Hacker Cinema
Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist
2020 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by Austin Winsberg
After an unusual event, Zoey Clarke, a whip-smart computer coder forging her way in San Francisco, suddenly starts to hear the innermost wants, thoughts and desires of the people around her through popular songs.
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2 comments on Hacker News
Aside from what my sibling comment said about a fantasy world, why'd you pick Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist and The Dragon Prince? Surely shows like Abbott Elementary and Euphoria would be more culturally relevant? Or recent animated movies Encanto and Turning Red?
And even as far as the Dragon Prince is concerned, it's interesting how you mention it as overrepresentation when much of the diversity is relegated to secondary characters. Callum, Rayla, Claudia, Soren and Viren are all white (elves are in some ways minority coded, but the British accent makes that remain firmly in the realm of coding), and seem to be straight and cisgender.
I personally love stories with "overrepresentation" - and not only just to make up for a massive history of erasure and underrepresentation. It makes me so happy to hear people saying "I usually don't feel seen, but THIS character, they look/sound/act like me!" Honestly, as a gay man I still don't feel especially seen - and as far as gay characters I feel connected to beyond just that, it's pretty limited. I can think of maybe... 4 main characters? And they're all in the past few years.
Not every show, but lots of shows over represent minorities in main cast in what appears to be a conscious DEI effort.
For example, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist gives the impression of high representation of minorities in tech (Sprqpoint is extremely DEI friendly being a woke silicon valley tech company, but even the main character's non-techy neighbor is a black genderfluid woman dating a gay black man).
The Dragon Prince gives the impression of high representation of minorities as well (with 1 main character and his kingly father black, 1 main character having gay parents, the rulers of the neighboring country being lesbian, etc).
I'm not saying that's wrong, just that minority groups don't need to make up 126% of TV actors in order to be overrepresented in main cast.
Heck, even outside of media, look at the Supreme Court. Soon 2/9 justices will be black, which is 22% of the court - an over representation of the black population. Again, not that I have a problem with that, just that DEI efforts can cause high visibility groups (such as a TV show's main cast) to be overrepressented by minorities.