Do you believe representation in works of fiction is important?
Yeah I think it is, to an extent. Everyone wants characters and stories they can see themselves in whether it’s a superhero or the bullied kid at school. But it’s also gotta make some kind of sense. A disabled Superwoman or a Muslim Captain America makes as much sense as Jane Bond or Debbie Ocean. That doesn’t mean we should leave out the disabled, Muslims or women etc, some of my all time favorite books and films have them as leads but I certainly don’t want it pushed down my throat just for the sake of appeasing the dreaded diversity brigade.
One of the biggest headscratchers that I still can’t fathom was when the outrage mob went after Tim Burton for not having enough black people in a movie set in Wales, 1943. How could replacing black characters with the existing white characters ever represent Wales in 1943? That’s the problem, we want ‘representation’ to represent modern society, but what exactly does that look like? Whites make up almost 80 percent of the population, blacks 13 percent, Asians 5 percent, Natives 1 percent, gays 4 percent, trans 0.3 percent, Muslims 1 percent - all of a sudden current representations seems pretty spot on, if anything, many groups are overrepresented.
And that’s just what those who enjoy spoiling the fun for everyone want. It’s “whitewashing” and “white supremacy” if regular white people are the cast or character majority despite being the majority, so we have to pretend black gay trans disabled Muslims would be the ones leading the fight against invading aliens or kickin the baddy’s ass. For all the minority groups to be represented as prominently as the activists demand, then we’d lose even more of the real world to fiction. Keep making movies with minority groups as key characters, I have no problem with that but it shouldn’t be slapped onto every single damn movie - which is exactly the direction we’re heading.
janainaart
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
titsay
jbbartram-illu
izzy806
stormborns
