diversity on tv

Lunchtable TV Talk: Halt and Catch Fire

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Halt and Catch Fire has been hit or miss in its first two seasons, but I liked it. I feel like the show did hit its stride in some ways within the second season. Recently the show was renewed for a third. The way season two ended, it could have gone either way. It would not have felt like a tragic loss had the show not won its reprieve, but the big changes hinted at meant that a third season could be an interesting shift.

Where things went right: the exploration of women working in tech, very early in the game. It’s refreshing to see, even if unusual. I sometimes think people have expectations that are too high for television characters. I read a lot of “analysis” taking different shows to task for their lack of diversity. And when there is diversity, there’s a lot of nitpicking about whether it’s the appropriate or representative kind of diversity. And in fact, real life is not always as diverse as people would demand. Were the early 80s a hotbed of activity for women in tech development? Sure, they existed but were probably anomalous. I haven’t done any research on the topic, but I am not doing a real analysis here. I find that TV viewing (or the practice of “reviewing” as a career) is a little bit muddied but the demands critics in particular place on the stories, the characters and the richness and depth of their lives. Sure, I like that, too, but there is really only so much a character can embody and accomplish in an hour each week for ten weeks.

I suppose this is why I find Halt very satisfying. The two women leads, Donna and Cameron, are very different, working together but at very different stages of their lives. They often work at odds, and handle things very differently, but ultimately come together for a common cause (especially in the face of adversity). I was particularly interested in Donna’s development, while Cameron is supposed to attract attention as the unstable wunderkind. But because Donna has been the stable one professionally and personally, she has been the backbone of the company she co-founded with Cameron, and she has been the backbone of her marriage with Gordon. She has always been the one to work in a stable job (until taking a risk on the gaming startup) to support her husband Gordon’s crazy ideas but eventually embraces the calculated risk – probably because she has the stability and experience to know it will work for her. She is also a mother, and one of the quiet but important stories in season two was her personal and discreet choice to have an abortion. The show did not make a big deal out of it – no one did. She is a married mother of two, in a troubled marriage, deep into the chaos of her startup company, and it was bad timing. It was clearly a difficult decision but always came across as intensely personal and right for her. It was pivotal in the development of Donna’s character and delivered subtly and beautifully by actress Kerry Bishé.

While the show started off being more about Gordon and Joe and their race and personal quest to build a personal computer, it morphed into a show that parallels the story of a scrappy startup with the story of two very different women swimming upstream, forging stronger, independent identities, in the formation of this startup. It has been quite fascinating. Gordon and Joe became secondary to the story, and they are no longer driving the action forward by the end of season two.

It’s a small world on TV after all: More subtitled TV

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More than ever, creators of TV are trusting audiences (particularly English-language markets) to delve into storylines that mix in non-English-language characters (integral characters and stories, beyond the stereotypical and often offensive Spanish-only illegal immigrant or household worker). I have written about the increasing instances of more foreign language subtitles on TV – and the number of shows weaving “globalization” into the story is increasing and lending depth and credibility to stories that are often removed from authenticity by giving English-speaking actors awkward, false, non-descript “foreign” accents while still speaking English.

Finally, we see more reality coming to the screen. This is the case because non-network TV has greater leeway. It is also happening because a more international group of people is creating TV entertainment. It is also happening because people are connecting more with reality – not in the sense of reality TV (ugh!) but in the sense of wanting to see reality reflected in the characters and stories depicted on screen.

In some cases, a show is created and not primarily intended for an English-language audience but is eventually exported and subtitled, such as the recent NRK production, The Saboteurs (Kampen om tungtvannet). The story and language is Norwegian with a heavy peppering of English and German. It’s been shown on UK TV recently.

Similarly the recent Deutschland 83, an eight-part, German-led drama (supported by German RTL and US-based Sundance), is the first German-language production to air in the US.

Yet, even in almost entirely English-language shows, we’re hearing a lot more diversity. While we tend to hear more (again stereotypical) Chinese-language in contemporary crime shows (always associated with Chinese gangs, such as in the recent Murder in the First and Sons of Anarchy), the latest (and final) season of Hell on Wheels has introduced a new story about Chinese railroad workers, and in telling these stories, we do get a “Chinese villain/gangster” but he is not a caricature so much as he is depicted as a profiteer not unlike the rest of the profiteers of the time, regardless of race or background. The Chinese workers, too, get a bit more depth to their story than standing around in the background. While I cannot say that Hell on Wheels has always been a superb show, it has sometimes taken interesting perspectives on intercultural interaction, conflict and integration in both a post-Civil War and westward-moving, “manifest destiny” environment. The Chinese language and culture addition is just another layer to a show that rolled out several layers already.

The already unusual Orphan Black, in which Tatiana Maslany plays multiple, very different characters (she has finally been recognized with an Emmy nomination), shows one character who is Ukrainian (and who uses Ukrainian). This affixes yet another piece of complexity to Maslany’s expertise at differentiating each character from the others

Ultimately what prompted my writing about this topic again, though, was the Swedish-speaking couple in the new show Mr Robot. Somehow their Swedishness makes them feel like a complete “otherness” in an already strange milieu. In Mr Robot, everyone is a bit of a weirdo, and while the Swedish guy seems to have it all together on the surface, he is perhaps the biggest weirdo of all, and his very private Swedish-speaking home life feels like it adds to that division.

Language can serve that purpose, too, which is of course something common in language and linguistic fields – different languages and how you use them in your life can contribute to very different aspects to your personality. In this sense, it is deeply interesting to watch how different characters’ behavior changes based on the language they use, choose to use in specific situations and with which other characters they interact in which language.