Five-Token Band: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

* To deliver [[An Aesop]] about accepting others' differences. This version was commonly used in [[The Nineties]] when diversity was considered a big deal, before it became [[Snark Bait]].

 

 

 

 

* [[White Male Lead]]

* [[Black Best Friend]] of the white male. [[The Lancer]], often [[Closer to Earth]] than the white male, and great at sports. Needless to say, he tends to get [[Positive Discrimination]].

* [[The Chick|White female]]. Love interest of the White Male Lead.

* Other white male. Tends to be [[The Big Guy|fat or large]]. Bonus if he's [[Informed Judaism|Jewish]].

 

Compare the more economical [[Token Trio]], and the villainous counterpart, [[Equal Opportunity Evil]]. If it's people with power, it's likely a [[Cosmopolitan Council]]. Compare/contrast [[Multinational Team]]. See also: [[Token Minority]] ([[Captain Obvious|duh]]).

 

== Advertising ==

 

** ''[[G Gundam]]'' did it first, although there '''is''' a slightly reasonable explanation for this, since the setting is a worldwide tournament and the [[Five-Man Band]] were the ones who realized there was something more important going on.

** Yoh: Japanese, [[The Hero]]

** Manta: Japanese, [[The Smart Guy]]

** Anna: Japanese, [[The Mentor]]

** Horokeu/Horohoro/[[Dub Name Change|Trey]]: Ainu, [[The Lancer]]

** Lyserg: British, [[Sixth Ranger Traitor]]

** Ryunosuke/Ryu/Rio: Japanese, [[The Big Guy]]

** Silva: [[Magical Native American|American Indian]], [[The Mentor]]

** Mimi: Japanese

** Michael: White

** Steve: Jewish

** Lou: Native American

 

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]''

** ''The All-New, All-Different X-Men.'' The wheelchair-using mentor (Professor X, representing the handicapped) and Caucasian male team leader (Cyclops from the original team, which was all-white) were joined by an African woman (Storm), an Asian (Sunfire), an Apache (Thunderbird), a German (Nightcrawler), an Irishman (Banshee), a Russian (Colossus), and a Canadian ([[Wolverine]]). The in-universe reason the "All New All Different" X-Men were so diverse was that, back then, mutants were assumed to be danged ''rare,'' and Professor X had to gather together those few he could find from all around the world. Of course, as [[Loads and Loads of Characters|more and more]] mutants kept getting introduced in subsequent years, mutant rarity became a forgotten concept, until a bit of ''[[House of M]]'' [[Status Quo Is God|forcibly restored it.]]

** The teen series ''[[Generation X]]'' is a subversion. The Asian girl (Jubilee) is the class clown, the Latino (Skin) is physically the ugliest member, the redneck is the brain, the black girl (M) is the [[Alpha Bitch]], etc.

* [[Chris Claremont]]'s rebooted ''Gen13'' has a team of a poor Irish-American kid (whose father was a firefighter who died in 9/11), a Black girl, a Chinese-American girl and a Black Muslim boy ''[[Twofer Token Minority|in a wheelchair]]''.

* The ''[[Young Avengers]]'', now that their white male leader is gone, are a shining example of how Marvel are really, ''really'' trying. Patriot (black) leads an interspecies gay couple, two girls and an android. Young!Kang looked asian in the ''Young Avengers' (or at least biracial).

* The [[Justice League of America|Justice League]] goes back and forth on this. As of the 2011 DC relaunch, the Justice League has [[The Atom]] (Chinese American), Cyborg (African American), [[Firestorm]] (African American), and Element Woman (Korean American), with Vixen (African), Fire (Brazillian), August General in Iron (Chinese), and Rocket Red (Russian) in the team's [[West Coast Team|spin-off title]]. The Justice League Dark has Zatanna (Italian American), John Constantine (English bisexual) and Madame Xanadu (bisexual).

* Very much so in the first ''[[Atari Force]]'' series, which featured two Caucasians, a [[Black Best Friend]], one Asian Indian, and a ''Chinese/Irish'' security chief out to save humanity.

