A few days ago Marvel comics announced that Captain America would become
an African American. They also announced that Thor the Norse god of thunder
(another super-hero) would become a woman.
Cue receiving a flurry of emails and texts that this was a great day
for diversity: Today a black Capt. America, tomorrow a gay James Bond and who
knows what next year will bring?!
I must confess I was a little less excited by the prospect.
First of all I think the idea of broadening out backgrounds of comic
book superheroes is a great idea. Why shouldn’t Spiderman be Asian? And as this
is a blog about TV Diversity why should so many major TV characters be white
from Dr Who to Sherlock Holmes? Coincidentally in the recent American adaptation
of Sherlock Holmes - “Elementary” - Dr Watson is an Asian woman.
But I believe this is window dressing that fails to understand the
real issues of diversity.
Although the debate about TV diversity on screen is often centered
around arguments about the number of black or disabled actors the problem isn’t
this simple or shallow.
Diversity is about people seeing their reality reflected in the
programmes they watch.
That is why I’ve seen Lenny Henry getting the biggest round of
applause when he asks an audience; “Where are Luther’s black friends?”
(referring to the character played by Idris Elba). Luther may be black but it
would be wrong to think that viewers’ appetite for more diversity on television
is satisfied by one of the actors having more melanin than usual.
This is one of the reasons why for some TV executives diversity can
seem like a thankless task. The number of BAME faces on our screens can
increase and yet viewers still seem unhappy. I have been to presentations where
senior producers have been able to roll out the increase in on-screen diversity
to disbelieving audiences (truth been told I have been one of those producers).
We have neat graphs and pie charts to show how well we are doing but
it doesn’t match the perceived reality of our audiences.
And that is because the programmes and the characters do not match the actual
reality of our audiences.
I think this is a reflection of the fact that irrespective of how
many people you have in front of the camera it’s not until the people behind
the camera start to look more like the diversity of the audience that the
programmes will more accurately reflect the reality of the audience. And
unfortunately the number of people from diverse backgrounds behind the camera
is still far too low.
