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.

Making engaging, enlightening, and entertaining TV is not easy. It's a full time job! It seems obvious that if you add on top of that a burdensome, highly politically charged mandate to infinity interrogate, measure and recalibrate every possible socially charged human attribute in every clip of media you produce for political correctness, time focus and resources spend on that will crowd out the resources needed to produce entertaining, or even palatable content.

It's possible of course that there might be a cultural shift in audiences where that becomes the (only) criteria against which content is judged. I've somewhat cynically assumed that that will eventually be the case as we're increasingly conditioned to expect check-the-box didacticism in all generated content. But the memo does suggest that there is still a large contingent that find it highly off-putting.

The Polish squadrons were mentioned in the Battle of Britain film from 1969.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Forces_in_France_and_Great_Britain

The Polish squadrons were mentioned in the Battle of Britain film from 1969.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Forces_in_France_and_Great_Britain

I seem to recall that in the books, Bilbo or someone comments about the hobbits in Bree having a different accent.

Bree-land, with its place names of Brythonic origin - Bree, Combe, Archet - has a similar relationship to the Shire as the English Midlands do to the Welsh borders. (Despite Breeland being east of the Shire and the Welsh borders being west of the Midlands.)

My (unscientific) feeling is that ethnic minorities are if anything overrepresented in TV and advertising right now, but there's also a strong tendency for them to be written and portrayed as indistinguishable from white (upper-)middle-class people in all respects other than their skin colour, and they rarely seem to resemble people one actually meets in real life.

Also if you go to the cinema the adverts are packed with ethnic minorities but when it comes to the trailers nearly everybody's white. They're happy to use minorities to sell products but not to make films that tell their stories.

Yes ethnic minorities are overrepresented in TV and ads, theres some stats about it, it was on another thread, but also misrepresented in terms of proportion within each group if you like

There miight be good reason for that but thats the stats which is why that report is a bit odd in its findings

I would be astounded if ‘LGBQT+’ were under represented in the arts. Certainly we know that T is over represented amongst BBC employees and their LGBQT groups have hugely disproportionate power over editing, including the news.

I am nodding along to so many of the comments here. I think the report was really clear about what is wrong with how the BBC sees diversity - it feels like a tick-box approach 'have we got a decent amount of 'diverse' people in this show?' rather than looking at the underlying cultural diversity. And of course what is needed is diversity in the 'behind the scenes' part as well - to write the scripts that represent cultural diversity.

I do think in the theatre it is easier to have 'colour-blind' casting - in a Shakespeare play, for example, whether history or comedy/tragedy, I don't think it matters if eg an Asian actor played Henry VI or a black actress played Portia. But I think that is because when you go to the theatre, particularly when you see a 'classic' play you are looking for how the words are spoken and the actor acts, not really what they look like. Possibly something to do with the bow at the end when everyone acknowledges they are actors playing a part?

A good example at the moment is 'Ballet Shoes' where the child actors are definitely not of the appearance that is described in the book, and 'HMS Pinafore' where 'Josephine' is played by a Korean soprano.

But although colour blind means diversity of talent representation, it doesn't give diversity of cultural representation.

What I particularly loathe, in TV dramas not set in the current day, is a storyline where all of the 'good' people react to a black/gay/Jewish character using todays morals, and all the 'bad' ones don't. Which, as the report indicated, completely misrepresents the real probability of the experience of the time, and therefore leads to the downplaying of how much racism/homophobia/anti-semitism was ingrained in society.

I agree that ‘colourblind’ casting can be done well, but the issue is that often it’s not colourblind, it’s casting with an agenda. In the early days of this there was a weird thing where they would only cast ethnic minority actors as good characters (eg the musical film of Matilda). They seem to have got over that now to some degree but they still wouldn’t cast white actors in minority roles, which suggests that it’s not colourblind at all.

At the root of this problem is the distortion of reality. I don’t want to see ethnic minority characters in Dickens or Austen or biopics about real people who were white. It ruins the story because you’re thinking, ‘hang on, these people were acutely aware of everyone’s social status, wouldn’t they have had something to say about this guy being ethnically Chinese?’ Same as you wouldn’t cast a 60 year old actress as Elizabeth Bennett because the story would make absolutely no sense. It’s an abandonment of quality in favour of ideology.

I do want to see minority stories accurately represented. I want adaptations of amazing authors of Indian and African origin. I want stories about Jewish people and working class people. I want to see rural communities accurately represented. Why doesn’t anyone in Lynley have a Norfolk accent?

You see the same problem in literature. The exam boards are desperate to ‘decolonise’ (by which they mean de-white) the curriculum. But the reason most writers on the curriculum are white is because non-white people have only been writing in English in large numbers in the last 50 years. ‘The canon’ consists of writers who have been consistently praised over centuries. If you prioritise race over quality you end up choosing writers who have not stood the test of time. You also end up fixating on race at the expense of other sorts of diversity (like social class). They removed Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin because they’re both white men, but they’re diverse in culture and approach. Both also not privileged materially.

I’m fine with this in theatre (or indeed tv) when the story has been brought into the present day (theatre companies often do this with Shakespeare). What I hate is the mishmash of historical eras. Don’t set it in the Victorian period and then cast actors who make no sense. Bring it into the present day if you want to do that.

