Monday, March 9, 2009

Ethnic diversity on television

After having watched a handful television at the GSA (I don't have a TV at home) I just realized that perhaps the show with the widest spread of ethnic diversity is none other than 'America's Top Dance Crew.' I'm serious. Blacks...whites...Asian...latin...its a pretty good shotgun spread.

And of course me being me I focused on how the Asian dancers were portrayed and man was I happy. I mean the team that won the show (Quest Crew) are comprised of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino members. Hells yes. You can't believe how stoked I was to watch Asian folk on TV without hokey accents, kung fu fighting, or working in a lab (don't worry Masuka I still love you). Instead it was a group of kids doing what they love to do, and boy do they do it well. Moreover...Asian men depicted as potential objects of sexual desire? Oh man, times are a-changin' and its about time.

While I find reality TV a bit kistchy, I can't deny the raw awesomeness of seeing so many ethnic groups represented onstage. It would be great to see this kind of diversity in a storyline based television show but we're probably still a ways away from that yet. But hey headway is being made and I believe in baby-steps and I'd like to think things are getting better. Randy Jackson, your show has made me optimistic once again.

And since I don't watch a lot of TV perhaps things are even better than I thought. Anyone know some good examples? Battlestar is good (Grace Park), as is Dexter and Heroes, but I only frequent a narrow (primarily sci-fi) area of TV land. What else is going on out there?

1 comment:

tonytung said...

Heroes? I liked the first season (and haven't seen any of the newer ones), but Masi Oka's accent isn't that heavy.

And I think that's terrible. Every time I see a slightly overweight Japanese guy with glasses, I ask him to make that happy exclamation sound. You know the one.