* ''[[Pride High]]'' has this: Mindsweeper (half black, gay), Kid Mischief (Puerto Rican, gay), Suravi (Indian, blind, lesbian), Scotch Bonnet (Scottish, bi-curious), Chip Cheetah (British), Unison (from Hong Kong), Kid Olympus (half Chinese, half Greek), Kilauea (Hawaiian), Cameron Ashton (gay), and Lightspot (gay). [[Word of God]] says that diversity was not the reasoning as the characters were created by different people, and his own experiences in high school were just as diverse (though the diversity of gay characters ''was'' intentional.

 

== Fan Works ==

 

== Films -- Animation ==

 

== Films -- Live-Action ==

* A classic example (and one that actually worked pretty well, though verging into [[The Squad]]) would be ''Sahara''. Here we had an American tank crew (commanded by [[Humphrey Bogart]]) pick up: a bunch of British Soldiers (one upper-crust officer, one working class), one Aussie, one South African, one Sudanese (British Colonial), one Free Frenchman, and two prisoners (one very Nazi German pilot, one harmless Italian). These (Western) Allies in miniature then hole up at the only water source for 100 miles and try to play Alamo with a German battalion. Though in those days, it was more of a propaganda emphasis on Allied unity in the face of the Nazi threat.

* One of the archetypical examples: The [[Steven Spielberg]] comedy ''[[The Goonies]]'' (1985). The formulaic band of seven kids includes a jock (the big brother), the smart quiet kid (the younger brother), the geek/gadgeteer (who is also Asian), the fat comic-relief boy (Jewish), the token pretty girl (and love interest of the older brother), the tough girl (the tomboy), and the loudmouthed guy who just can't shut up. Not so much different ethnicities (all except the Asian kid are white) but rather different personality archetypes.

* The commando team in ''[[Executive Decision]]'' consists of a white guy, an Asian guy, a Hispanic guy and a black guy, and is led by [[Steven Seagal]], who might be part Native American (seriously, does anyone know for sure what Steven Seagal is?). To add bonus minority points, {{spoiler|the black guy is injured early on and spends most of the movie paralyzed from the neck down}}.

* In the notorious ''Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave'', the heroic [[Bruce Lee Clone]] must [[Gotta Catch Them All|track down and defeat]] [[Quirky Miniboss Squad|some villains]] consisting of "A Japanese, a black man, a white man, a Mexican, and a cowboy."

* In ''[[The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou]]'', the crew of Steve's ship (on the hunt for the Jaguar Shark) consists of Steve himself, Klaus Daimler, Vikram Ray, Bobby Ogata, Renzo Pietro, Vladimir Wolodarsky, Anne-Marie Sakowitz, Pel?os Santos, and seven interns from the University of North Alaska. Of course, as a world-sailing international icon, this is justified, even though Steve points out that none of them actually have outside nautical experience.

 

== Literature ==

* [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]

** A meta-example: the original lineup for the rebuilt [[Rogue Squadron]] in the eponymous books was deliberately chosen on politically correct grounds by the Alliance leadership, given how important a propaganda symbol the squadron is. However, this is a ''Star Wars Galaxy'' Twelve Token Band, so it consists of: the token Bothan (for their work in finding the second Death Star), the token Twi'lek (Ryloth is coming into its own at this time), ''other'' other token aliens (an insectoid, a wolfman, and another... thing, to represent the more non-human ones), the token refugee (a woman), the token kid brought up in jail (also a woman), the token precocious kid (who's also from Tatooine), and ''two'' token Thyferrans (including one woman) because that's the only way to please the two factions of the planet producing the most critical medical supply in the galaxy. In fact at one point, a good Corellian pilot isn't allowed to join because they already have two Corellians.

** ''Young Jedi Knights'' has as its main characters: one male human, two female humans (one of whom is from a primitive planet), one male Wookiee, and a miniature protocol droid. The [[Sixth Ranger]] is also a male human, but was written in the ''Dark Nest'' trilogy as bisexual. It's somewhat subverted by the fact the droid was built by C-3PO, and the Wookiee is Chewbacca's nephew.

