Some thoughts on representation in Pretty Little Liars

[dolorosa_12]

A few days ago, I was discussing (good and bad) representation of women in stories with a bunch of friends. I concluded the conversation by saying that it's easier to get representation right if you're not relying on a single female character to represent the broad spectrum of women and girls (see, for example, the original Star Wars trilogy, or Pacific Rim - their sole female characters are fantastic, but they're representative of only one way to be a woman). I also remarked that I prefer shows, films and books with female protagonists, and, if possible, written by women, as they tend to contain multiple and varied female characters. This is not a fail-safe approach, but it does work a lot of the time.

It's for this reason that Pretty Little Liars became my favourite currently airing television show: at its heart is the friendship of four teenage girls and their complicated relationship with a missing friend (also a teenage girl). One of the girls is a lesbian and has romantic and sexual relationships with other girls that are granted an equal status to her friends' relationships with boys and men. There are important teenage girl antagonists, and all the girls' mothers play major roles in their character growth as well. In terms of the representation of girls and their stories, Pretty Little Liars gets a resounding A+ from me.

Which is why it's so disappointing to say that the show has a serious problem with racism. Although Emily, the lesbian character, is of Asian origin (until the last episode, her exact heritage was uncertain, but there was a throwaway line to 'your Filipina grandmother', so I assume the character is meant to be of Filipino heritage like Shay Mitchell, her actress) and her parents are portrayed positively, we've now seen three black characters killed off. One was a violent stalker, and another has been revealed to be an antagonist (the third was Emily's first girlfriend), and without context, their deaths wouldn't have been such an issue. The problem is twofold. Firstly, there were equivalent white antagonist characters who have not been killed off. More to the point, none of the other love interest characters (all of whom are white) have been killed off. Which leads me to the second problem: these three dead characters were the only black characters on the whole show.

Remember how I said a lot of bad representation wouldn't be so bad if there were simply a broader range of people being portrayed? Pretty Little Liars is - Emily and her family aside - blindingly white. And there's no narrative reason why this should be the case. Filipina-American Emily herself is a departure from the Emily in the book series from which Pretty Little Liars is derived, who apparently has pale white skin and red hair. There's no reason why another of the central four girls (or, indeed, all of them) couldn't have been similarly played by a POC. I love the actresses we do have - a large amount of the success of the show is due to the fantastic chemistry between Troian Bellisario,* Ashley Benson, Lucy Hale and Shay Mitchell - but if their roles had been given to other equally talented actresses, I'm sure I would've loved them just as much. By the same token, other secondary or tertiary characters in the show who are played by white actors could easily have been played by POC. That they're not reflects a failure of imagination on the part of the Pretty Little Liars writers and casting people.

If you have a broader range of characters played by POC - protagonists, love interests, friends and enemies of your protagonists - you are able to represent a broader range of humanity.** It also makes it less likely that you'll fall into traps like the ones I've outlined in relation to Pretty Little Liars. Your POC won't all die or end up turning evil, because enough of the roles for protagonists and non-antagonistic secondary characters will be being played by POC. It really is that simple.

I'm disappointed in Pretty Little Liars because it gets it so right in terms of female characters, and so wrong in other areas. And it's wrong in a frustratingly common way, with a frustratingly easy solution.

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*I'm aware that Troian Bellisario's mother is black, but since her character's family are all played by white actors, I'm assuming that the show wants us to read her as white.
** For an example of a show that mostly gets this right, see Sleepy Hollow. Only two of its main seven characters are played by white actors.

ETA: Janel Parrish, who plays Mona (an antagonist of the four main girls), has a Chinese mother. Sorry for leaving this out before. I still think my point about the show's representation of black people stands, though.

Comments

[malinowy.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched more than two or three episodes of Pretty Little Liars, so I can't really comment on it. However, I started thinking of the biggest and most popular Finnish daily series (I'd like to call it a soap opera but it's not really one, more like our equivalent to Eastenders or something like that) and how it has bothered me for ages that they don't have a single POC character. They've been doing really well with LGBT characters, even in its first years about ten years ago and now some of the biggest story lines involving gay characters. But POC characters. They've literally had one character of Asian origin about nine years ago and that character was an exchange student so she was around for a few months only. That's it. I think two of the current characters are supposed to be half-Russian, but that's about as far as they go. Given how the city the show is set in (Helsinki) has a lot of people of African and Asian origin, it would make so much sense to have at least one POC family in the series. But nope, nothing. It seriously bothers me so incredibly much but it doesn't even look like they're going to introduce new characters. Yes, we're a white country, but not that white.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's so disappointing when stories get it so right in one area of representation, and so wrong in another. You sort of expect more of shows that are good in terms of (e.g.) representation of women, or of LGBT people. Because it's like the writers get it - they get that good stories should represent a broad range of human beings - and then they fall short of their own ideals.