Arturo R. Garcia, at Racialicious, posted this graphic illustrating how the cast of Heroes has become increasingly white over its four seasons:
Comments
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peebs1701
When I saw this earlier it was with the note that these are not all the characters in the show, but rather the ones who are mentioned in the opening credits. Which is important because most of the new people added on the White side have actually been in the show all along–though the fact that they are being given opening credit over other actors is significant.
And even though they may not have actually added many more White characters, the loss of so many amazing characters of color is quite disappointing, especially when they could have been so useful to the story.
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Gomi
I was going to say the same thing. I would consider the season 3 “white side” to be the cast for seasons 1 & 2 (including Sylar, HRG and Ma Petrelli).
Which would mean only a minor increase in the “white side,” but that stability in the cast just highlights the reduction on the “POC side” even more. Why has there been so much change on the POC side when the white side has just added one actor and dropped none?
I should mention as a caveat that I really only watched the first season, so I don’t know about the general cast from later seasons. Maybe other POC characters/actors were introduced to the level of Sylar/HRG/Petrelli in later seasons, and just not included in the credits. This could reduce the impact of the loss on the POC side.
Which raises the question, why are the opening credits important as a metric? I know such credit inclusion is important for salary and general industry impact, but for viewers and the general public, do we really care if an actor is listed in the opening credits? Or if we see them in the show on a regular basis? Does listing POC actors in the opening credits really matter, from a popular point of view, if their characters are significant (and portrayed well)?
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peebs1701
Solely in the context of this show, it might not matter whether an actor is listed in the opening credits–except for recognizing the name of the actor instead of just the name of the character, however as you mentioned before it is very important for salary and general industry impact. Those who have opening credit are going to be more likely to get roles in the future and the ones they get will likely be better than for those who didn’t have opening credit.
As far as whether or not they introduced other POC characters in later seasons, they did introduce some very good ones, but for some reason those characters were allowed to fade away. Even the ones that they do keep aren’t treated the same as the white characters. We only found out The Haitian’s name recently (René).
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anezka
Not that I know anything about this show but there some sort of non-white political correctness quota that programs need to meet in USA?
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Doro
I think it has more to do with what the show is about – it tries to be kind of international, by including characters from India, Japan and several other countries. At the beginning, it tried to be about normal people across the spectrum. But it did also have problems from the beginning: Characters of colour were killed off a lot more, while white characters were kept alive against all odds. The Haitian fits the magical negro trope quite well and didn’t even have a name until the fourth season.
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grady
I feel the same! What an amazing first season and then…what happened? Lost was the same way. Really good first season but the rest is terrible.
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splack
Cocaine.
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nele
Someone recently counted all deaths and disappearances of Heroes characters by sex and race, with results similar to the graphic: http://just-katarin.livejournal.com/198169.html
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Onno
I don’t know the show, but from the pictures, it also seems that there are much less heroines than heros… hardly surprising…
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kristyn
This is grossly inaccurate… half the white characters shown as “new” in later seasons in this graph were there from the beginning.
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phildog
It should be noted that Ando & Mohinder have had barely any airtime at all.
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Thaddeus
Being included in the opening credits certainly increases name recognition with the general public.
I recently heard someone comment that Heroes “had too many blonds”. When my wife was watching the most recent episode I noticed that there was a Thanksgiving dinner scene with three women, all of whom were blond. And that wasn’t counting Ali Larter, a blond woman who has been on the show since the start.
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abby_wan_kenobi
That Thanksgiving dinner scene was the Bennet family who is quite blonde, but this is an isolated scene. The other leading family of the series, the Patrelli family, is 100% brunette. The Parkmans, Mojinder, Hiro & Ando, Sylar, Gretchen and most of the new characters from the Carnival have dark hair. Ali Larter is sort of the token hot blonde, but I wouldn’t say that the show has a really disproportionate number of blondies.
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Thaddeus
I would say it REALLY does have a disproportionate amount of blonde characters, specifically women: Tracy, Lauren, Emma, Claire, Claire’s adopted mom, Claire’s biological mom, Lydia, Elle, Daphne, Nikki/Jessica. Most of the women who are brunette are no longer on the show.
