Representation in Media

Allow me to quickly address an issue that might arise from beginning this conversation. While I don’t fit all of the “normative” mold, I’m still a white guy. I believe there is a myth of “exclusionary discourse,” in which because of the nature of my birth, I am unable to approach this subject. But I’ve yet to find anyone who actually believes that to be true so long as I admit my own privilege and act with respect in mind first. So, what I will say. Is that if I get anything wrong, or if I misrepresent something. Tell me about it. I am anything if not open-minded, and I want to respect what I think is right. Above everything, I want to know what I can do to be better and help make the world more inclusive and fair. Thank you.

Minor character spoilers for The Shape of Water ahead.

Representation in the entertainment industry has always been problematic. Whether it be based on gender, sexuality, religion, race, or ethnicity, the question of equal or fair coverage is almost a non-argument. While representation is certainly getting better, the conversations that stem from it are still harrowing. On both sides of the fence there are “issues” with reaching equal representation.

If you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you most likely already know my approach to this subject. I believe media generally under represents and misrepresents minorities and women. When media does choose to depict anyone other than a straight white male, the representation can often be cruel or misguided. It can often feel like it was done for the sake of representation itself or it could be for humor (which just makes me depressed).

On the other side of the argument, there is a call for tradition and the need to not create “over” representation. People tend to suggest that America is mainly white, so it’s okay to have mainly white leads. Individuals might also call to “race bending” or “gender bending” roles, (the act of changing the race/gender of a pre-fabricated character) as an issue stemming from the “need” for equal representation and complain that these changes aren’t true to the canon. This is a lot to talk about, so buckle up friends.

Underrepresentation is one of those issues that almost seems too daunting to approach. Thinking about all of the video games I’ve played, the movies and TV shows I’ve watched, and the books I’ve read, how many involved a straight white male protagonist? Or at the very least, mainly white men as characters? That’s a lot of media to pull my head through. In terms of representation, it’s very difficult to find a foundation to approach the massive amount of content that is produced every year. You’d have an easier time simply finding films that do feature actors who aren’t white men than attempting to catalogue all that are. Rather than approach these numbers by myself, I urge you to think of movies that came out this year that feature a lead who isn’t a straight white male. If you’re having trouble, go ahead and shift your focus to media that simply has minorities with speaking roles.

You can, of course, mention last year. The Shape of Water won Best Picture. It was directed by a “foreigner,” had a disabled female lead and the two leading supporting characters were an older gay man and an African American woman. The other films that were nominated were Get Out, Lady Bird, Call Me by your Name, The Post, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Almost every film nominated for best picture featured a lead character who is a woman, LGBTQ, or not white (to note, 2016 5 out of the 9 films nominated for best picture had minority or female leads).

So clearly, there isn’t a problem with the actors or directors that feature minorities. The academy actually seems quite fond of them! And studies suggest that sales for movies featuring minorities actually make more money! Clearly, studios have enough reasons to have a vested interest in diverse films, and it seems like they’ve taken notice. Currently in theaters as of June 29th,2018: Incredibles 2, Ocean’s 8, Uncle Drew, Breaking In, RBG, Book Club, Superfly, and Hereditary. Note that this isn’t even half of the movies showing currently, but clearly the industry is trending in the positive direction of at least balancing out representation. This doesn’t excuse years of neglect, but it does bode well for the future.

There is a strange dichotomy in the gaming industry. Games are becoming more and more immersive, but female and minority leads are usually reserved for games in which you can create a custom character, and sometimes even THAT causes outrage.

Games where you play as a prefabricated character who follows a specific story line are kind of falling to the wayside and the ones where you can/do play as a premade character, generally have you playing as a monster or an animal. A lot of “indie” games, however, do generally feature female or minority leads! Celeste, a puzzle platformer that came out earlier this year, has you control a young woman on a surreal journey of self-discovery. Other indie games, like Hollow Knight, feature characters that are coded (intentionally or not [here’s looking at you Tolkien]) as the ‘other’ in society.

Without passing out all my praise before getting to larger companies, there are actually a lot of mainstream developers that are known for being inclusive. Bethesda’s games generally have a very diverse cast of characters and allow the player to embrace whatever role they want. Additionally, in the Elder Scrolls series, there is a precedent of talking about relatively radical race/ethnic issues.

Telltale games are essentially choice driven visual novels. While there might be some things to say about how they approach story telling or running a business, they are known for being diverse. Arguably their biggest game, The Walking Dead, features an expansively diverse cast, and despite their games generally coming from existing franchises, they continue that trend of inclusivity throughout.

From the 10 best selling games of 2017, five of them allow you to create your own character. Three of them feature minority or female leads (Destiny 2, Grand Theft Auto V, and Star Wars: Battlefront II) in their story mode. As of right now, story-based games like Night in the Woods, Life is Strange, and the aforementioned Telltale games definitely lead the pack in terms of diversity and inclusion. RPG games allow players to make their own characters, putting all of the power into the player’s hands into who they want to represent.

