American Horror Story- Checking Boxes

The first episode of the new season of American Horror Story aired last week, and since it is one of my absolute favorite shows, I wanted to address its main problem- lack of diversity. People commend the show on its representation of women, and disabled and queer people, including the casting of queer and disabled actors/actresses. In season 4 specifically, since the theme was "Freak Show," they actually used actors who were disabled instead of having able bodied actors act as disabled characters. That is very important, even though their focus in the season was on their disability, so in a way this could be seen as exotifying these actors who are being exotified in the plot of the show.

But in general, AHS (created by two cis white men), will have one person of color for every 10 white people. These "attempts" by mainstream shows to have better representation of marginalized identities are always half-hearted, they feel more like "checking the boxes," yes it is great the show has a lot of female leads and queer subplots but that really is not enough.