Disappearing Diversity (LOST)

As we have been talking about in class throughout the year, heightening with Mr Bolos's "TV Tokenism", there is a prominent issue of race in television. We talked about the TV show LOST and how it started out with this huge diversity of characters, a very powerful and good part of the show, but as it came to the end all the ethnic characters had been killed off and all the white people were left.

In my ventures to watch the anticipated LOST series finale, there was a little "pre-show" lets call it. The "pre-show" had the two writers and some of the actors/actresses talking and reflecting upon their experiences. A huge part of this pre-show was to explain how diverse and amazing the cast was, how they had been flown in from so many places and represented so many people. The writers however failed to mention the fact that they killed off all these characters. Obviously the fact that they started out so "diverse" made them think that they had done their job and could now kill them all off so they can play with their more "relatable" characters, as Mr Bolos talked about with the "key audience".

The even more interesting part to me was hearing the actors and actresses real accents. For example, Naveen Andrews played Sayid, a former Iraqi torturer. In the TV show Sayid is given an Iraqi accent, yet in real life he has a very strong British accent. This completely shocked me. Here I was on the show, taking him by appearance and believing this accent, yet the "diversity" is all just created by the false accent. As I researched Naveen Andrews I found out another interesting fact: he is actually of Indian decent, not Iraqi. Again, here I was believing the false Iraqi background and accent and they actually took a British man of Indian decent. 
Also, Jin, played by Daniel Dae Kim, is an American born actor who actually had to learn Korean, and fake his Korean-American accent. And his Korean is apparently so bad that he is laughed at by native Koreans (although this is a "fact" from my father, so it's not completely trustworthy).

As I researched these actors I realized a very interesting thing. Even if a show looks diverse, it's not necessarily what it seems. Yes, American shows are going to have American actors, but it can be quite deceiving when actually watching a show. You don't realize that the, say, Chinese people on your American TV show are just barely fumbling over their new basic Chinese skills, or that the Italian on your show is faking an Italian accent and is actually from Canada.