Can Super Heroes Rescue TV Diversity?

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.

Or to put it another way: A black Captain America and female Thor might be able to come to diversity’s rescue but only when the writers of comic books are 50% women and 36% non-white American (and we haven’t even started talking about disability and sexuality).