Diversity in the entertainment is easily one of the most misunderstood societal issues we have today. Dedicated fans of properties in almost every medium have bemoaned the inclusion of black, female, or sexually diverse characters because they’re afraid that it’s going fundamentally change whatever it is that they’re so enamored with.
I can actually understand that. When you invest your time and money in a new game, comic, or movie, you want something good. There’s nothing wrong with that. Forced inclusivity for the sake of mass appeal can be detrimental to a product, and it’s no surprise that it pisses off fans when they feel it’s happening.
However, that’s not what’s happening. Instead of unilaterally changing in an attempt to pander to people, entertainment is just getting more diverse. There’s a fundamental difference there. The former isn’t really all that good for anybody, and the latter is actually great for everyone.
To use video games as an example, because gamers tend to get a bit riled up when someone messes with their hobby, a move towards more inclusivity and increased diversity may actually be the driving force in dramatically increasing the quality of the average video game story.
If you’re a writer, you know that the easiest characters to write are the ones that are most like yourself. Writing a character that you don’t have much in common with is actually really hard. In order to write a character that’s wildly different from yourself, and avoid the inevitable backlash that comes with doing it poorly, you have to be a damn good writer.
Hiring writers who can write good stories about underrepresented characters will actually have a positive effect on the industry as a whole because it raises the bar for everyone, not just studios who are trying to be inclusive or progressive.
If “Game A” has a great story with a wonderfully fleshed out minority character and “Game B” has a boring story with a generic white male protagonist, “Game B” isn’t going to be received as well as “Game A.” The makers of “Game B” will have to work on writing a better story for their next project if they want to remain competitive. They won’t have to change the race or sexuality of their character, but they will have to deliver a better story.
That’s not to say that a generic white male protagonist can’t also be a part of a great story, it’s just that a minority (whether through race or sexuality) is more likely to be the better written character because he/she has to be in order to equally impact an audience made up of the majority.
It’s not just video games, either. Gender and/or racial representation can have similar effects across movies, television, and comic books.
Even better, no one is going to stop making whatever it is you like while it’s still making money. Sure there might be a character that’s written in for inclusivity’s sake every once in awhile, but it’s still going to remain largely unchanged because companies don’t want to risk losing customers.
So, if you hear someone complaining about a black Star Wars character or a female Thor, send them a link to this article. Show them that while change might be a bit scary or frustrating it can actually work out pretty great for everyone involved.
Image via Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
