Coloring Outside the Lines
Minorities on television are a hot topic if ever there was one. How much coverage do minorities get on television? Once they get the coverage how should they be portrayed? Should minorities on television blend in with the white characters or stand out as role models for their community? And the questions go on and on and on. You'll have to indulge me this week. I have no answers; I have no quick fix, and no magic pill like I always (think) I do. All I can do is throw up my hands, say my piece, and hope the scrutiny in some way gets these soap and network executives off their butts instead of making excuses (as Mickey Dwyer-Dobbin and Jill Farren Phelps always do).
Now, I have a lot of opinions on this subject, but the truth is, before most of these opinions can be addressed, there is the major hurdle of putting minorities on television at all. Soaps used to be groundbreaking in their diversity in their soap towns. Llanview, Salem, and Springfield had black characters back in the sixties and seventies; Llanview also dealt with the Hispanic working class with Angel Square. The odd thing is, soaps were a lot better about this in the eighties and early nineties. It must have been a fad of the time like uppers and downers. But ironically, now in a world that is incredibly politically correct, minority families have disappeared for the most part. And very, very few towns have more then one-minority family. Of course, I'm using the term, "family" loosely because two or three relatives does not a family make.
Recently TV Guide attacked the CBS soaps specifically, stretching for their faint praise by applauding the number of blacks on ATWT and condemning GL for their lack of contract players which says nothing for their storylines. But it is only the beginning of the problems. The TV Guide column completely ignored the lack of blacks on ABC or the handful on Days of Our Lives. And what about the numerous stereotypes for Hispanic characters? Or what about the complete and utter lack of Asians and Native Americans? Are a handful of minority characters all that should be asked of daytime television, a quota? When you take into consideration the actual amount of characters on a soap landscape, minorities are literally all they are.
Let's target a soap with more blue bloods then I can count, All My Children. In a cast of more then thirty there are only six (if you count Simone) minority characters on the canvas. On As the World Turns, of twenty-five regulars, there are only three African-Americans and of the recurring sixteen, there are another three. Days' Salem, over forty characters on the canvas and five minority players. The show used to have a better track record of dealing with minorities with families like the Ramirez family, but now, heaven forbid another minority family shows up, instead the show drops teen aliens into Salem. While General Hospital's minority casting needs work with a large cast and only a handful of minority characters, most hardly ever on screen besides Sonny. Bold and the Beautiful is absolutely the worst. Their recent African adoption and Hispanic HIV patient aside, that's only two of the at the most, fifteen minority characters the show has had in their fifteen year history. Ironically, the show takes place in L.A., granted in the fashion world which is also is pretty resistant to minorities, but still, to get a black kid the show goes to Africa? There are some bright spots. In a cast as small as the cast on Port Charles, there are three minority players to a cast of fifteen which is actually a better ratio then the other soaps have.
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