From Ask Ausiello ...

[apocalypsos]

The italics are mine.

Question: As much as the female fans of Supernatural seem to hate the idea, I think that Bella and Ruby added a nice dynamic last season. Will the show's writers ever stand up to the fans and give at least one of the brothers and ongoing love interest? -- Jeff
Ausiello: Not if they value their life. And based on Eric Kripke's response to this question, I'm guessing they do. "The most dangerous job in Hollywood is to be the recurring female lead on Supernatural," Kripke laughs. "No, the formula in terms of romance that really has proven to work best for us is a girl in every port. Not that there’s not ongoing characters. But there are going to be recurring female characters threaded in and out of the story, and they will affect the storylines. But just to have them in sort of passive love interest roles is something that hasn’t really worked."

Oh, faaaaaabulous. I'm part of THAT fandom.

*headdesk*

(Not that I didn't know, but ... you know, past Kripke's lips, it sounds even worse.)

Comments

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

Um, I really don't nwat this to sound like I'm jumping on you, because this is meant as an observation, not a 'gotcha'.

I live in Vancouver, where SPN is filmed, and it's an EXTREMELY diverse city. I routinely encounter situations here where I, as a white person, am in the minority. Also, there are quite a few actors of colour based out of Vancouver. Bottom line, if SPN wanted to cast more characters of colour, in either major or minor roles, there'd be absolutely nothing preventing them.

Hell, I know someone who has worked as an extra on a casual basis, and on more than one occasion she's been told she can't be in the background of a scene because that would make the background look too Asian. After hearing that, I started watching the crowd scenes of TV shows and movies shot here. On average, the background composition of a scene that takes place in public is significantly whiter than you'd see in real life.

Now, granted, a lot of shows that are shot here aren't actually set here. When Vancouver is standing in for Generic Midwestern Town, USA, as it often does, matching our city's real diversity would be problematic. I doubt you'd see as many people of colour and as many different PoC ethnicities in, say, Terre-Haute, Indiana or similar.

But even when Vancouver is playing itself, or playing Seattle (which it very commonly does) there tend to be more white people in filmed scenes than in reality. And your average TV viewer is usually pretty aware that San Francisco/Portland/Seattle/Vancouver have sizeable East Asian minorities, for example. So my Chinese-Canadian acquaintance carrying a shopping bag in the background really shouldn't be a problem. But Vancouver/Seattle/etc. are often portrayed as significantly whiter than they actually are.

I don't think it's a problem specific to Vancouver-shot shows, mind you. I have flisters who live in Southern California and frequently complain that shows set in LA are bleached out in comparison to the real racial mix you'd see the moment you set foot outside your front door. Now, my Chinese-Canadian friend's experience has been of deliberate exclusion. I suspect that it's far more common for showrunners and casting directors to do this stuff subconsciously (i.e. Actors of colour just don't get considered for a role. Or roles are theoretically being cast colour-blind but somehow the best person for the role is always white). But conscious or not, generally speaking what we see onscreen is an artificially lightened environment. It's not that the actors (and extras) of colour don't exist here, it's that they're more likely to be passed over.