Article written by Dylan Bell.
One of the most important aspects of any good movie or television series are the actors that perform in them, and when an actor is chosen for a role it can either make or break a film, so choosing the right the actor is crucial.
But what happens when an actor is chosen to perform the same role multiple times for different movies or tv shows? At first it may just be a coincidence but then you start noticing more and more this actor is plays a lot of the same type of characters. Why is that? Well, it’s because they have been typecasted, which means simply that Hollywood has decided that this actor can only perform one role.
This is prevalent all throughout the media industry, from A-list movie actors such as Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, who only do comedic roles, or Samuel L. Jackson, who’s so type cast I can’t name a single film where he doesn’t play some form of badass motherf**ker, or Michael Cera, who’s only ever portrayed the awkward geek, all the way to tv stars such as Jennifer Coolridge, you know the blonde loud mouth with lots of cleavage and a weird accent, yes her. This is sometimes for a reason such as Adam Sandler who can really only do comedic roles (sometimes not even that), but other times it’s because that’s all the actor is known for and is never allowed to do anything else such as Michael Cera who’s only work that strays from his usual is Youth in Revolt, and even then, he spends the first half of the movie doing his usual shtick.
So why, why does this happen? Well in most instances it’s because of name recognition, the public and more importantly for some reason producers, know these actors are good at portraying this type of character and know if they cast them in this role they will attract an audience who thinks “oh I know him/her they where good in (insert movie title) I’ll see this movie then” (admit it you’ve had this conversation with someone haven’t you, I know I have) and then in most cases the movie makes bank perpetuating the cycle.
This also happens in a more sinister, yet possibly less intentional, way when it comes to characters who aren’t white, typically playing the same type of role just with different actors. For example the token black guy or the black best friend is very common within media and often that black character doesn’t have much of a character arc if at all that isn’t somehow tied to them being black. But there’s also the effeminate foreign man prevalent in shows such as That 70’s Show with Fez or The Big Bang Theory with Raj both characters that have some story to them but much less then their white counterparts and typically revolves around them being very effeminate, both of which I don’t think I need to say is problematic at best.
But this problem isn’t just prevalent with races it also exists when talking about character with disabilities, often times they aren’t portrayed in the best light even if the intention was meant positively, for example in Glee, Artie who was resigned to be in a wheelchair, many people with disabilities where upset that this character was not portrayed by someone who actually needed a wheel chair and that part of his story arc was the cliché ‘I’m in a wheelchair but I wish I could walk again’, yes this type of story happens in real life but it’s so over done that people with a disability don’t want to continue seeing this, fortunately this is slowly dying out as writers are learning they need to actually consult disabled people in order to write them properly, slowly.
So why do those type of typecasting exist? Well most of the time it isn’t nefarious it’s mostly because the majority of writers for tv shows and film are white men and therefore don’t know how to write anything that isn’t white men, you may think I am over exaggerating and perhaps I am but go look at some of your favourite tv shows or movies and have a look at who wrote those films, go on I’ll wait… Mostly white men ain’t it?
Thankfully this trend is slowly being remedied with more diverse writing teams being able to write non-white characters in way that best represents what it’s like not being white. Now, you may be thinking at this point why is he doing an article about this if it’s slowly changing as he said, well first of all good question, gold star for you, and secondly it’s because it may be slowly disappearing but the fact is it still exists and most of the time it’s not enough. The best way to help start fixing this problem is for us as an audience to able to see this as a problem and point it out directly, because if the audience sees and complains about it then writers will eventually get the idea to diversify their writing teams, but until then it’s up to us to point out when they are wrong, even if it is unintentional.
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