It's not just men though. You can see a lot of women's sport on YouTube.

When I first had to get my own TV licence I always thought I should pay less because it was so man centred.

Even if you did get something like women's gymnastics on you could have commentator nattering on about the 'sex appeal' of a routine.

Somerset v Stewart could also make an excellent drama. I wonder if it's ever been done?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart

Yeah, honestly, that seems very far fetched to me. I also don't think that black actors are under-represented. Asians I'm not so sure, maybe.

One thing that becomes difficult with "representation" is that very often, you don't know a lot of things about characters. On a typical detective show, you probably don't know the sexuality of many of the main roles, sometimes none. It doesn't come up.

Sometimes people complain about disability always being represented by someone in a wheelchair. That is in part I think because if you want to "represent" disability, but it's not really a significant element of story, you need something visually obvious, but which doesn't make the thing that character is doing too implausible or tricky.

It lends itself to these clunky insertions tat are a little cringy at times.

And then this:

What I particularly loathe, in TV dramas not set in the current day, is a storyline where all of the 'good' people react to a black/gay/Jewish character using todays morals, and all the 'bad' ones don't. Which, as the report indicated, completely misrepresents the real probability of the experience of the time, and therefore leads to the downplaying of how much racism/homophobia/anti-semitism was ingrained in society.

This also really annoys me, mainly because I think it's so disrespectful to people in the past. And in a way to the audience. But it seems to come out of a place where having the wrong view is simply a sign of moral bankruptcy, and there is no possibility of understanding people who have differernt ideas. I really started to notice it in later seasons of Call the Midwife. They were constantly having to fudge things like the nuns views on marriage or divorce or contraception or abortion, because they couldn't bear to show an intelligent, good, character who had a well thought out, but now unpopular, view. They struggled to write much about some of the nuns in later seasons I think in part because of this.

I actually think this is something that contributes in a larger way to political and social alienation and polarisation, and is bad for society.

Sometimes people complain about disability always being represented by someone in a wheelchair. That is in part I think because if you want to "represent" disability, but it's not really a significant element of story, you need something visually obvious, but which doesn't make the thing that character is doing too implausible or tricky.

Downs syndrome is another example of visual disability. My nephew has learning disabilities and would love to be an actor but even with diversity targets that is unlikely as he doesn’t look disabled.

How about a bit of diversity of opinion - very sadly lacking and that should be uppermost in their minds especially in the news arena

This is such a good point, I sit there baffled sometimes that all these people in the 1600s or Victorian times or whatever have such 'modern' representations, they're really open about sexuality, having children out of wedlock, womens rights, yay, child centred parenting styles, workers rights.

Total nonsense, unless of course its the baddie and then they can be really racist and sexist.

What I find most troubling about the BBC and other media outlets transparent shoehorning of “diverse” characters in is the complete laziness and contempt with which it’s done. It seems so obvious that if these people felt really, truly passionate about casting diverse actors, they’d make sure that those actors got to play thrilling, deep, complex roles that reflected the true breadth of their character’s background and experience.

The BBC had immense reach. They had the opportunity to launch so many careers, and bring realistic, well loved new characters to so many people who might never have sympathised with a character from that minority before. Instead, they’ve done a lazy, half arsed job of most of it, and in doing so I honestly feel that they’ve done more to alienate the public than if they’d done nothing at all. It’s so frustrating, and it’s so disrespectful to the very groups they’re supposedly so keen to help.

Yeah, I had to stop watching Father Brown eventually and being a light sort of cosy mystery I was happy to give it a lot of leeway on political things.

But at a certain point it started to seem pretty offensive to Catholics.

I really started to notice it in later seasons of Call the Midwife. They were constantly having to fudge things like the nuns views on marriage or divorce or contraception or abortion, because they couldn't bear to show an intelligent, good, character who had a well thought out, but now unpopular, view. They struggled to write much about some of the nuns in later seasons I think in part because of this.

Christianity is very often a target and Christian’s are stereotyped as hypocritical bad guys by writers who seem to have little understanding of the Christian faith.

FYI - the film about Joseph Bologne (Chevalier) is on Film 4 tonight for those who are interested. I hadn't heard this story before so I will definitely watch. Agree this is a good way to tackle diversity - telling real stories from diverse backgrounds

I'm still fond of it as an undemanding box set for a bout of flu. I like Mark Williams & I've known some religious who'd have given even Pope Francis a bit of a turn with their views.😂 OTH, I don't think of it as echt Father Brown at all, GK Chesterton was very partial to intellectual rigour & so was his little priest.

Be fair, there are people in Holy Orders whose understanding of the Christian faith could be written on a postage stamp.
The Rev Paula Vennels springs to mind.

Does it say anything about the huge over-representation of drag queens at the BBC?!

The one that really annoyed me was Shardlake. In the books, he meets a black, Moorish, immigrant monk who ends up living in London as a physician. They are good friends and this is partly down to them both being simultaneously respected professionals and outsiders. Shardlake is a lawyer and a hunchback. Guy is a doctor and black. The ableism and racism they face is an interesting foil and allows commentary on Tudor society.

In the TV show they make these plot points impossible to address as the high Abbott and some courtiers are black.