Merlin Meta: Race and Gender Statistics

[such_heights]

beccaelizabeth started this current meta trend off with statistics on Torchwood - out of the speaking characters, how many are female, how many non-white characters are there, and does it pass the Bechdel test (women talking to each other about something other than a man)? dsudis crunched numbers for the first season of Stargate SG-1. lefaym also did a post last year on Doctor Who and the Bechdel Test. (If anyone knows of other, similar sets of stats out there, I'd love to see them!)

So, I decided to run the numbers for Merlin.

A couple of notes - this is looking at speaking characters only, and though I've tried to be objective as possible it's possible I've overlooked things, misjudged things, or that there are simply two valid cases to be made. (Especially with regard to the Bechdel Test, because I really wanted 'The Moment of Truth' to pass, for instance, but I don't think it does.)

Episode Title	No. of Speaking Characters	No. of Women	% of Women	Bechdel Test?	No. of Non-White Characters	% of Non-White Characters	Death Tally
The Dragon's Call	12	6	50%	Pass	2	17%	1 WM 3 WF
Valiant	10	2	20%	Fail	2	20%	2 WM 1 NWM
The Mark of Nimueh	8	3	38%	Pass	2	25%	(none speaking, misc. plague victims)
The Poisoned Chalice	11	3	27%	Fail	2	18%	(none)
Lancelot	8	2	25%	Fail	2	25%	(none)
A Remedy To Cure All Ills	8	2	25%	Fail	1	12.5%	1 WM
The Gates of Avalon	10	3	30%	Fail	1	10%	1 WM 1 WF
The Beginning of the End	12	2	17%	Pass	1	8%	1 WM
Excalibur	11	3	27%	Fail	2	18%	2 WM 1 NWM
The Moment of Truth	10	3	30%	Fail	2	20%	2 WM 1 NWM
The Labyrinth of Gedref	8	2	25%	Pass	1	12.5%	(none)
To Kill the King	8	2	25%	Pass	2	25%	1 WM 1 NWM
Le Morte d'Arthur	8	4	50%	Pass	1	12.5%	1 WF

[code - WM = white male, WF = white female, NWM = non-white male, NWF = non-white female]
[All corrections on both my counting and my maths welcome!]

Overall Stats

Out of 42 speaking parts over the 13 episodes, 27 were white men, 8 were white women, 6 were non-white men, and 1 was a non-white woman, giving us a 76/24 male/female ratio and a 83/17 white/non-white ratio.

In posts in other fandoms, people have made reference to the way these reflect the society in which the show is set. Though I would expect (well, hope for), a roughly 50/50 gender balance, the show's too anachronistic to make it worth my while pulling up figures on the different populations in Britain in the Middle Ages - which means, of course, that the set-up of the show allows them to cast as diversely as they'd like.

I'm not going to make a lot of commentary of the above figures, I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. All this really tells us is a baseline about who gets to speak, not anything else about representation or positive presentation. One last set of stats, however:

Congratulations! You've just ended up in Ye Olde Camelot. Here's how your survival chances are looking based on your gender and skin colour once you get there, assuming you get a speaking part.

• If you are both white and male, you've got a 40% chance of dying.
• If you're male but not white, you have a mortality rate of 67%.
• If you're white and female it's 62.5%.
• Good news, though! If you're female but not white, you have a guaranteed 100% survival rate. It's just that it's also 100% likely that you are in fact Guinevere.

eta: figures changed thanks to heather11483's correction!
eta2: and again thanks to oconel! (This, this is why I shouldn't be allowed near numbers.)

Comments

[glass-icarus.livejournal.com]

Actually, there were plenty of non-white cultures that existed and traded with Europe at the time, and thus (although possibly through various intermediaries), England. Slavery is not, in fact, the only way people of color would be historically present in society, despite the way they are overlooked in most Western accounts. As woldy mentions below, Africa, Asia, and the Byzantine Empire cannot be discounted even by Eurocentric records, and since many coveted products- silks, dyes, spices, precious stones, etc.- originated from those areas, it's more than reasonable to assume that merchants and traders of color would have been present at the time. Also, keep in mind that history is written by the winners and the upper echelons of society, and since those were generally white people- it being Europe and all- there were whole classes and societies they would automatically have dismissed and overlooked in their Western superiority.

[lorannah.livejournal.com]

Completely agree - plus there would have been slavery likely to bring poc into England prior to ''this period''(sorry, what period people are discussing confuses me as the period Arthurian history is believed by different people to have occurred in covers nearly a thousand years).

The Romans had occupied England for several hundred years and almost certainly brought poc with them - in the form of slaves and servants, not to mention the large number of poc serving in the Roman army at the time and freedmen and women. Plus since the 13th century, at least, some of the Knights have been portrayed as POC, springing to mind particularly are Pallamedes and Sagramore - though as with any character their origins vary from retelling to retelling.

P.S. Amy this is great.

[papervolcano]

Yep - there's quite a bit of evidence for African Roman Legions/auxiliaries - such as squad who were mustered from Morocco to guard the western end of Hadrian's Wall - there are tablets and gravestones dedicated to them. Then you've traders and immigrants - I've seen archaeological evidence of trading between the North African coast and the UK south coast from the late Bronze/early Iron age - some of whom undoubtedly settled in London and other cities.
There has been a very widespread tendancy to ignore the presence of POC in British history - consider the Numidian Roman Emperor Septimus Severus, who was one of the few Roman Emperors to actually visit the British province and who died in York - despite my going to school in Yorkshire and being fascinated by local history, I didn't find out about him until I read 'the Emperor's Babe' by Bernadine Evaristo and did some background digging on the topic.