As Risa Bramon Garcia sees it, her contemporaries do not like being told that they have to make a more conscious effort to include actors of color in the rosters they build. She told KPCC recently that this really a reflection of consumer power as advertisers are demanding networks do a better job of representing their customers and the networks then lean on the casting directors to deliver.
3 comments:
Although it is great to see racial progression within the entertainment industry, this article irked me a bit in the sense that it seems to make the task of including all ethnicities in the casting pool to be a chore and a hassle. Instead of casting directors celebrating the fact that they now have the opportunity to add diversity within this artistic field, they see it as a task they must complete instead of something to be celebrated. I think one of the main problems with the situation as a whole is the fact that there are few shows that are actually written for actors of various ethnicities. In most cases, television shows and films are centered around a Caucasian male or female, and actors of other ethnicities are often times the "side-kick" or "best friend" character. What also annoyed me about this article is the fact that race is now viewed as something to amp ratings and status for casting directors and directors instead of it being about bettering the human race and industry as a whole with such important and necessary inclusion of diversity.
This article vocalizes something I've been considering for a while with the development of representation on mainstream tv programming in the past few years. I immediately think of Modern Family, which includes a gay couple in the character range. While most people enjoy the show, for reasons beyond the fact that the creators chose to include a gay couple, I have always had a problem with the way that they use the diversity as a prop. While TV grows and continues to expand in terms of diversity, I see more and more programs using their more diverse characters as props, that usually fit in to the stereotype of that chosen background. This is problematic in multiple ways:
1. If they include a character, which may be considered more diverse, but choose to use it as a prop, are they really expanding our perception of these diverse communities?
2. They are perpetuating these stereotypes, in front of massive audiences, if they choose to include these characters and use them as props.
I wholly agree with the above comments. It should not be a chore that casting directors complete to fill out a diverse and interesting array of cast members of a show. But it certainly only is not their faults; I have always felt the blame should be placed upon the people who seek a certain 'type' of person for their films and television series. Like the writers, directors, and producers of the new series that come out each year. We also need to change the immediate thought of 'white, blond hair, blue eyes' that comes to our minds every time we read a female ingenue's character introduction. I have some hope that in the near future we will be seeing more shows from more diverse writers, and that young audiences will start to sway away from the old, white-washed, heteronormative cable shows of the past. Online moguls companies like Amazon and Netflix, who have produced television shows like 'Transparent' and 'Orange is the New Black', have a future in a changing industry I would like to be a part of.
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