Interesting report on diversity of representation in BBC programmes

[DuchessofReality]

Report here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/documents/thematic-review-of-portrayal-and-representation.pdf

BBC article about it here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9312091kpeo

Well worth reading the whole document. It mentions, among other things, lack of representation of women and older women in particular, lack of diversity of geographical and class-related views, and how tick box diversity annoys people.

Sentences I appreciated:
We also found that measuring diversity by aggregating groups of sometimes very different people (such as BAME, disabled people, LGBTQ+) misses crucial detail which is required to ensure an appropriate range is present in content over time.
.....
However, there’s a noticeable gap between those whom the general audience wants to see more of and what specific groups within the audience feel they need. This gap is widest for LGBTQ+, black African and Caribbean communities, who express a greater desire for increased representation than the wider audience does for them.
.....
Nearly nine in ten say that women over 50 are represented poorly in adverts, films and television. And two thirds of women cease to feel represented in the media from the age of 46.
......
Commissioners should now take a proactive role in developing on- and off-air talent, to ensure authentic portrayal of the following groups: People from working class backgrounds (in a way that represents and celebrates their own cultures) South Asians (particularly in drama and entertainment) East Asians (in all genres) Disabled people with a range of impairments (particularly focusing on incidental representation) East Europeans (in all genres)
......

To help achieve diversity, measurements often group people together under labels like BAME or LGBTQ+. The term disability is itself an aggregation of a number of different conditions and experiences. This can result in some peculiar outcomes where very different groups are lumped together for no other reason than they share some common characteristic, such as being ‘non-white’.
.....

The aggregation ‘LGBTQ+’ tries to encompass a range of sexual orientations and gender identities, with the plus at the end used to ensure inclusivity of all identities beyond those in the term. It’s widely used as a term for gender, sexual and romantic minorities and, unlike some of the terms above, it specifically points out the range and variety it includes. However, it presents another issue in that the various groups in that umbrella label don’t always want to be associated with each other, specifically some of the L and some of the T. While we think it is still useful, it is worth pointing out that a single person cannot be LGBTQ+, any more than an individual can be BAME. As with all the above aggregations, where a programme is talking about an individual, it is best to be specific about that person rather than using an umbrella term.
.......

However, productions should consider their choices carefully when it comes to colour-blind casting. In depicting an anachronistic historical world in which people of colour are able to rise to the top of society as scientists, artists, courtiers and Lords of the Realm, there may be the unintended consequence of erasing the past exclusion and oppression of ethnic minorities and breeding complacency about their former opportunities.

What a great post, I agree with everything, particularly the bit about Jim Thorpe, who was incredible. The IOC tried to erase his Olympic titles, because he had been paid a pittance for two seasons of baseball prior to the Olympics. A film about him could become one of the best sporting films ever - think Chariots of Fire. Then you have Jesse Owens, an extraordinary competitor.
As you say, there shouldn't be a need to insert a black actress to play Ann Boleyn, because there are numerous roles for black actresses to play. Why can't they put LGB actors in realistic roles - Alan Turing for instance?
I stopped watching live television in 2020, the turning point being Match of the Day, when during the pandemic, Shearer, Wright and Lineker were pushing scraps of paper around a table, trying to work out who was the best goalkeeper etc. when the BBC should have been showing replays of classic matches from World Cups and the Champion League.
Everything I now watch is from Youtube or Netflix Films, no live TV at all.

I watched some of The Rings of Power based on The Lord of the Rings. Arguably as a total work of fiction in a fictional world any race would do (though it also was based on Europe culture). But what grated there was the distinct range of races of communities in what became Mordor - small communities that were in the story pretty isolated with hundreds of years of inbreeding. They should have been pretty homogeneous as a people by then!

I am 67 and one of the guys who stopped watching live TV in 2020, the reason being the BBC. I now find that I can get far more information on YouTube and various forums, plus news sites which are not live television.
I am also a petrolhead and the amount of car related content is never ending. Anything you want is on YouTube - history, politics, photography, gardening, model making, cooking (particularly breadmaking and Asian food).