* In ''[[The Egypt Game]]'', the Egypt gang consists of a white girl, a black girl, her younger brother, an Asian girl, a white boy and an Asian boy. The white girl is more-or-less the protagonist. Somewhat justified by the fact that the novel was written in [[The Sixties]]. And in the sequel ''The Gypsy Game'' we learn the white boy is of Gypsy descent.

* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[IT]]'', the Loser's Club is made up from kids who are ostracized by the others for various reasons: Bill stutters, Ben is fat, Eddie is physically weak, Stan is Jewish, Mike is black, Beverly is poor, and Richie just can't keep his mouth shut.

* ''[[The House of Night]]'' has Damien and later Jack, two gay boys who quickly become a [[Token Minority Couple]], Shaunee, a black girl, her white mental "twin", Erin, and Stevie Rae, a country girl from the middle of nowhere with an Oklahoma accent. Add in Zoey, the main character of [[Magical Native American|Cherokee descent]], and you definitely have one of these forming.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** Season one starts with a [[Sassy Black Woman]], an Asian [[Perky Goth]], a white [[Hollywood Nerd]] wheelchair user, a white Jewish girl with two gay dads and a white [[Camp Gay]]. the later additions to the team are black and Asian boys, an [[Ambiguously Jewish]] kid, a [[Spicy Latina]] girl, a [[Teen Pregnancy|pregnant teenage girl]], [[Anything That Moves|and Brittany]].

** Invoked by Sue in the episode "Throwdown" when they split the glee club into two groups and Sue picked all the minorities for her half in an attempt to drive a wedge into the group.

* British sitcom ''All About Me'' centres around a man with an Indian partner and a wheelchair-bound child with cerebral palsy. It scores high for political correctness, low for comedy or interest.

* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' in most of its incarnations.

** ''RPM'' had an African-American Red, Caucasians Blue, Green, Black and Yellow (female) and Asians Gold and Silver (brother and sister).

** ''Samurai'' had Caucasian Red and Yellow, African-American Blue, Latino Green, Asian Pink, and Spanish Gold.

* An arguable example of a villainous version is in the series ''[[Sleeper Cell]]''. The terrorists in both seasons are from several nations and ethnicities as a deliberate counterpoint to the stereotype of all terrorists being Arabs. Of course, this is probably [[Truth in Television]] as well.

* ''[[The Knights]] of Prosperity.'' Obviously, the only American one is the leader.

* The Swedish kids show ''[[Vintergatan]] 5A'' (''Milky Way 5A'') had a cast consisting of a Spanish-Swedish youngster, an African-American-Swedish youngster, a Swedish youngster, and a Swedish oldster. In the sequel, ''Vintergatan 5B'', a Russian youngster was added.

** Lampshaded when the dean sees the main cast assembled:

** Gag is extended later in the same episode when designing the mascot for the new school team, ''The Human Beings''. Wanting to represent every ethnicity and background without explicitly mentioning any of them, the Dean eventually creates a powder-white, amorphous blob man with a slit for a mouth as the new mascot.

* ''[[Look Around You]]'' spoofs the tendency for maths textbooks to go for an unlikely level of diversity in the characters in their problems, as well as the general nature of such problems themselves:

* The kids in ''[[Space Cases]]'' were each from a different planet, and one was from a different galaxy. Harlan Band, the token human, is an interesting case in that he very much played the role the white guy usually plays in this trope as both the leader and the complainer, but he was played by a black actor. Also, he had a strong case of [[Fantastic Racism]].

 

== Music ==

* Girl Authority is a ''nine''-token music band consisting of both racial and social/hobby tokens.

* The Pussycat Dolls

* Averted ''hard'' by The Tokens (famous for "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"), which is made up of five white men.

 

* All of the NXT seasons with the possible exception of season 4 have a pretty diverse set of wrestlers:

** [[The Nexus|Season 1]] had Wade Barrett (white and English), Justin Gabriel (South African), David Otunga (black), Michael Tarver (black), Skip Sheffield (white), Daniel Bryan (white), Darren Young (black) and Heath Slater (white and [[Acceptable Ethnic Targets|ginger]]).

** Season 2 had Kaval (white), Michael McGillicutty (white), Husky Harris (Samoan), Titus O'Neill (black), Eli Cottonwood (Jewish), Percy Watson (black), Alex Riley (white) and Lucky Cannon (white).

