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ericdeggans · 7 years

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CBS’ Diversity Controversy, HBO’s Confederate Highlight Fight to Resist the White, Male Gaze in TV

To some, it was a landmark moment; when a roomful of journalists descended on CBS executives to pillory the company at length for its lack of diversity in primetime shows.

But, to me, it felt like a flashback to a time five or 10 years ago, when every network played this game.

Facing reporters at the TV Critics Association summer press tour Wednesday, CBS executives tried their best to frame the situation to their advantage. Their executives took the stage after a press conference with the cast and producers of its S.W.A.T. reboot, which is the only new show on the network featuring a non-white person in the lead role, with a white man, black man and Asian man as executive producers.

Still, they had few good explanations why, for the second year in a row, all their new fall primetime shows star males (in fact, every new show they have planned for the entire 2017-18 TV season stars men). Or why they couldn’t pay the two most prominent non-white co-stars on their Hawaii Five-O reboot the same as the two white males who star in the show. Or why the casting departments for the network – as alleged by Maureen Ryan from Variety and not contradicted by the network – are staffed entirely by white people.

“There is change happening on CBS,” insisted Kelly Kahl, a longtime executive in charge of scheduling at the network who became entertainment president earlier this year. “We have two shows with diverse leads this year that we didn’t have on the schedule last year. We have a midseason show with a lead character who’s gay. And over the last few years, if you look at the number of diverse series regulars, that’s up almost 60 percent.”

This is how TV executives at most every network talked about representation years ago, as incremental, careful advancement. Numbers of inclusion barely budged as network executives insisted they were doing the best they could. Of course, that was before shows like Fox’s Empire, ABC’s Scandal and Black-ish and NBC’s This Is Us revealed how much success could be found in featuring non-white characters without reservation or equivocations.

I think this issue boils down to something simple: Resisting the white, male gaze.

Shows with people of color in starring roles and status as creators and/or executive producers – for example, in series like FX’s Atlanta, HBO’s Insecure or Netflix’s Master of None -- have told unique stories through the perspectives of non-white people. Women have found similar success with series like Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and HBO’s Big Little Lies. And once those perspectives brought success, it was surprising how quickly many TV outlets figured out how to bring more of those characters and stories to their air.

But CBS, long considered the most traditional broadcast network, has moved slowest to offer something similar. It has a profitable, long-running business model built on formulaic programming. And as much as executives like Kahl insist they are changing things, there’s also a sense they are too hesitant to challenge their audience -- with a slate of new shows which feel like slightly tweaked versions of many series which came before.

A long line of CBS’ most popular shows, from NCIS and Hawaii Five-O to Bull and MacGuyver, start and center their narratives on the perspectives of white, male characters.

And it feels long past time for that to change.

Even the way TV executives talk about these issues can make progress difficult. “Every single drama on our air has at least one diverse regular character,” Kahl said of CBS during the press conference.

Using the word “diverse” as an adjective is an odd way to refer to non-white characters, though it is something TV executives do regularly. It both avoids mentioning the topic of race – which is the heart of the issue, most times – and positions non-white characters as a divergence from typical casting and programming decisions. And it leaves women out of the discussion entirely.

CBS has outsourced much of its diversity to other platforms in its media family. Its streaming network, CBS All Access, will feature the first Star Trek series centered on a female, non-white Federation officer, Star Trek: Discovery. And its sister network The CW has Latino-centered comedy Jane the Virgin and a midseason show which will be the first primetime network TV series to feature a black superhero since the mid-1990s, called Black Lightning.

But if diversity in casting is good enough for sister networks and streaming, why isn’t it good enough for the mothership network?

A version of this struggle also seems to fuel to controversy over HBO’s proposed series Confederate – a drama set in an alternate reality where the Confederacy didn’t lose the Civil War and slavery remains a reality in modern America.

HBO announced the series back in mid-July by emphasizing its creators – David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the executive producers of its hit Game of Thrones. But when the Twitterverse heard that two white guys were going to produce this series – overlooking the fact that two black producers will be working on it, too – the backlash was severe and continues today.

Some critics seemed to make an awful lot of assumptions about a show that doesn’t even have a script yet. But others made arguments which hearken back to objections over the white, male gaze. Why must this alternate reality be centered on black subjugation and suffering, yet again? Why can’t producers imagine a world where non-white people actually achieve freedom?

African American producer Will Packer stepped forward with an alternative, telling the industry website Deadline about a show he is developing for Amazon, called Black America, about a world where black people formed a country from three states given to them after the Civil War as reparations.

This is a show where black people likely won’t be victims of a system they can’t control. And it may be no coincidence that it is created by a black producer.

I spoke to CBS’ Kahl after his press conference ended, and he remained steadfast. “In my heart, I believe we’re moving in the right direction…I think we are getting the job done,” he said, in response to a question on whether their pace of chance is too slow and ineffective. “We want also want to put on, not just diverse shows but successful shows that are inclusive…I would hope you see the progress going forward.”

I hope so, too. Because it seems one of the most venerated names in broadcasting is in danger of becoming a symbol of the bad old days, when the white male gaze was the only perspective available on television.

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