I think it depends on the drama and what you want to get out of it? Bridgerton is pure fluff. It doesn't really have much concern for the "real" issues facing people at that time.
Dickens is a bit different because he is very popular but as you say deals with real issues facing the working classes. I think there have been lots of productions that glossed over that anyway. So the Nancy in the Oliver musical is sort of hinted at being a prostitute but it's very child friendly. Whereas in the original story she is very much someone who was groomed into an abusive relationship as a young teenager so that said "boyfriend" could pimp her out. And is later murdered when she tries to leave. It's very very bleak but most peoples "Nancy" is a cheerful cockerny sparrow with a heart of gold. So I think it depends on whether you want Dickens as a cosy feelgood Classic, or Dickens the describer of urban poverty and social injustice. I would also give it a bit more leeway because there were black people in London at the time. And poor black people. So one or two people in the cast wouldn't be as ahistorical as having half the main characters.
Other historical adaptations are more nuanced. Heathcliff in Withering Heights absolutely is described as being a different colour. I think it is deliberately vague - the most likely explanation being that he is a gypsy but his nurse suggests to him he might be an Indian Prince. And I think readers are meant to suspect he might also be the illigitimate child of Cathy's father and therefore mixed race (men having sex with prostitutes sex slaves in the West Indies and bringing the resulting offspring home absolutely happened. As did men having illicit liaisons in port cities like Liverpool and bringing them home as "orphans"). So conceivably you could cast a "swarthy" white actor or a South Asian or black actor to play Heathcliff and it would work. I don't see the point in being angry about it either way.

Yes, I think that this is certainly how it comes across.

Someone up thread said that it's differernt on the stage, and I agree, there is a lot more scope for abstraction in live theatre. (Though, I actually wish we could go back to it being ok to use theatre arts to play people of different races convincingly, I think this would open roles in an exciting way for all actors.) You get the odd film production that is similar where it works.

And in modern settings it often works pretty well, as someone said like Gray's Anatomy, or as in Succession where they cast a female actor in a role that was originally conceived as male.

It may be that in shows like Bridgerton, they are thinking it is not a real historical setting, it's a fantasy, so why not? Or maybe even with Dr Who. But I don't think the audiences are convinced that is the real reasoning. They feel it is either meant to create attention and controversy, or maybe even to push the kind of ahistorical agenda you suggest. And both of those things piss people off.

The shows of course den that kind of motivation, but I don't think the audiences find it very convincing, especially in a show like Dr Who which is so keen to reduce it's characters and the actors who play them to collections of identity boxes, and push political agendas on the audience.

I've given up on the BBC. I felt that I was constantly being preached at, while who I was (female, 60-ish, English, rural) didn't exist in the hive-mind of BBC producers and programmers.

I'm sure I've banged on about this before, but I sometimes feel that the BBC has no idea what the British countryside is like to live in, who lives in it and what we do. Most rural people take the piss out of Countryfile for just never getting to grips with the things that enrage or engage those of us who live rurally (mention it to any farmer and wait for the eye-roll). Clarkson's Farm, OTOH, is very popular - because he shows the reality of dead piglets and crop failure (as well all the Clarkson-y things like being able to buy a pub and set up a restaurant).

If I'm told that a TV drama is 'diverse', I generally conclude that it will contain no older women, nobody with a rural accent, and probably nobody with a physical disability, but will have a transwoman in the lead female role, be 25% BAME actors, and include a character who is neurodiverse.

BBC diversity and genuine diversity are different things.

I'm not sure why they would need to put LGB actors into "realistic" roles. There seems to me to be zero reason that sexuality should be a limiting factor when casting.

Ethnicity and sex can be because they are so visible, though imo if I am convinced in the production I am happy with cross race or cross sex casting, it is just very difficult in many cases to make it work.

As far as finding stories from different groups, sure, although I will say that I tend to find shows too centred around "identity" are often lacking. And too many shows centred around it is tedious. I'm not convinced that should be the uppermost thing in the minds of those choosing shows to develop.

There are quite a lot of people who think the fact that rural areas tend to have fewer "diverse" people is a problem. The fact that various groups and peoples have had their own history which means that settlement is not homogeneous seems to be a problem for them somehow.

Rural areas are less diverse because they reflect Britain before the huge levels of immigration of recent years. Immigrants tend to settle with others of their ethnicity so tended to have concentrated in mainly cities.

