False Diversity in our society: when different cultures fake being represented
Disclaimer: The article you are about to read is not real; it was part of a school project about diversity. The goal was to denounce the lack of diversity in our society. “Forevermore?” is not a real movie, and the poster is a fake one. Good reading!
Diversity is put forward in today’s society, especially in television and movies in which producers cast people of different ethnicities in multiple roles. However, this semblance of tolerance actually uncovers a society still based around white people. What at first appears as a will to promote different cultures is but a sham destined to meet the quotas forced upon the makers of various media. Nowadays, it is legally required for directors and producers to represent different groups characterised either by their origin or sexual orientation. While people would believe that an effort is made to give people of colour and the LGBTQIA+ community more representation, the truth remains otherwise as seldom, if not never, like Netflix, or any other form of media, given the main role to those people.
Although it would be hard to blame them for casting white people as the main cast for a series based on a Polish novel, which is the case for The Witcher, it remains that they could very well create one of their original series with people of colour as their main protagonists. (The only thing they achieved to do was to anger the fans of Sapkowsky’s novel who did not understand how a red-headed green-eyed woman, essential for the fans, became a lightly-dark skinned brunette.) People of colour are only side characters in today’s culture; you just have to watch the upcoming “Forevermore?” trailer, which only cast a black woman as a side character only here to support the white protagonist. The problem does not reside in putting forward a white culture but somewhat lacking to represent other ones.
A simple example would be the young Marley Diaz, who launched a campaign to find a thousand books with a black girl she could relate to as the protagonist because none of the books she studied in class featured any. The most flagrant is when posters claim to favour diversity by showing a person of colour surrounded by white persons, such as the case of Paris 8’s “we promote diversity” poster showing a black woman surrounded by white people in the background.
Other cultures are not represented enough as most of our catalogues feature European and American media, with a sudden surge of Korean dramas. Still, it is practically impossible to find stories made in Africa, Asia or India. Although some media put forward diversity, like Disney’s The Owl House, the main character is a Latino American girl; it is a real shame to see it being cancelled, despite its ever-growing popularity in different groups, because “it didn’t fit the brand”. Fans are, of course, trying to save this cartoon representing diverse cultures, for example, the LGBTQIA+ community. It seems very hard to represent all the cultures of our society when some producers only allow themselves the bare minimum. To go with, but even more, when those willing to spread tolerance are being pulled back by their companies. Therefore, what would it take for this false diversity in media to be replaced by real diversity?
Mohamed M