WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED “DIVERSITY”?

By Kristin Scheimer

Diversity is the hottest word in Hollywood right now.  Everyone, particularly TV Networks, wants to be proudly hailed as being appropriately “diverse”.   Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not disparaging this effort.  In fact, I applaud it, but the reality is, we’re not really making TV more diverse; we’re making it more… true to life.

I’m a writer, and I’m also a script reader.    One thing I’ve seen over and over, in badly written scripts, is that – quite simply – all the characters are alike.  Now I don’t mean, they are all straight white men and women in their 20s and 30s, although I do see that a lot as well.  What I mean is, they’re all generic characters with virtually the same personality.

So, when I tell a writer that their characters need to be more diverse, I don’t necessarily mean:  Make one black or one gay.  What I mean is that each of these characters needs to have a distinct and unique personality.  That’s what diversity is to me.

But that’s not Hollywood’s definition of diversity.  What they’re looking for is more people of color and maybe a gay person or two.   This feels a bit contrived, but there’s a reason for that.  The reason there is such a need to "diversify" TV is that it has, for so long, been un-diversified.  Ok, so maybe that’s not a word, but it fits.

In the 90s there was a wonderfully, charming show called “Will and Grace”.  The premise of it was: a gay man and a straight woman are best friends. 

 

The existence of a gay man in the world was so remarkable it was the premise of a whole show.  I call that a Tuesday. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to have always been a part of one of those “groups” of friends.  At first it was friends from acting school

and now it’s friends from Capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian Martial Art I study.  And having a friend who is gay, or black or Asian or Latina, isn’t the premise of show; it’s just… life.

Capoeira Brasil Los Angeles - Mestre Boneco

Not to disparage “Will and Grace”.   It was a great show and I loved it.  And, the reality is, at the time, gay characters on TV – unlike real life – were extremely scarce. 

There was a time when NBC was in its golden age of comedy.  I remember fondly the Thursday night comedy line up of “Mad About You”, “Friends” and “Seinfeld”, all of which took place in New York.  In fact, the shows existed so much in the same universe that there was one night when a New York City blackout covered all three shows.

And I loved these shows.  I tuned in with such excitement and I laughed and laughed and laughed.  The characters were wonderful, the humor well executed.  We loved these shows.   We loved these characters.

Small problem.  These were three whole shows that took place in New York, a city populated with as many races, genders, ages, and people of various sexual orientations as Los Angeles.  And yet, on not one of these shows were the main characters anything but white, 20-30 something straight people.

I’m not going to get into what they should or shouldn’t have done.  I’m simply going to say this.  “Diversifying” those shows, if we must call it that, wouldn’t have been bold or daring.  It would have simply been more realistic. 

The world, and certainly New York City, isn’t made up of one kind of people:  Straight and white.  Neither is Los Angeles, which is where I often set pieces that I’m writing.  It’s where I live and it’s what I know.

Warning:  Shameless self-promotion ahead. 

I tend to have a lot “diversity” in my writing for two reasons.  One, when one writes about a group of people, giving them as many diverse characteristics as possible will just make the script and the characters more interesting.

But here’s the other reason:  That’s what my world looks like.  I have a lot of friends and let me tell you it’s rare, in fact I’d go so far as to say it never happens that I find myself spending an evening with all white, 20-30 something straight people.  That isn’t my reality, so why would I write about it?

And here comes the shameless self-promotion.    In 2010, I made a TV Pilot called “Five in a Car”.  It featured a white woman in her 30s (me) who broke up with her husband and moved in with four men, who happened to be: An Egyptian, a Mexican, a Brazilian and a black guy.  Did I set out to write a show with characters of these specific ethnicities?  No.  I shot the project on a budget and used the friends I had on hand. 

And to fully embrace the shameless self –promotion, here’s a link to the pilot.  Enjoy!

Five In a Car Pilot

I currently have three original TV pilots that I’m using as writing samples.  In these scripts, I occasionally specify some characters as one race or another, but often this is merely a suggestion.  Perhaps I have an actor in mind for a part or it’s simply how I see the character in my head.  

There’s also a serious misconception that if I don’t specify the race of a character, then they must be white.  Again, not at all true.  Sometimes, the race of the character isn’t relevant.  There are, however, times when I specifically make a character a certain race because the story will be about the experience of someone of that race.

For example, in one of my samples,  “Theater Folk”, set in a small town community theater, the young black character has trouble getting cast in the shows because he’s black.  However, I specify another character as being of Indian descent.  I actually did this because I was working with a group of actors at the time, one of whom was Indian/Australian, and I like having an actor in mind when I write.

However, there is nothing in the story that makes it imperative that he be Indian.  In fact, for him, the most important characteristic is that he’s currently in the process of transitioning.  So he could be of any race, he just has to dress as a woman.

After the emergence of “The New Girl” on Fox, I felt the need to change up “Five in a Car” a bit and came up with another TV Pilot, “Complex”.  I absolutely know with certainty that it will be touted as “Friends” with diversity.   

However, I simply wrote the characters as racially different because that’s the world I live in.   But it’s not just race that makes these characters “diverse”; it’s also age and sexual orientation. 

I would have no problem changing the race, sexual orientation or age of one character or another, but I would definitely not be ok with them all being white, straight and in their 20s as that is not the story I’m telling.  The point of the show is that these people – who range in age from 20s-40s and are from “diverse” racial backgrounds and sexual orientations – have formed a makeshift family.  The point is, that’s my life.  That’s my world.  I would have nothing to write about a group of white, straight people in their 20s all living in a house together – at least nothing that would be of interest to me.

While I do not necessarily set out to try to make my scripts as “diverse” as possible, there is something to be said for pushing this kind of diversity in order to show audiences, who may not encounter people of different races, ages or sexual orientation, that they exist.

But mostly I think we need to change the way the TV universe looks because it doesn’t reflect the real world.  Do we really want to project onto the airwaves the idea that only straight, white people in their 20s and 30s have experiences and lives and stories worth seeing? 

That above all others is the reason to include more “diversity” in television.  Because if we don’t, we are arrogantly saying – to a rather large population of people – that they don’t exist in TV land… and maybe that means we wish they didn’t exist in real life. 

No.  Absolutely not.  We cannot continue to express that idea.  So I embrace Hollywood’s determination to embrace “diversity”.  It’s not so much a new idea as it is… a correction of an old fallacious one.