So much of modern entertainment (particularly superhero content) is written by white straight men who identified with outsider narratives when they were kids because they were unpopular, and then grew up convinced that was the same as being oppressed.
And that set the tone for so much of modern society because entertainment has always played a major role in shaping society.
Like I’m talking about the writers who rave about how the X-Men were their favorite comics as a kid and how they identified so much with their struggles because they felt ostracized and alone when they were growing up. How they felt like a mutant and just weird and like they didn’t fit in.
Which sucks, sure, but the problem is ostracized (because kids can be mean) isn’t interchangeable with marginalized (because people have erected society-wide systems of power which they use to oppress entire groups of people).
But they never figured out the difference and now they’re responsible for penning most of the narratives that convince the next generation of audiences and content creators that there IS none.
It’s kinda like how in the seventies and eighties there were a lot of ‘goofy and good-hearted jock guy’ archetypal characters. But when lots of the writers who emerged from that generation were guys who were bullied by jocks in their childhoods, the entire landscape of television and movies shifted so all of a sudden the lovable but misunderstood underdog was the go-to archetype always triumphing over his nemesis, the malevolent jock bully.
Here’s the thing that often gets overlooked though, two things actually. First is how frequently society changes, ever since the advent of the internet and how much that’s hastened the spread of information. With conversations happening on a global scale and with new information coming at us from so many angles and directions constantly, day after day, the pace at which society wide perceptions shift and change focus is happening MUCH faster than it did a generation ago.
Which leads into the second thing....so much has changed, so fast, and perceptions have shifted on so many topics in just the past twenty years alone....and all of this has happened in such a compressed span of time, that there hasn’t been TIME for a changing of the guard, when it comes to much of entertainment’s content creators.
The same writers who shifted the television and movie landscape so that instead of the straight white golden boys being the heroes of cinema it was now the straight white loners who were the heroes....they’re still the ones holding the reins in much of entertainment and setting the tone of the narratives. There hasn’t been TIME for them all to retire and make way for the next generation of content creators, informed by their own life experiences.
Which means an entire generation of marginalized creators who spent a lot of their childhood ostracized because of oppression, often at the hands of the straight white social misfits Hollywood spoonfed the belief they’re the true victims AND the rightful heroes, all in the same breath....this next generation of marginalized creators not only found themselves faced with the struggle with visibility and getting hired that actual systemic oppression causes....they ALSO had to contend with the fact that the previous generation of writers and directors haven’t given up the reins yet, and have no intention of doing so any time soon.
Not to mention the fact that when they do, they already have their preferred successors picked out, the M/ax L/andis’ and the like, the ones who grew up identifying with THEIR stories and wanting to produce and create more of the same.
Point is, this is how we end up with shit like that godawful Heathers’ reboot, which thought it made sense to cast the conventionally popular straight white kids as the bullied underdogs while it was genderfluid and LGQBT+ teens of color who were the vicious oppressors at the top of the high school social hierarchy. Or on NBC’s latest terrible attempt at a diverse show this past season, Rise, there was a trans boy who was criticized by the straight white pregnant girl who had REAL problems that he couldn’t possibly know what she was going through, because yeah he may be trans, but he had parents who love him and supported him no matter what.
Like, if you look at even the last ten years of television content and compare it to the previous fifty, there’s an obvious gap. It’s the place (in the mainstream) where all the stories by marginalized creators about oppressed kids triumphing over their victimizers SHOULD go, just like the creative misfits of previous generations altered the cinematic landscape to reflect THEIR personal struggles.
And so even in the past ten years, a ton of Hollywood’s content has shifted. From fringe projects by and about marginalized characters that are treated as a niche interest and tragedy porn by the mainstream.....to mainstream projects about marginalized characters but BY non-marginalized creators....that try and jump to the finish line and act like those marginalized characters have it just as good as anyone else. The zeitgeist SKIPPED an entire chapter about marginalized characters being the triumphant underdogs pushing back against their white able-bodied cishet tormentors, popular AND unpopular kid alike, and raced to the part where they’re just like everyone else....which means just as likely to be the bad guy and the bully of the story.
It’s not remotely coincidental that the only exceptions to this, the stories where marginalized characters get to be prioritized struggling and triumphing as the underdog against all odds.....these exceptions are without fail the instances where the content is being produced by marginalized creators who scraped and clawed their way into gaining a mainstream platform against all odds.
Because this skip in the zeitgeist? It’s artificial. And its not JUST due to racism, homophobia and the like, though of course that plays a major part. But it also all goes back to those same content creators I started off talking about....the ones who tailored the Hollywood landscape to reflect their personal paradigm that they were the misunderstood ones who just needed the right opportunities to prove they were the real hero of the story all along. The ones who are STILL there, at the very top of Hollywood, pulling the most strings....and still just as convinced as ever of their view of the world.
And when they’ve spent the last three decades writing characters like them as the heroes of the story, there’s a ton of incentive to box out stories where characters like them are the villains of the story. But the call for more diversity isn’t going away anymore, marginalized voices have gotten loud enough that pretending they don’t hear them just doesn’t WORK anymore.....so that leaves one alternative left.
Write them themselves, but still very much with their own character-types still centered as the heroes they obviously are, but now with 50% more marginalized characters....in the only roles left, the ones that are specifically designated to be inclusive, but without stealing focus (which INCLUDES audience empathy) from the true heroes. Marginalized characters can’t be shown as struggling harder than the white cishet heroes, because that might make said heroes seem less deserving of being the focus and the ones to triumph.
Ergo, marginalized characters can’t be shown as having it that bad.
