Less 'Diversity' On TV Is Fine With Me

By Aaron Ting

Dwayne McDuffie passed away yesterday. You probably don't recognize his name. I can't blame you; you'd have to be an unhealthily-obsessed fan of superhero cartoons and comics to know who he was. To be clear, this isn't a fan rant. I'm not going to preach about how great his comics were; the truth is, I actually didn't get to read a lot his work, and a number of the stories I did read were not ones I would necessarily praise. So why should I care that this guy with a funny name who you've never heard of is no longer among the living?

I care because he saw a problem happening in American storytelling and he spent his entire writing career trying to oppose it. It's a problem that's uncomfortable for Americans to talk about - not because we're unaware of it, but because we are aware of it. And we're afraid of the implications of that awareness.

See, McDuffie was one of the few writers working in comics (and in the greater entertainment industry) who truly understood the awful mistakes committed when storytellers carelessly toss 'diverse' characters into their stories to achieve a sense of scope, authenticity, or open-mindedness. We can all crack jokes about the clumsiness displayed by television networks and movie studios when they cast token minorities to keep things 'balanced,' but McDuffie saw the real problem: "If you [add] a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They have to represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting." In other words, when we try to make a piece of entertainment appear open-minded, we often end up reducing a 'diverse' character's personality into whatever makes him 'diverse' - and they become incredibly boring.

We know that a character like Wolverine, despite being a white guy, doesn't automatically represent all whites, which is why writers are comfortable making him an animalistic, murdering vigilante. But minority characters aren't allowed to be that interesting - we're so afraid of giving them flaws or 'normal' problems (you know, those problems all the other characters have to deal with), because we might risk offending someone. So instead, we give them jokes and flaws unique to their perceived culture. 

Surprise! Another joke about life back in India!

Those who know me personally know that I rarely talk about the issue of race in any serious light. I'll never hesitate to crack a good joke at the expense of my own Asian heritage. But I hate having to feel guilty every time I see an uninteresting ethnic character drag down a show with his or her poorly-written (and often, poorly-delivered) lines. It makes me feel guilty because you know it starts with a group of white writers sitting at a table, feeling that they owe me a colored character, and trying to think about what an 'authentic' person of that color would say - all while making sure they don't offend anyone. And the loyal TV viewers must suffer every time they see the boring results of this 'open-mindedness'. 

The Star Trek franchise depicts a utopian future in which all Asians have the personality of a cardboard box.

Believe it or not, plenty of minorities are able to speak English without accents. But check out Daniel Dae Kim's IMDB record; even prior to Lost, I can't tell you how many times I'd seen him appear in guest roles over the years as "the Asian guy" with a heavy accent. Think about that: this actor who speaks perfect English in real life was being told repeatedly to speak with an Asian accent, because that's what Americans should believe an 'authentic' Asian must sound like. Similarly, all Native-American characters must be depicted as honorable environmentalists, all Hispanics must be fluent in Spanish, and all homosexuals have to sound obnoxiously flamboyant. God forbid we break from these conventions and risk offending these groups of people by not depicting them 'authentically'. 

Inception's Saito worked because there was nothing about the character that required him to be Japanese. He was simply a badass billionaire who bought airlines out of convenience.

Dwayne McDuffie cared so much about this issue that he started his own comic book company -Milestone - to bring multi-cultural sensibility to comics without compromising actual characterization. I think he understood that black children growing up in the U.S. deserved better superheroes than Marvel and DC's 'authentically'-named heroes Black Panther and Black Lightning. 

I guess I'd just prefer that Asian-Americans simply be absent from TV and movies (as we mostly are), rather than subjecting them to even more boring, unimaginative characterizations. The exceptions, of course, are movies about ninjas and/or samurais. But those are never boring. 

Thanks for reading.