Pt. 3 of DISCO, series

As I examine how good the show is, how well it meets my expectations, it is extremely use full to hold it up to a ruler—to use a test. The Bechdel Test is a great start, but it’s just a start. It fails to examine all the diversity, incision and centering I expect in a modern TV show.

Before explaining what my ruler is, let me explain some terms and abbreviations.

ATP– all the power. A character who is male, white, strait, cis, non-disabled, and what mid-20’s to mid-50’s? IDK what the “ideal” age range is exactly.

Diverse aspect— an aspect of a character that provides much needed diversity to shows. If a character is wildly outside of the norm age range, is a person of color, is queer, is female, has a disability, or and has a mental illness.

Tokenism— This is when a character is a walking talking stereotype. The character who is included just so the creators can say the show is diverse. The black guy who is the only person of color in a movie filled with white guys. Yeah, he’s only there so the movie is “diverse”.

Show—I use this word as an umbrella term for a movie, a TV show, a play, even a book… any form of story telling with, for my rule, human or humanoid characters who represent humanity. A story about an alien race living on a planet with social structures, that is an imagination or examination of a dystopian, utopian or realistic human society is referred to as a show.

Character—when I write the word character, I mean a character who talks, has flaws, and is key to the plot. A figure who walks on screen and works at work station is not a character. A security guard who shoots a few shots and then dies is not a character. A person who talks and gives advice to a main character and never appears again is not a character. In TOS these are Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty, and later nurse Chapel

 Main character– is a character who talks and appears on screen at a high frequency as well as being key to the plot.  A main character is also classified as a character. In TOS these are Kirk, Spock, and Bones.

Frequent character-is a character that talks less, appears only for a few seconds (or possibly a minute or 2) per episode at most and is usually not essential to the plot. Who is a main character and who is a frequent character can change by episode, though tends not to. For example, if a frequent character is featured in an episode, that character becomes a main character for that episode. In TOS these usually are Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty, nurse Chapel.

Red shirt— is a character who appears in one episode and usually dies before the end of the episode. The term comes from original series’ very minor characters who wore red uniforms, and though Scotty had a red uniform, he is not a red shirt, dew to him not dying, having a name, lines, flaws, and plot importance.

All right. We got enough terms to get started. What you’ve been waiting for my new rule- dubbed the Ewald ruler-after its creator—me!

Here’s how it works: a show is rewarded one negative point for each character, and it gains points for including diverse aspects. Each diverse aspect of a character gains the show one point. If the character with a diverse aspect is a main character, then the show gets one extra point for the character. For example, Michael Burnham from Star Trek: Discovery gives her show 4 points: one for being a person of color, another for being a main character AND a person of color, one for being a woman, and another for being a main character AND a woman. In order to “pass”, show should gain back at least half its points. A character with a disability? Add a point! That character is also a person of color? Now we’re at 2 points! A show with 10 characters should aim for about -5 points. 0 points is better. Positive might be overkill. It might be excellent.

However, when a show has a token character, the show does not earn a point. Glee, for example, doesn’t earn many points because a lot of the characters are token characters. This exemplifies how diversity does not often equal inclusion.

Notes:

1. To be clear, this rule doesn’t ask for shows to represent the population of the USA, nor does it in any way prohibit white characters or even APT’s. I’m just asking for inclusion of diverse characters in shows. It’s a simple rule to measure diversity and inclusion, and I’ll be using it in future posts to measure up DISCO, episode by episode!
2. Only diverse aspects gain points for this rule! See definition.
3. I don’t mean for this to be absolute, like a “meet it and the show passes, don’t and there is only failure.” There are good reasons a show might not reach half the points lost. It is only probably extra awesome to reach 0 or exceed it, but it might be overkill to reach or exceed 0, even without token characters.

The image of red shirts was drawn by me on Paint, the reference image is from HISHE’s Star Trek Into Darkness deleted scene.