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Name five examples. I only say this because I think you are making this a much bigger deal than it actually is.
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<p>Let's take the Asian perspective, shall we? </p>
<p>1) Kung Fu</p>
<p>A TV series about a Shaolin monk stars a white man, David Carradine.</p>
<p>2) The Last Samurai</p>
<p>Story about the clash of feudal Japanese samurai and industrializing forces stars a white man, Tom Cruise.</p>
<p>3) 21</p>
<p>Upcoming movie based on the story of the MIT blackjack team that won millions in Vegas. The team was mostly comprised of Asians who used their ethnicity to curb suspicion of young men with loads of gambling money. Yet in the new movie, the cast is all white. </p>
<p>4) Tsunami: The Aftermath</p>
<p>This one puts British blacks in place of Indonesians, so it's a little different.</p>
<p>5) The Replacement Killers</p>
<p>Studios demand that the villain's race be changed from white to Asian, in order to counter-balance the fact that Chow Yun Fat is the hero. Bottom line is that while the white hero can kick the Asian people's ass (i.e. The Transporter), it cannot be the other way.</p>
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Are a third of the doctors in NYC black? Should the janitorial staff always be black or mexican? Should the nurses accurately represent the true ethnic breakdown of nurses? Should the cast of criminals in any show be broken down demographically?</p>
<p>I don't understand your rule of: If the city is 33% black, make the cast 33% black. I don't understand why one needs to stop there. Why not make it as accurate as possible? It doesn't make sense that you would want one but not the other.</p>
<p>This is different from my view of complete artistic freedom. The director can do whatever they want - the audience gets to decide if the show is good or not. I don't care if the entire show is white, black, hispanic, or asian. I'll watch what is entertaining. I don't care if any racial group is overrepresented - I just don't understand your reasoning on why a show in a city should follow the racial breakdown of the city, because that, in itself, is not always an accurate representation of reality.
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<p>I've never watched ER, so I don't know how many black doctors are on that show, and I'm not going to take your word for it. But think of it as karma then for all the depictions of NYC or Boston as lily white.</p>
<p>Your reasoning was that since blacks only comprised of 10% of the population, anything more than 10% of TV characters being black was too much. I didn't bring up the over-representation argument. You did. Now you're trying to argue that population percentages don't really matter in reality, which means the first point you made was ******** anyway and you've wasted both my time and your time.</p>
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The core cast of Friends is actually pretty realistic. You have to take into account that NYC is a city of boroughs and some boroughs are slanted towards certain ethnic groups. Also, only white people would spend that much time in a coffee shop.
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<p>I guess that's sort of true, but c'mon, it's NYC. I'm sure if the casting directors really wanted to, they could conjure up a realistic group of relatively diverse friends. But they didn't.</p>
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What's not realistic about Friends is how every minor character, extra and special guest seems to be white as well. I mean, I can understand why white people would naturally hang out with each other, they're white, that's just what they do when they're not playing golf and raping foreign cultures for their art, but it's not like NYC is completely devoid of non-white people.
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<p>That's not completely true. There was that Chinese woman, and that black woman. Of course, both were brought in as love interests for the white males, so there you have it.</p>