Representative Cast

I often use the word 'representative' and usually I'm referring to the trustees or delegates elected to represent the citizenry of a polity. Here however I refer to it in the statistical sense of a small group whose demographic composition hopefully reflects that of wider society. And my focus will be its use in fiction.

I longed for a variety of looks in fictional characters long before I understood such concepts. As a kid I watched old black-and-white repeats alongside newer full-colour programs. In a story you have to rapidly understand who the various characters are and that got easier with the newer shows. Gone were the identical unforms of masculine and femine grooming and dress. Gone was the need to focus solely on who was blond or brunette and who was fat or thin. Suddenly the distinct looks of sub-cultures and the recogition of diverse origins made it easier to keep track of who was who.

Incorporating this into storytelling tends to be haphazard. Who one wants characters to be and in what proportions is personal. That is how I have usually done it. But what if such decisions were informed by population statistics? I first did this as a footnote to my description of a spaceship. Its eight person crew were international and so I looked at population figures by continent. This gave me a framework of two east Asians, two south Asians, one other Asian, one African, one South American and one person that I called 'north Trans-Atlantic' in origin. Within that I developed a specific set of origins which also included religion and sex-specific names (as described in the first comment to Momentum).

A whole Earth spaceship is one thing but what of other more mundane settings? In a globalized world you can find anybody of any ancestry in any story. And yet locales still have distinct population profiles. The largest minority in the US is Latin while the largest in the UK is Desi. Do the core casts of television shows reflect that? I suspect they could do better and census data could be something that is worth writers glancing at.

How old is globalization? How long is a piece of string? We are the walkers and humanity has been travelling slowly but surely over the planet. Even in ancient times we occupied all but one continent. Trading centres have long been cosmopolitan and the largest of nations were defined by shared culture and language rather than by a common ancestry. And yet distance and natural barriers do play a role.

I got thinking about this while watching an historical fiction inspired by Scandinavian lore. Characters (as represented by those acting them) looked like they originated in particular parts of the world. Most were from north of the Alps as was apt for the setting. One or two characters however were from south of the Sahara. This in itself was fine but what jarred for me was what was missing. Why were Mediterraneans absent? It was this georagphic gap in demographics that stretched credulity. What was needed was more diversity rather than a kind of tokenism that feels lumpy rather than smooth.

And yet the size of a cast affects how much it can reflect diversity to a finer degree. Most shows will have an ensemble of just five to ten regular cast members - it gets difficult to remember more. Am I suggesting then that a demographic can only be represented if it commands a tenth to a fifth of a given poluation? Hardly. It is merely a method. In my spaceship I took whole continents and then narrowed in on national origins that are in some cases small (Iceland is a tiny part of the combined North American and European sphere). Groups of friends consist of unique combinations of individuals. Creators will draw on both personal anecdotes and imagination to design such groups. But if ever they are at a loss then a bit of empericism can come in handy.