More Tokenism

The past few weeks in class, we have talked a lot about tokenism in television. Tokenism is the inserting of minority characters in an attempt to create diversity. At the end of friday's class period, I was told the only homework is to think about the world critically while on break. So, I decided to look for tokenism while outside of school.

Being Jewish, during Christmas break there are many times when my friends are celebrating the holiday with their family. During these times, I watch movies. So far this break, I have seen three movies. Elysium, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, and This is the End. While watching all three of these films, I found perfect examples of the different kinds Tokenism we examined in class.

During Elysium, a movie staring Matt Damon in which he is given special strength and assigned to save the world, token characters are most defiantly present. First off, Damon's best bud Julio is hispanic. Julio serves as a "Buddy Character". This is a character that is an under-developed minority due to the lack of screen-time. While Matt's character has many flashbacks to his childhood, Julio's past remains a mystery to the viewers. During these flashbacks, Matt's character becomes complicated, and these flashbacks stir up moral conflict, therefore complicating his character. Julio however, remains a "2-dimensional" character.  Not only does the movie have a buddy character, it also incorporates an "Authority Minority". This token character is the president of the affluent community, and makes no rash decisions. President Patel is a level-headed minority in a position of power making him the "Authority-Minority" of the film.

The second movie I watched was Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters. Although I felt this movie was awful, I was interested in the tokenism present during the film. A buddy character is present: a black, half goat half human, best friend of the main, white character Percy Jackson. This was a pretty basic character, not very exciting. The token character that did interest me was the character Tyson: a Cyclops. Tyson also served as a token character, and joined the LONG list of token characters in entertainment to die heroically. Tyson leaps in front of a flying arrow to save Percy, and then falls off a cliff. As we discussed in class, Token characters almost always have heroic deaths, whether or not it fits their personality up to that point.

The last movie I saw this Christmas was This is the End. For the third time. This time, I was able to look at it critically, and saw the movie in a different light. The movie is about 6 famous actors playing themselves while surviving the apocalypse. There are 5 white men, and a black man. The black guy, Craig Robinson, serves as this movies token character. All of the 5 white men have had major roles in many over-lapping films, are are very used to working together. Craig on the other hand, is featured in only one of these films, and plays the body guard to one of the white men. Like the majority of  token characters to come before him, he dies a heroic death, distracting a monster so three of the white men can live.

I'm sure I will continue to watch movies as most of my friends are out of town, and now I know what I'll be looking for in the rest of the movies. Tokenism is present in all aspect of American Media, is very easy to see once you know what to look for.