Why do shows always try to be cool and make random characters gay or lesbian. It’s unnecessary. #stop
— Madison Ahmad (@WhereIsMadison) May 16, 2012
tv shows meed to stop adding gay characters just for views. rep is important but forced rep is obvious and just ugly
— lam (@lamyugh) July 12, 2016
These are real tweets written by real people living in this world. I stumbled upon them on my twitter feed one evening = quite literally stumbled. My brain was thrown off balance and I had to scroll back up to make sure I’d read correctly. Why is it, I have been wondering for quite a significant amount of time, that people are so unsettled by the fight for social change being so “obvious”?
The demographic that tends to make such comments generally doesn’t identify as any of these minorities that it’s so worried about being “in your face”, surprisingly enough. A man once told me it was “absurd” that the lead of the new Star Wars is black. His reasoning was that Storm Troopers have white suits so they can’t be played by a black actor. Shocker: this man was white and middle class. I guess it sort of rubs you up the wrong way when you start to realize your privilege is being threatened.
But why do minorities have to be so OBVIOUS?
The importance of minorities being right there, in the middle of the screen, in the middle of the giant billboard poster – not on the left hand side of the lead, not on the right hand side of the lead, and not in the “best supporting actor” category of the Academy Awards but in the “best actor period.” category – is that they represent an entire segment of the population of this Earth. White, cis, men have been represented for decades. The mere fact that we are surprised when there’s a POC lead or a protagonist LGBTQ+ couple shows exactly why we need to be surprised. People need to keep being thrown off by minorities right there, in their faces, in LEAD roles in film, television, theatre and heck, in LIFE, until it happens so often it’s normal.
Why is representation so important?
Finally watched Ghostbusters. I expected to love it, & I did. Didn’t expect to feel really moved by seeing women my age as science heroes.❤
— katiefward (@katiefward) February 20, 2017
It opens doors, and it inspires. An entire generation of youth that identify as minority in some way need to be seeing people who look like them, love like them and talk like them in the positions they aspire to. And that means intersectionality needs to be taken into consideration as well. Yes, it’s nice to see a middle class, white, male, gay couple on TV, but if you’re a lower class, lesbian black woman there’s still a lot preventing you from identifying with those characters. Do you think, for example, a black woman watching the new ghostbusters felt as empowered as a white woman? No. Three white women were physicists and nuclear engineers whilst the black woman played a subway worker.
“Yeah the new Ghostbusters is empowering women”
… ? pic.twitter.com/97loVwRqbm— Ali Al Saeed (@alialsaeed) February 23, 2017
A young, black, queer female actor needs to know that she can win an Oscar. Hattie McDaniel and Viola Davis’ Oscars aren’t enough. This young woman needs to know she can win for a role that is a lead, and that the character doesn’t have to be a housemaid, it can be a renowned business executive. It’s time for her to have a place in an industry that “rejects any complex representation of black women”. We need more films like Hidden Figures, a non-fiction story about female African American mathematicians at NASA, so that this can happen.
And while we’re at it, let’s address the fact that minorities need to be played by minorities. Enough of this nonsense of able-bodied Sam Claflin playing the role of a wheelchair user. Down with cis-gendered Matt Bomer being cast as a transgender woman. Gimme more of that Modern Family casting 8 year old trans actor Jackson Millarker to play a trans character. I like that. (Now just give him more than 8 words to say in the whole episode…)
But most leading business executives are straight white men, you say? But the guy I had a crush on when I was in high-school was cis-gendered (or so you assumed)? Exactly. Because society was founded on patriarchy, and white supremacy, of course the vast majority of “successful” people that you encounter are straight, male, and white. And there’s no doubt that the history we learn is focussed on white men. Would you like to hazard a guess as to why? This is the exact reason that we need to stop being so preoccupied with seeing the real world reflected in art: the real world is an unjust society, and that is what we are trying to change.
If we don’t give lead roles to minority actors because they don’t have lead roles in life, injustice becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.
Let’s allow life to imitate some nice and representative art.
Ok, yes, tokenism is not great. And yes, TV shows probably do get more views from having gay characters, but that’s the whole point! People want to see these things! All those extra views are coming from people who are excited to finally be seeing themselves, or their brothers/sisters/loved ones, represented onscreen. Believe it or not, a lot of us want to see accurate representations of our society in the media. Does it really matter all that much if the incentive of the producer wasn’t to instigate social change, but to make money? I’ll take representation regardless of the motives behind it for now.
stop making people have to hunt for gay
make it obvious
like all the straight relationships on tv
can’t miss those can we— cry // baby; (@loki_Iaufeyson) April 15, 2015