** Season 3 had AJ Lee (half Italian, half white), Naomi Night (black), Kaitlyn (white), Jamie Keyes (white), Maxine (mixed race - Cuban, Chinese, Mexican and Lebanese to be specific) and Aksana (white and Lithuanian).

 

== Puppet Shows ==

 

== Radio ==

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[No One Lives Forever]]'' had a trio of multiracial go-go girls who were actually a [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]] with sniper rifles. Before you encountered them, they lounged around their dressing room moaning about how ''so very bored'' they were.

* ''[[Strange Journey]]'''s four major (human) characters are a Japanese man (who became American in the localization, but hey, he could still be Asian), a black man, a Hispanic man, and a white Russian woman.

 

== Web Comics ==

 

== Web Original ==

* The [[Five-Bad Band]] in ''[[The Guild]]'', the Axis of Anarchy consists of a white man, [[Angry Black Man]], [[Ambiguously Gay]] Hispanic, Korean man who can't speak English, and white, paraplegic woman.

* ''[[The Onion]]'': "[http://www.theonion.com/articles/graphic-artist-carefully-assignsethnicities-to-ant,1588/ Graphic Artist Carefully Assigns Ethnicities To Anthropomorphic Recyclables]"

 

== Western Animation ==

* The cast of ''[[The Magic School Bus]]'' is almost mathematically precise: Four boys, four girls. Four white students (one of whom is [[Informed Judaism|Jewish]]), two black students, one Asian, and one Hispanic. All of them have very different personalities, except for the one who [[The Generic Guy|doesn't have a personality at all]].

** The Ashleys as well. Ashley A. is the stuck-up white leader, Ashley B. is the prissy, sarcastic second-in-command black girl, Ashley Q. is the tough, [[Jerkass]] white girl, and Ashley T. is the quiet Hispanic girl.

* The cast of ''[[Class of 3000]]''.

* The four main characters of the ''[[Bratz]]'' cartoons (and doll line). There's the white girl Cloe, the sassy black girl Sasha, the super smart Asian Jade, and vaguely [[Granola Girl|GranolaGirlish]] Latina Yasmin. The fifth ethnicity is usually covered by whatever one-shot character is hanging out with them in that particular episode/movie.

* ''[[Disney Fairies]]'', where there are five fairies in the group. They consist of the blonde Tinkerbell, the black Iridessa, the Latino Fawn, the Asian Silvermist, and the Southern-accented redhead Rosetta.

** The West Coast Titans: Robin (White male), Cyborg (Black/Robot Male), Beast Boy (Green Male), Raven (Half-Demon Female), Starfire (Tamaranian Female), and Terra (Eastern European Female)

** The East Coast spin-off team features Bumblebee (black female), Speedy (white male raised on a Navajo reservation), Mas and Menos (both Hispanic males) and Aqualad (white Atlantean male). Justified in that with the exceptions of Mas and Menos, the Titans East was made up entirely of teen heroes who had met and teamed up with the original Titans in earlier seasons.

* ''[[Jem]]'', where the Holograms were made up of redhead keyboardist Kimber, the Asian guitarist Aja, the Black drummer/guitarist Shana, and later, the Latino drummer Raya.

* The ''[[Western Animation]]/Histeria}}!'' Kid Chorus consists of one brunette boy, three blonde boys (one short, [[Dumb Blonde|one dumb]], and one from California with a permanent sunburn), a blonde girl, an African-American girl, a teenaged red-haired girl, an Asian girl, a German boy without an accent, and a Native American girl. Oh, [[My Friends and Zoidberg|and an Asian boy and two more kids with tan skin]], but they're only in crowd shots or songs.

* A villainous example in the ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' episode "The Princess and the Bounty Hunters". A team of bounty hunters includes a white female leader, a Russian, a Southern American, an Aboriginal Australian and two asian-ish cat aliens.

** Explicitly parodied with the Ultimen in ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]''. The team contains Wind Dragon (Asian American), Long Shadow (Native American) and Juice (African American), with Shifter and Downpour (Albino alien teenagers) rounding out the team. Justified in-story because the Ultimen are explicitly formed as a marketable, publicity-friendly alternative to the Justice League. It makes sense that the team would need to be as diverse as possible in order to hit all the key demographics.

