Episode One: Inclusiveness
TY’HANA ALDRIDGE | OCTOBER 19, 2020 | ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
The incorporation of diversity in media has steadily increased over the last century, and children now are having their culture, ethnicity, and sexual orientation represented through the characters they watch on television. For students at Stanton College Preparatory School, witnessing the increase in LGBT and multicultural representation in children’s shows has brought them a sense of pride and inclusivity.
In recent years, certain producers, like Rebecca Sugar and Alex Hirsch, strive to re-shape the new age of television by normalizing diversity in family-friendly shows.
“By including LGBTQIA content and characters in G-rated entertainment for kids, you tell kids when they’re young that they belong in this world,” said Sugar, producer of the Cartoon Network show Steven Universe, in a 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly. “There can’t be only a certain group of kids who are told ‘someone will love you’ by all the entertainment that they see.”
In 2018, Steven Universe won the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) award for its portrayal of gender identity and sexuality through incorporation of LGBT main characters. Similarly, Hirsch made efforts to widen the scope of diversity by including subtle nods to side characters' romantic interests in his Disney XD show Gravity Falls, despite the controversial nature of such inclusions at the time of the series’ airing.
“We immediately got a note from the network saying two women falling in love is not appropriate for our audience,” said Hirsch in a 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly.
In the past, diversity has been present most commonly in side characters, such as the main character’s bisexual sibling or their friend’s gay parents. Prominent strides in LGBT representation are exemplified by the leads in shows such as Legend of Korra and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. According to GLAAD’s 2019 "Where We Are on TV" report,10.2 percent of recurring characters in 2019 and 2020 were reported to be LGBT, an increase from the previous years and a peak in the 15 years GLAAD reported on the subject. This rise in the number of LGBT characters represented in television shows reassures GLAAD and viewers that there is promise for the future of LGBT representation in the media.
There has also also has been growth in racial representation in children's shows.The 2019 University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study analyzed 1,200 films from 2007 to 2018 and found that White actors represented 63.7 percent in 2018, a decrease from the 2018 report of 70.7 percent. This increase of minority representation in the media has brought inspiration to Stanton students who feel the over representation of White heterosexuals and a lack of representation of various other ethnicities and sexualities in kids television programming has negatively influenced them by giving them a poor self image for a portion of their childhood.
In the same Devil’s Advocate poll, 94 percent of participants noticed stereotypes being used to represent minority characters in children’s shows. Several Stanton students feel their culture or sexuality was not only underrepresented, but also misrepresented.
To senior Armani Strowbridge, his childhood was affected by lack of representation of his sexuality as well as his mixed race. According to Strowbridge, that absence of diversity in children’s shows during his childhood delayed his process of self discovery and understanding that mixed race is not limited to the way it was portrayed on screen.
“There are shows that feature mixed children, but rarely show the divide they feel from races that make up their DNA,” said Strowbridge. “As for my sexual orientation, the minimal represenation that I see is not accurate and usually features a played up caricature of what it means to be a gay man. I wish I saw more diversity because it would be refreshing for every child to feel represented or feel like they have a place in society.”
Because of the lack of accurate representation of their ethnicity displayed in the television shows they watch, students are filled with joy at the sight of a character portrayed in a non-stereotypical manner.
“Every time I saw an Asian character on TV, I remember this excited feeling I would get [seeing] her on screen,” said Stanton junior Danielle Soriano. “It was usually an Asian female character, like Brenda Song on Suite Life on Deck, and I felt sort of a spiritual connection to her and the child-like feeling of ‘ooh I wanna be this person’ and ‘you can be that person’ resonated within me.”
As television shows continue to improve their representation through the growth of LGBT and multicultural characters, Stanton students like Strowbridge and Soriano are brought a new sense of pride and inclusivity.