Also Claire is Nathan’s Daughter, so technically she IS a Patrelli, and thus they are not 100% brunette. I’m suprised Lydia’s daughter isn’t blonde…-
Thaddeus
AH! You have my name…and you were reinforcing my earlier statement.
Apparently there are two Thaddeus’s who think there are too many blondes on Heroes.
…weird…
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Victoria
Not surprising in the least. We wouldn’t want people of color to feel like they’re an actual part of American society, now would we? I have a massive, unprofessionally non-scientific theory on this type of thing. Actors of color never appear in mainstream American movies without them being segregated off if the actor isn’t Jackie Chan, Halle Berry, Cuba Gooding Jr. or Denzel Washington. People of other ethnicities must act funny or stereotypically, black women must be light-skinned and attractive, men must just be Denzel. If darker or brown-skinned women like Whoopoie Goldberg or Oprah Winfrey are going to act in mainstream American films, you’d better believe they’re either “the funny black lady” or a slave. Sure you can find an exception here or there, but this is the norm.
And that is why I find it SO disappointing that a popular American show has lost its actors of color. They were just the everyday Americans I know. Sure they had superpowers, but with Sci-Fi shows also being acted by predominantly white people it just continues the divisive way whites still tell people of color that they are excluded and not authentic representations of America today.
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Evan
I watch Heros. There are really only 3 Heros: Hiro (optomistic, geeky, intelligent, asexual asian man) Peter (loving, sensitive, easily taken-advantage of White man-child) and Clair (Blonde cheerleader who just wants to fit in)
everyone else mostly evil.
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Evan
They’ve been trying to revamp for a wider audience, that may be why they are white-washing. I mean, who in “real America” is going to relate to a bunch of non-white people with special ability. That’s MORE scary! (“they took my country” etc.)
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finefin
I don’t think this is accurate enough. Micah for instance had a big role in season 3 (vol.4). okay, he had not much to say, but his character was omnipresent…
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Megan
Oh yeah, I’ve definitely already noticed this trend. But really what offends me the most about heroes is that the very dark-skinned black man doesnt even have a name. Thats not a coincidence. Even the people closest to him (like clair’s dad) call him The Haitian. It gets on my nerves so damn bad. And Hiro is pretty racist as well. He’s my favorite character because he is really the only unselfish person on the entire show and he only uses his powers for good, but they use his ethnicity as comic relief. like “hahaha look at the stupid things this japanese guy says”
And of course there’s the stupid Clair being a lesbian just for ratings thing.
Heroes is dead. The first season was awesome and its never been good since then. They just need to cancel it.-
peebs1701
The Haitian has finally gotten a name this season. Rene.
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Freya
I’ve got to agree that this is incredibly confusing. First of all, all the ‘white’ characters in season 3 were in seasons 1 and 2, as well – counting this, there’s only one or two white characters that season 4 has that are missing from season 1.
Then, in season 2, the writers introduced a whole bunch of new characters of various races – Elle, Adam, Maya and Alejandro, Monica, West, Caitlin – and the only one that ’survived’ to season 3 was Maya, IIRC, the rest were causualties of the writers’ strike (especially Caitlin, that’s pretty much the biggest loose end EVER!).
On the ‘people of color’ side, the Haitian is missing from seasons 1-4, Micah is missing from season 3 at least, and I haven’t watched enough recently (it seems to have jumped the shark) but what about that African man who could paint the future from season 3 or 4? And didn’t Micah’s dad come back sometime in season 3? Or was that season 2? Oh, and Ando is missing from season 1.
Someone should put together a really comprehensive thing like this…
Interesting observation: While the minority characters get ‘killed off’ for real more often, there are several white characters who die more times than all the minorities put together – Claire, Adam, Peter, Sylar, and let’s not forget Nikki/Jessica/Tracy/whoever the f*ck she is this week. What’s up with that?
(In case you couldn’t tell, I loved the show during season 1. Season 2 was tolerable, but the writers’ strike really did it in. Season 3 was where I mostly gave up, and from my occasional watching, it seems to have jumped the shark in a most spectacular mannet since then.)
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