone. 

[ZaldamoWilder]

35 minutes ago, Rick Kitchen said:

I could see somebody complaining if Rashida Jones was trying to play a black character.  Am I out of line there?

I don't think so.  I mean she is black, but I could see how that would be overlooked, if you will.  She's in some phone commercial that made me completely forget about race and dammit I don't know if that's progress or regression.

15 minutes ago, jhlipton said:

I've always put Maya in with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as comics who are Just Not Funny.  Her sketches are always so bland, and a lot of them seem to be based on her color (but NBC or Lorne Michaels won't cast a dark woman...)  I kind of see it as a "paper bag test" -- no woman darker than a paper bag can work for Lorne Michaels.  Your mileage obviously varies.

I couldn't remember the other brown sister's name but Sasheer Zapata (thanks Google) is also an SNL cast member.  Maya is funny to me because of her physical expressions.  Ironically, I can't stand Jim Carrey for the same reasons.

[BoogieBurns]

44 minutes ago, Rick Kitchen said:

I could see somebody complaining if Rashida Jones was trying to play a black character.  Am I out of line there?

There's no way of knowing that she wasn't playing a black character in all the fictional characters before. Ann Perkins didn't have on-screen parents. They could have both been black. A real life black person could be played by Rashida without offending if they had some resemblance. If not, then we have a Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone situation.

[Neurochick]

10 minutes ago, jhlipton said:

And Maya looks as much like Oprah as Zoe Saldana looks like Nina Simone. 

But the HUGE difference is that Maya wasn't in blackface when she played Oprah.

[vibeology]

1 hour ago, jhlipton said:

We'll see how long she lasts....

Seeing as her profile has only increased in the past two years and she's got Ghostbusters coming out this summer, if she leaves SNL it'll be because she has options not because Lorne fired her. Leslie started as a writer, did a few on-air bits and grew because she was so well received by the audience.

At the end of the day I agree with @Neurochick that with Maya the difference is about blackface. You can do an impression of someone and as long as you get there with your voice, mannerisms and costumes I don't see the problem, Maya's Oprah mostly based on the voice and the way Oprah holds words for dramatic effect. Whether someone finds it funny or not is completely up to them, but I don't think it crosses a line to offensive. Would I like to see more dark skinned black women on SNL? Yes. I'd love Asian men and women too and people who are Latinix because it would make for a more diverse cast and better impressions/sketches. And I'd like more of it in comedy in general and more of it in media in general but I think it's troublesome to decide if someone is black enough to do an impression. As far as I know, Maya has always identified as black so that makes her black enough to do the impression.

[Neurochick]

And Maya also used to imitate Donatella Versace.

Here's what I think is offensive, when a black MAN plays a black woman; like when a man plays Oprah or something.  That bugs me because I sense they're making fun of black women. 

Edited June 14, 2016 by Neurochick

[BoogieBurns]

1 hour ago, Neurochick said:

Here's what I think is offensive, when a black MAN plays a black woman; like when a man plays Oprah or something.  That bugs me because I sense they're making fun of black women. 

Yes to this! Maya played Oprah to keep us from seeing Keenan play Oprah. We should all be grateful for that.

[jhlipton]

1 hour ago, BoogieBurns said:

Yes to this! Maya played Oprah to keep us from seeing Keenan play Oprah. We should all be grateful for that.

This is very true -- we can all agree with that!

[JBC344]

6 hours ago, Rick Kitchen said:

I could see somebody complaining if Rashida Jones was trying to play a black character.  Am I out of line there?

Why?  Are people unaware that she is half black?