Positive Discrimination: Difference between revisions

* ''[[The Office]]'' (USA): Even though Stanley and Darryl have clearly been obnoxious or inappropriately insubordinate, Michael constantly ignores it for the cameras, fearing accusations of racism. The show is also pretty impressive when it comes to gender: the female characters are exactly as flawed as the male ones.

* ''[[Spin City]]'' averted this cleverly with [[Twofer Token Minority|gay black guy]] Carter. Carter was highly intelligent, extremely good at his job and often acted as the voice of reason, but he was a flawed character in other ways such as his neuroses and hyper-sensitivity to racial and sexual discrimination.

* In the BBC version of ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'', the character of Djaq is a [[Twofer Token Minority|double token minority]]- the one non-white outlaw and the only female member of the group. She is frequently shown to be more intelligent than the other characters and is usually the one to tell them off for being idiots, kicks butt while fighting, has incredible healing powers, and can always get herself out of a fix with her Saracen know-how.

** It got worse in S3, in which Djaq (whose [[Twofer Token Minority]] status was at least alleviated by a likeable personality and a plausible backstory for her assortment of skills) is written out and replaced by Kate, whose characterization was a mess of [[Double Standard]]s. Essentially, the portrayal was an strange blend of [[Damsel in Distress|blatant sexism]] and [[Faux Action Girl|wannabe feminism]]: on the one hand, the only female of the gang was invariably the one that was constantly getting arrested, kidnapped or injured (usually due to her inability to keep a lid on her emotions), her only objective on the show was to become Robin's girlfriend (with a [[Love Triangle]] with two other outlaws on the side), and she was an otherwise completely useless member of the gang who contributed nothing and was in need of constant supervision. At the same time, Positive Discrimination played its part considering none of the male outlaws ever seemed to notice just how much of a liability she really was. Instead she was allowed to [[Abuse Is Okay When Its Female On Male|abuse and criticize them constantly]], was never required to take responsibility for her actions, and had all the outlaws fall inexplicably in love with her despite her serious attitude problem. Too useless to be an [[Action Girl]] and too obnoxious to be a worthy [[Damsel in Distress]], no one really know ''what'' the writers were trying to achieve with her.