* ''[[Handy Manny]]''. School principal-Asian. School's coach-black. Town handyman-Hispanic. Lazy Hispanic-Manny's grandfather. Camp gay-Mr. Lopart. Seriously, could a children's show be any more stereotyping?

* On ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' it's oddly the jerky popular kids who fill this trope: [[Jerk Jock|Dash]] (white guy), [[Alpha Bitch|Paulina]] (Hispanic girl), [[Token Good Teammate|Kwan]] (Asian guy), [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Valerie]] (black girl) and sometimes [[The Sixth Ranger|Star]] (white girl). They're like [[Equal Opportunity Evil|Equal Opportunity]] [[Jerkass|Jerk Asses]]. (Valerie is eventually exiled from the group when she becomes a [[Fallen Princess]], though, and becomes [[Anti-Hero|kind of]] nicer.)

 

== Real Life ==

* Many [[Big International Clubs]], unsurprisingly, tend to look like this:

** The UN Security Council, for obvious reasons. Political representation is an important goal of the selection process, which involves voting on nominees from various regions of world to ensure all of them are included.

* When reading books about the space program, after three decades of white males, the crew portraits in the early space shuttle era look like this.

* The current American government: Black-looking Biracial president with a Black first family and a half-Asian half-sister, Jewish Chief of Staff, Irish-Catholic vice president, blonde Secretary of State, three Asian secretaries, [[Word of Gay|(rumored) lesbian]] Homeland Security Secretary, black UN Ambassador, and first female Speaker of the House (representing the gayest city in America, natch). Add in Dick Cheney in a wheelchair and Sarah Palin's [[Teen Pregnancy|family]] and you've got a full house.

* Wow, [[Canada, Eh?|Canada]] is [[Averted Trope|sure looking rough]] against that line-up. The heck with racial diversity; any time that a Québécois finds himself near a position of power, people scream. Considering what a diverse country it is, you'd think that the days of the Caucasian Sausage Fest would be numbered by now. Currently (April 2010) there is one member of the Conservative caucas who is disabled, one Asian woman, and one Inuit woman among thirty-eight members with portfolios. A fair smattering of women, in general, but by and large white men. Of course, geography in Canada is often as important as actual ethnicity, so representing eastern, central and western interests is seen as being "diverse," an is often more politically significant than racial diversity.

* Seriously, college is like this, especially in diverse areas. The military too.

** Particularly colleges in sparsely populated areas where people from from all around, and ones that have extensive international programs. In some you can encounter every race and culture in the world just from walking across campus.

** Many colleges informally adjust the strength of an application based on the gain in diversity represented by an applicant; there have been studies done on SAT scores of entering in-state freshman at the University of Washington which revealed that, if you treat white students as a reference point, Hispanic and black applicants get an informal boost corresponding to 40-70 points, whereas Asians are actually ''penalized'' by around 150 points to compensate for their over-representation relative to the state population (the state is 84% white and the most diverse parts are still 75% white, compared to a respective 7% and 14% being Asian, despite this UW's student body is slightly over 20% Asian when all other groups are almost perfectly scaled by the state demographics). When this troper was in high school, we were warned about how far some colleges go to ensure diversity - some schools go so far as to rank applicants against others from the same high school, then consider the top student at each school while ignoring the others (who are then added back in to compete for unfilled spots until they have accepted enough students) - after all, they can't have one high school get disproportionate representation at that college; scholarships can be offered to help encourage an "under represented" group (racial, economic, geographic, or field of study) to attend. Recruitment materials then tout a college's artificially high degree of diversity - they make sure to have students of every race, from every US state, and international students from no less than 30 countries, even if the school is in rural Minnesota and has a total of 400 students. Essentially, they try to build a Five Hundred Token Band for the same reasons that this trope exists in media.

** [[Boarding School]] in this day and age is very often this, particularly if it's a public one with lots of rich international students.

** In less diverse areas, integration was, yes, a five-token band.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:The Index Team]]

[[Category:The Nineties]]

[[Category:Token Index]]

[[Category:Race Tropes]]