But, for every fair portrayal there are hundreds of depressing stereotypes that make their way though the cracks in the entertainment industry. Quiet (don’t google her, please), from Metal Gear Solid V, a game starring the voice talent of Kiefer Sutherland and produced by media super giant Konami, is a badass. From the moment she’s introduced, she’s a sniper who pins you down and is essentially the first person to give you real trouble in the game. And… then you see her. She’s a world class mercenary, the best sniper in the business, and she is in a bikini the entire game. But don’t worry! There is a lore reason, it’s because she has to… “breathe through her skin.” Eventually you can watch her shower (in her bikini), dance in the rain, or murder a dude from 1000+ meters. And did I mention you keep her locked in a prison on your home base? The Metal Gear series has some serious chops when it comes to characters too. “The Boss” has a heartbreaking storyline, she’s extremely diverse as an antagonist and a mentor figure. The games also depict several other “stereotypical” archetypes with rich nuance that prove diversity in games is simpler than it sounds… but then there’s Quiet. Someone who is built to be an amazing super soldier, relegated to being an object that is owned and ogled. Did I mention she can’t talk?

The same issue stems to representation in TV and movies. “Token” characters were common enough that it became a South Park joke. There is an amazing piece by writer Jonathan Higgins on “The Root” about Hollywood’s portrayal of African American women. I can’t do the subject even half as much justice as he did. Please, read this article.

Which now brings me to the counter arguments about increasing representation. I realize that this is a little too “inside baseball,” to mention. But this is a long article, and the issues I had to research here make me sad.

As I briefly touched on earlier, sometimes there are adverse reactions to representation in video games. Battlefield V announced a female soldier in their story line about WWII, an outspoken minority expressed their outrage on forum sites and in the comments of videos. They suggest that including female soldiers is unrealistic in a game about World War II. When customizing your character for playing online against other real people, you can choose to make your character a female. Apparently. This is a big deal.

Generally, the issue cited is that this is revisionist history. It’s achronological. And that’s an issue because it’s less immersive. In any game, there exists a ludonarrative. Which is essentially the story your character has that is separate from the events of the game itself. It’s the choices you as a player make that affects your environment.

In Battlefield, one can crash a helicopter onto an enemy control point to kill their enemies. Someone can strap plastic explosives to a motorcycle and drive it into a cluster of enemies and blow themselves up. But there is no outcry that doing anything like this ruins gameplay immersion. Or that the inclusion of voice chat across great distances with your teammates ruins that as well. There were no minimaps or HUD displays in WWII either. So, how can customization options be a problem, if none of these are?

I realize this is detracting from the overall argument. But isn’t it more immersive for someone to play as a character that matches their gender or racial identity? So why is historical immersion more important than being able to identify with your character? Additionally, a Gamespot article pointed out there were several very famous soldiers in both WWII and WWI.

This issue all began because there is one female soldier, in one cutscene, in a story driven campaign (that will probably explain why she’s there). This game isn’t even out yet! Additionally, the female character shown in the story trailer is disabled. She has a prosthetic left arm. There were some early issues with that as well, but those died down when the prosthetic was revealed to be “historically accurate.” The same issue came up when an African American character was on the cover of Battlefield One, which confusingly is the last game to come out in the series. This game takes place during WWI, there were black regiments in the French, German, and British army in WWI, but people were still mad.

Within this debate, the issue is referred to as gender bending and race bending, (be careful doing your own research on these terms). Even when work is based off of completely fictitious events, people still take offense to specific races playing specific characters. The most famous recent example of this is the actress Noma Dumezweni playing Hermione Granger in the Broadway production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Dumezweni is a talented actress with quite the resumé, but instead of talking about the clout she’d bring to the character, issues stemmed from her race. Nowhere in the novels is Hermione stated as being “white.” There has been extensive textual analysis about this, and it’s really a non-issue, because what matters about an actor is how they play the character, not what they look like. Theater has followed that tradition for quite some time.

The common counter to this idea, is what if a traditionally black character is played by a white actor? Which is a valid question. What would the outcry be? To that, I have to say context matters. I cannot speak for any community, and I won’t speak for communities that even I belong to. But if a character’s identity is tied directly to race, then changing that would make this a completely different story. There are hundreds of things to keep in mind when it comes to casting, and looking the part is just one of them.

This is, again, the immersion principle in effect. I don’t struggle to differentiate a game or a movie from real life. I’m more interested in how the two manage to relate to the real world than I am how the real world relates to the game or the movie. So, you can’t cast a white guy to play the Black Panther, but you can cast a black woman to play Hermione. I can say that and sleep at night. It is all simply context. If you’d like a reverse of this, you can cast a white guy (or any race) to play someone like Finn from the new Star Wars movies, but you can’t cast a black guy to play Michael Shannon’s character in The Shape of Water.

That being said, I want to see more representation, and fiscally speaking, it makes sense for Hollywood to do so, and judging by the best sellers of 2017, the same might be true for video games. I want writers to stop typifying and to start humanizing. I want changes in rhetoric when it comes to LGBTQ, gender, religious, and racial equality. And I want to see a world where an actor is praised for who they are as a person, how well they carry a role, and not what they look like. To make this happen, I’ll continue having this conversation with anyone who wants to in the comments, I’ll support media properties that present positive representation, and I’ll do my best to write my own characters with the nuance and interest that comes from being a human being, and not from superficial characteristics.

Thanks for sticking with me through this, I know it’s a long one.