And so our stories ‘skip to the finish line’ without reflecting the struggles that are still very much a reality for most marginalized viewers. Showing an idealized, sanitized version of reality in which society has become so progressive, its really not that hard to be black or gay or trans or disabled or mentally ill or even all of the above anymore. They’re all just people, just like everyone else, with struggles no different than anyone else, which means there’s really no reason their struggles should take priority over anyone’s else....let alone the same white cishet protagonists as always.
All of which then feeds back into the perceptions of the society that consumes all this entertainment. And further validates the idea non-marginalized audiences already WANT to believe.....that privilege is a myth, nobody else has it any harder than them, all these other groups talking about their oppression are just whining and grand-standing for attention, and they don’t know what it REALLY means to struggle....not like their favorite white cishet underdog main characters on TV, triumphing in the face of all adversity.
And this is why I believe so strongly in prioritizing marginalized creators getting opportunities to write their OWN representation, and why I have increasingly less patience for the glorification of non-marginalized creators writing ‘diversely’. Every time I see a mostly white straight cast of characters with one or two exceptions, and those exceptions are just as popular, financially well off and ‘privileged’ (according to most of America’s wrong-headed idea of the word) as their straight white counterparts? It doesn’t make me optimistic like oh this show is portraying a version of society where equality really exists! It makes me question their motives.
The Joss Whedons of the world who look at a black woman pitching something that was inspired by her watching Buffy as a kid and made her want to write something like it but fixing the racist flaws in it that made it harder for her to enjoy.....if their response to that isn’t to say “I’m glad my work touched and inspired her, what can I do to help her tell her story and do the same for others,” if instead its some version of “okay, I GUESS my story was flawed or is a little dated now, but you know what, let me take another crack at it and do it better this time”?
Like, even with me being GENEROUSLY over-optimistic about their best intentions there, they can tell themselves that all they want, but they’re still not doing it FOR that black woman and other viewers like her, looking for more and better representation. And the proof is in every time a so-called progressive white cishet writer creates new content that’s ‘more inclusive and diverse’ while still centering both white cishet characters w/in it AND their own role as a progressive patron of diversity and champion of marginalized underdogs everywhere.
If your work continues to do more to champion and benefit how you and characters like you are perceived.....than it does to champion and benefit how marginalized characters and viewers you CLAIM to be trying to champion are perceived? Guess who you’re actually championing.
Like, if a supposedly progressive writer or showrunner or director wants to include more marginalized characters and narratives in their stories alongside of the characters that look like them and center their own experiences, great - but if that’s ALL they’re doing, and they’re not actually doing anything else to uplift or boost the stories, voices and experiences of the marginalized people they claim to be doing it FOR, you better believe I am 100% comfortable questioning their motives and their sincerity.
The creator of Jane the Virgin and now the new Charmed reboot is a white woman who has gotten critical acclaim and commercial success for championing latine stories with latine casts - but if its to represent latine audiences and experiences, it she’s truly trying to be PROGRESSIVE, why aren’t those writer rooms full of latine writers able to offer a breadth and variety of experiences and viewpoints to those stories while representing themselves? Why is a white showrunner content to settle for a couple of latine writers on her staff while rounding it out with over a dozen regular white writers throughout four seasons of telling SPECIFICALLY latine stories? The creator of Teen Wolf, a gay white man, FREQUENTLY hyped up his choice to cast an actor of color as his lead and used it to win ‘progressive’ points....without ever hiring a latine writer (to my knowledge) on his show to write stories for that character....something reflected in the fact that many people have commented on the lead character never being given an opportunity to so much as bring up his heritage in the story.
When Lucasfilms decided a white woman, a black man and a latine man were who they wanted to uplift and promote and market as the faces of their new direction for Star Wars in the new trilogy, why were not a single one of those demographics represented in who they chose to write and direct the stories those characters were to be the faces of?
Why are shows praised for adding trans characters to their ensembles when trans writers who can write their stories and represent their own experiences aren’t invited into the writers’ rooms first? Why are we so willing to settle for LGBTQ+ storylines written by straight writers and accidentally centering straight characters’ high school angst as just as pivotal to a gay character’s coming out narrative, as though gay men aren’t capable of writing their own experiences and those stories aren’t worth telling?
The examples are endless, and yet the number of them just keep climbing. And yet the number of marginalized creators actually gaining mainstream platforms and attention for their stories, getting to represent THEMSELVES....it creeps up by inches and inches. While Hollywood pats itself on the back for how progressive and inclusive it is, giving award after award to white cishet writers, directors and showrunners who continue to represent THEMSELVES in their stories, same as always, but now with a few characters of color and the occasional trans supporting character among the ensemble.....and that’s called them championing diversity, all without any extra effort or even thought towards hiring more writers, directors and showrunners who are fully capable of championing themselves if given the opportunity.
The opportunity those very same ‘champions of diversity’ are actually invested in using their power and established platforms to withhold.....because as I said at the start of all this.....marginalized creators ACTUALLY getting the chance to represent themselves and their experiences risks reframing those diversity champions’ chosen archetypal heroes as the bad guys for a change instead.
And that just doesn’t work for them at all.
*Shrugs* So fuck the Joss Whedons of the world and their attempts to be progressive and write and cast diversely. I mean, I’ve seen what Whedon considers writing diversely, and it sucked. Why should he be applauded for giving himself chance after chance to ‘do better’ when literally any marginalized creator can knock ‘writing their own experiences’ out of the park on the first pitch?
If the Whedons of the world TRULY want to help marginalized viewers and creators, they need to get better at passing the mic.
They say everyone’s the hero of their own story, but we already know they’re the heroes of their stories.
What’s it say that they feel its their place to be the hero of everyone else’s too?
