Supplemental Post #3 - Lilla

 Both the Gray and the Han readings talk about narrowcasting and niche audiences, practices that on a surface level, I would normally find counterintuitive. Why focus on a specific demographic that only constitutes a fraction of your viewership? At the same time, the Han reading also points out the issue with choosing a niche audience that isn't niche enough, and how the attempt to cater to a pan-Asian American audience led to disjointed programming that interested very few.

This got me thinking about ensemble shows with multiracial casts. Are these written for a white audience by default? How often are they white savior narratives? How often do non-white characters embody a select few, that don't represent the average experience of those communities? How often, even in true ensemble shows, are BIPOC relegated to sidekicks and secondary characters? And is it possible to truly create an ensemble show that caters to people from all racial backgrounds?

Admittedly, I'm not a TV person, so the only show I could think of off the top of my head was This Is Us. I only watched the first season of the show, and it was around the time it came out in 2016, but I do remember discourse around show centering on how This Is Us would finally unite Black and White viewers alike. Again, only having seen the first season, it somewhat felt like a white savior show that reduced its Black protagonist's storyline to a clichéd sob story (admitted, the entire show is a clichéd sob story). The show is intended to be about average people, but nothing about it felt average. It felt contrived, overtly aware of its aim to unite. 

And I think contrived is the key word here. It was an issue with ImaginAsian, and it is an issue with shows that aim to check all racial boxes. When you try to get everyone, you get no one, and that highlights the importance of narrowcasting to me.