Tokenism and Representation: A Fine Line in Popular Media.
By: Joanna Dias
Tags: LGBTQ, Women, Hollywood, Representation, Storytelling

It’s the 21st century. Fantasy, sci-fi, horror, comedy, and every other genre seems to be played out under the sun; being woke is a currency and diversification is key. Production houses seem to be bringing out show after show, milking on views of their target audience with clean-cut character-types that would fit their demographic. And while new scenarios and stories find their way to mainstream media, the people striving to bring these stories to the screen, find themselves balancing on the tightrope of building the lives of people on-screen.

For the average media consumer, the entertainment industry seems to have everything for everybody. Fantasy and sci-fi storylines stemmed from real-life disasters, political satires weaving their way into dramatic plotlines, common vices uncovered in feel-good family movies, deep-rooted societal issues bring reality to the horror genre, etc. Sociologists find that popular media in society could be understood as a reflection of its people.

Finding an original and creative niche, decades into popular storytelling, can be hard for writers, and thus, the building of characters, as any mainstream writer would find, isn't so easy when one's society has a problematic gaze. An easy look at the evolution of Hollywood could be a good indication of that:

The mainstream cinema-going audience forgets that while art imitates life, life also tends to imitate art, and thus by depicting particular views, one projects the stereotypes of the majority, onto the minority. And while these minority communities try to participate in society, they are forced to fit into these prejudicial boxes. These are milder versions of deep-rooted issues present in a society, like that of racism and colorism, patriarchy, and religious radicalism that also found a horrifying place in common society in those times. And as long as the lens was held in the hands of the silent majority, cinema would only exist as a window into privileged homes for afflicted minorities, rather than a mirror for the majority to rewrite it's normative.

Even as present-day activists would have hoped for another way, this had to slowly begin with the white nod to the black lens. This came from a promising place of a mutual understanding of personal narratives, and the passing on of the lens to the community. When minorities found themselves in the writer's rooms, collaborating with the majority to build their own cinematic histories, and eventually found themselves in the director’s chairs, narratives that depicted the normal lives of minorities came through. Narratives of their struggles, failures, victories, became synonymous with that of society. This could be seen in extremes like that of ‘12 Years a Slave,’ and in stories made for a general audience like ‘Marvelous Mr’s. Maisel,’ and in many others. Representation seemed to come through.

A still from the movie, ’12 Years A Slave.’

But consequently, even as these new characters come on screen today, the gaze could make or break the narrative. Mainstream movies like ‘The Help’ and ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’ (both, adapted from books.) were popularly discussed as depicting important perspectives of minorities. Yet, at the grassroots level, it displayed problematic views, in turn, hurting the African-American, and LGBTQ+ community respectively.

A still from the movie ‘Blue is The Warmest Colour.’

The power dynamic of ‘The Help.’

Actors of the adaptations spoke out about the discomfort and the realisation of the impact of their portrayal, the ‘Blue is The Warmest Colour’ actors stating, that as lesbian lovers on-screen, they were worried that they were playing out a male fantasy due to the narrative. Hollywood actor, Viola Davis regretted her role in ‘The Help,’ as it played into a white saviour narrative. Interestingly, both of these adaptations were made by directors of the majority, for the depicted minority, to ostentatiously congratulate themselves for being ‘allies.’

This marked the early stages of regression, or what educated activists would call ‘Tokenism.’ Emboldened by the system, Tokenism could be considered the watered-down, diet version of the prejudices of the past, its impact creeping into communities under the cloak of allyship.

Minorities came to see themselves on screen, not under any prejudicial gaze, but as contributing to the storylines. The primary difference now is that writers found a way to slyly work around the creative mechanism, and try to liken it with diversity. For one, Hollywood remakes like that of ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Ocean’s 8,’ were branded as feminist films, even as the community recognised the harm of attempting to masculise femininity for global recognition, rather than celebrating femininity. The mere creation of these roles pigeon-holed these characters to fit into legendary roles written with men in mind.

Writers often get cornered into the ideals of writing a character with no specific sociological characteristics, so that any individual could fit into portraying that role.

The Doctor Who series franchise popular for The Doctor’s morality and experiences, in the early 2000s, saw a steep drop in views in Season 11, fans accusing the creators of attempting to blatantly tokenize its characters, when the entire cast was abruptly changed to include one individual from every minority group in the UK, seemingly to bring views to a franchise that was already dying. The problem could be best understood when, because of lazy writing, these individuals don’t seem to have any autonomy. They are driven by the momentary storylines, and don’t have any character depth beyond it, or that they are written to supplement the stories of a privileged majority.

All the Doctors from ‘Doctor Who.’

A simple run-through of popular films and shows today could reveal the underlying issue. The tropes of the ‘token black guy’ that exists only to die early in horror movies, the ‘trophy wife/bimbo girlfriend’ that seems to have no individual agency, the ‘gay best friend’ who only exists for shopping trips and boy advice; popular shows including characters like Kevin, the gay best-friend in the teen-drama show Riverdale, Raj, in the sitcom Big-Bang Theory, Stanley Hudson in The Office, all with different formulas of tokenism, should have been red flags from the beginning.

This is most prominent with the representation of females in popular media. According to Katha Pollitt, a popular media practice would be to include only one woman in an otherwise entirely male ensemble, where they were hyper-sexualized and existed only in reference to men like Princess Leia in Star Wars, Black Widow in The Avengers, Elaine in Seinfeld, etc. She coined it ‘The Smurfette Principle.’ These characters would consequently fail the Bechdel test, revealing deep-rooted gender bias. All of this was done for more views, without addressing societal effects. Needless to say, one could see how this could be problematic.

After the Oscars was boycotted half a decade ago under the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, they tried to rebrand themselves, and announced new rules of diversity this year, for films to be nominated, calling for representation on screen, in the crew, and at the studio. Yet many predict that filmmakers will take the easy way in and tokenise their characters and crew since the bar is set so low.

The only way to get out of lazy character sketches, and treading the fine line between diversity and tokenism, would be to bring systemic change. Only when minorities are brought into every sphere of creating content for the masses, will the sense of being tokenised be transformed into the essence of being empowered.

And finally, when communities have systems set in place that provide opportunities to own their perspectives, they’ll be able to drive change in how they’re seen in popular media and seen in society. This would, in turn, allow them to influence the direction of the production of media. Character depth and narrative matters, and only when popular media is able to portray that sensitively, is when representation will be commonplace.