Also because the big story of the last few centuries worldwide has been the movement of people from the country into cities. You have that internal to countries (I moved from a very rural part of the country to London, people from rural India are migrating to Mumbai.etc). But also external. So someone from a rural part of one country won't migrate into rural Somerset. They go to London/Manchester. And someone from a city in another country will.also move to London/etc. So either way, people are moving to cities.

There are exceptions of course, people do move to the country especially as they retire, and there are seasonal workers picking fruit etc. But you will always get more movement into cities and therefor more diversity there. It isn't because the countryside is inherently racist.

Absolutely
I love YouTube as they have all kinds and I have found some fantastic old films on there that I hadn't seen in Years.
My favourite type of videos though are Local History .
As for the BBC well, they don't give a stuff about Working Class Whites.
Hope this bites them on their arse.

As the poor in Victorian Britain that Dickens used as inspiration for his characters were overwhelmingly white, race is not a factor in his stories. The main theme of his stories is poverty. Barbara Kingsolver transferred the story of David Copperfield to 1990s Appalachia in her novel ‘Demon Copperhead’, and the common theme in both settings is poverty.

But if you’re going to do mixed race casting you have to really go for it, otherwise it looks like tokenism.

Would you mind telling me where that happened? I'm involved in media diversity research and I'd love to use that as a case study.

Im sorry I dont know you from Adamso im not going to be sharing private details, but I believe they went to all the new media universities at rhe time. It was the first year they introduced the honours programme.

Fair enough!

Was it a programme to try to get more black people specifically or did they actually say the BBC were there for recruitment but didn't want to recruit white people?

Yes, exactly.

In fact, where I live, there are a number of rural communities that historically have a black population, and they are still the majority there today.

The reason is that at the time those groups moved here, in the 18th century, people were mostly settling in rural areas to farm, and the government would give a large land grant to a group of people who arrived together. So we had some groups arrive from Haiti, who were given grants, and then quite a lot of black Loyalists fleeing the US after the War of Independence, and they also were given rural land. They were mostly farmers before so intended to farm here as well.

Many of their descendants have since moved into cities too, just like other rural areas have lost their people to cities in the 20th century.

'Hi all, the BBC are here today to recruit from the Media Studies course. <short pause>. All white people need to leave'

<white people left and went to the cafeteria>

'Oh hi, what happened after we were kicked out?'

'We arent allowed to say'.

Thats as much as we were ever told.

@EdithStourton can you remember the last time that you saw a drama where any character with a rural (East Anglian, Central Southern or West Country) accent wasn't a "I can't read and I can't write but I can drive a tractor", thick as pig shit, racist? Me neither.

This report was financially supported by the University of Manchester. The findings reflect that.
It is no surprise to me that they find too much representation by and of London and the South East. What a surprise !
The findings are designed in my mind to ensure the BBC employ or have more roles carved out for working class people from the North. Or Manchester perhaps ?
It will not be interested for example in working class people from the South West or anywhere else.

Yeah, I find this stuff really distracting if I am honest.

If you had groups of elves with ethnic differernces, I would think that was totally natural if they were from differernt kinds of places.

In Game of Thrones, there were differernt ethnicity, for example, but they made logical sense in terms of the geography.

A tiny rural village of people who are supposedly from there but look totally different is weird.

I find that really shocking.

That's crazy. And certainly didn't work as the BBC remained very white so what a waste of pissing everyone off. I'll see if I can find anyone at the BBC who can remember the thinking.

Dickens was specifically telling stories of poverty in Britain (and occasionally France). Yes you could transfer the story elsewhere but in doing so you are ignoring the historical context of the stories, the history of the UK and why Dickens wrote the stories.

Is this a problem?

People do this in literature all the time. Why not film?

Clueless, Bride and Prejudice, The Magnificent Seven, half a dozen versions of The Bridge, or Life on Mars...

The transfer of a universal theme and story to another place and time can often be very effective.

Taking a story and completely transposing it to another setting so the context and characters have all changed is fine. It is when you film the original story in the original setting but distort it, so it misrepresents the history of the time and the message the story was trying to portray, whilst pretending that it is a true representation that it becomes an issue.