ceo of shadowrose

TAG employs a lot of tactics that many cartoons do that want to seem racially diverse without actually committing to it in any meaningful way. There are plenty of secondary and minor characters who are Black, Brown, and Asian, but at no point does anyone meaningfully connect to or express their culture.

We have no idea what Kayo's ethnicity is. She's a rebooted version of a Malaysian character, who has an Indian name (Tanusha), who's voiced by a Black English woman (Angel Coulby), and the show acknowledges none of it. We speculate a lot in fandom about her background because canon gives us so few footholds.

She's a textbook "ambiguously brown" character. A character who's Brown on a surface level, but whose ethnicity and culture is non-specific and hand waved away. The result is "brown" character uninformed by any actual identity, allowing the show to look diverse at first glance, while the character is still functionally white within the narrative.

Brains is canonically Indian, and his voice actor Kayvan Novak played him that way. But that acting choice is literally the only reason we know Brains is Indian. The writing gives us no indication where he's from, what his background is, even though (because of his accent) we know he spent, at the very least, a significant amount of his childhood in India. If Novak had decided to play him with a British accent instead (because Novak is British-Iranian) we'd have two ambiguously brown characters on our hands. I would even argue that though Brains has a canonized identity and an Indian accent, he still operates in many ways as an ambiguously brown character because the script does not acknowledge him as being Indian whatsoever.

It's not just a writing problem either, the art style is another one. Every single person in the universe has straight hair which is CRAZY in any show, but especially in one where we're hopping across the globe every single episode. Dark brown eyes also just straight up don't exist? Neither do two toned lips. They made the choice for everyone to have a very defined nose bridge, but undefined nose bridges are a very common feature in many ethnic groups, especially for Black and East Asian people.

It's a bunch of seemingly small choices like this that pile up and create an art style that's pretty hostile to the depiction of racialized people.

The art style is also restrictive in terms of body type as well. And though I love the young disabled girl in the hoverchair, and Buddy Pendergast who's an amputee, that's two minor characters in the series entire 70+ episode run. They meet new people every single episode, they had so many chances to add people with varying disabilities.

As for Queer representation, I don't know near enough about Britian's media landscape at the time to critique that aspect. Censorship of queerness is a big issue in children's media, and it feels unfair of me to just say they're lacking queer representation when I don't know the context this show was created in.

That said, I wanna note that a show centering on familial love between five (mostly) adult brothers living together in a multi-generational household really does push back against western ideas of heteronormativity.

So! Unfortunately,

The show highlights five white men as main character while simultaneously doing a poor job writing and visually depicting racialized people.

Disabled representation is extremely slight.

And, due to lack of knowledge, I personally am unable to meaningfully critique the lack of Queer representation, though the show's main premise does, in my opinion, push back against western heteronormativity

Now, when you said that it's a kids show and "isn't about diversity as a main point" so they don't talk about it... that's the wrong way to think about diversity and representation. It just is. A show can be about anything and for anyone and still portray racialized people well.

They could've had Brains speaking in Hindi or Punjabi. They could've incorporated Malaysian fashion into Kayo's design. They could've referenced cultural foods, or holidays, or turns of phrase. Culture and background can be seamlessly woven into their characters.

Brains stutter takes on a whole new meaning when it's acknowledged he's speaking a second language. Kayo hiding familial ties to the Hood takes on a whole new meaning when you acknowledge she comes from a family of immigrants and likely had to assimilate. And this is just off the top of my head! They could have and should have done so much more than what they did.

And not gonna lie, this show should've been about exploring and interacting with cultures. The Tracy's hop around the globe every single episode. The fact that they went to all these places and didn't include more cultural detail is a monumental missed opportunity. The world would've felt fuller and the show would've been better if they had.

Now about race swapping. I already said the Tracy's (including Jeff and Lucille) didn't have to be white and gave examples so I'm not going to repeat myself. I'm not surprised they didn't go that route, but I want to reiterate that that was a choice they made to have five white male main characters. Just like they chose to make Brains Indian, they chose to keep the Tracys white.

Is it an inherently wrong or bad choice? No, of course not. But when your entire main cast is made up of white guys, and then you keep more ensemble white characters (Penny, Parker, Grandma), and then you refuse to give your only major characters of color any cultural substance (Kayo and Brains), well you've just made a series of decisions that center whiteness and white people to an overwhelming degree while simultaneously reducing the ethnic backgrounds of your (very few) characters of color to nothing.

So yeah. They didn't represent racialized people very well at all and they should've done way more. I personally love the idea of a Black-British Penny and Parker <3, I think they would've balanced out the cast nicely since they didn't wanna change the Tracy brother's race. But there were plenty of routes they could've taken, and the few racialized characters we do have are rife with missed opportunity.

Now about the art style. The backgrounds and settings are physical sets, while the characters are 3D animation designed to mimic the puppets from the original series. It's a super cool fusion of artistic techniques and I respect the hell out of it.

But it is absolutely a cop out for any production to use art style as an excuse for failing to properly represent racialized features. Like there is no excuse why Colonel Casey couldn't have had braids or cornrows or locs. No reason why the little boy in Extraction couldn't have had an afro or twists. There's definitely no reason why dark brown eyes don't exist in this universe. Even the Japanese grandpa and granddaughter in Hyperspeed have light brown eyes.