In-World Representation
As I have pointed out, life imitates art, and depictions of groups of people in the media can influence how they are treated and viewed in the real world. Thus in order to fully discuss diversity in the media, we must also address how to responsibly create characters with a wide range of identities.
The most crucial point is that no one is more equipped to write about an identity than the people that share that identity. It is ultimately their narrative to tell. Of course, this goes back to what was discussed in part two, which was having a diverse range of people responsible for creating the media. It then raises the question, how does one create a character with an identity that they don’t experience? For the purposes of this article, I will discuss the process of character creation in writing, though the issues that I raise are generally universal across mediums.
It, of course, can be said that nearly all writing entails writing characters with identities other than your own. As far as I know, J.K. Rowling is not a teenager singled out by wizard Hitler as the only threat to his power. However, as we are talking about marginalized identities, having responsible and accurate representations of them has higher stakes and requires more thought than, say, if someone from the suburbs wanted to write a character that lives in a city.
Writing a narrator belonging to a marginalized group when you yourself do not belong to that group already raises some questions about the appropriation of a narrative that is not yours. The problematic element increases when the story deals with issues specifically pertinent to that marginalized group. There is a version of this that is a writer who is white/cis/male/etc writing POC/trans/woman/etc narratives, and because of that writer’s position of privilege in the world, their version of this narrative would be heard, and they would profit off of it, whereas the accounts of these narratives written by the people who actually experience them would overshadowed. Even writers with good intentions might fall into this dynamic if they do not put forth the thought and care that this sort of writing would deserve.
Let us assume that a narrator has the same identities as a writer—does that dismiss the writer from having to worry about these issues? On the contrary, the writer still has a responsibility to populate the world of their writing with as much diversity as they would encounter in the real world. This, of course, might vary according to setting. If writing takes place in the suburbs of middle America, the cast of characters might be more homogenized than they would be otherwise. However, it is important not to fall into the Friends trap, i.e.—filling up a show with almost exclusively white characters when the setting is one that would demand a more diverse range of identities.
Having peopled the world the question still remains, what does it mean to take these characters and write them responsibly? Technically there is no one way to answer this—by virtue of these characters being complete people, they will act in different and individual ways. It is best then to approach this question from its negative and talk about what not to do, as there are several particularly egregious ways that diversity is portrayed that appear repeatedly across mediums.
Stereotyping
This is the most common complaint brought against representations of marginalized identities. When characters of these identities are written, they can be oftentimes written as one dimensional, relying on stereotypes that exist about that group. Think Bechdel test. For those not aware, the Bechdel test was a test invited by Alison Bechdel. In order for a piece of media to pass it, it must fulfill two requirements: 1. there must be two or more named female characters, 2. they must have a conversation about something other than a man. While this test is obviously not perfect, it’s an examination of whether this group is represented, and then whether it is represented in a responsible way, eschewing a stereotype (in this case, that women center their lives around the men in them). While such a test does not exist for every marginalized group, the idea that it puts forth remains the same across groups.
White-Washing
This exists on the opposite end of stereotyping, perhaps as a overcompensation in response to it. The term “white-washing” is specifically used in reference to representations of POC, but a similar effect happens with other marginalized groups. Instead of being represented as a stereotype of the group that they belong to, that identity is completely erased. That is to say that for a lot of these groups, culture forms around the identity. Not all individuals necessarily choose to engage with the culture, but the culture still exists for many. Being queer oftentimes does not only have to do with sexuality, but also with the culture and community surrounding queerness.
White-washing might come from a well-intentioned place. “Ah, I want to avoid stereotyping, so I will just write this character as I would myself,” a creator might say to themself. However, this ends up “othering” the culture of the individual. Instead of allowing the character to be a complex person living within the context of their culture, the creator removes them from a context that would have played a crucial part in their life, and packages them into a form that is more “digestible” to a white/straight/etc audience. In doing so, this culture is labeled as undesirable and the message is, “yes, yes, we will accept you, but only if you look and act and think exactly like us. No more variation than necessary is acceptable.”
Tokenization
As things have gotten more progressive and the push for diversity has gotten greater, the view of it has shifted so that oftentimes it is seen as a quota to be met. Critiques are often made of universities that in a sea of photos of white students on their pages, they will unfailingly have a singular POC as their “token” diversity, in order to show that they, too, have met this socially-imposed quota. Creators of media oftentimes commit the same fallacy, including diversity just for the sake of checking off boxes.
This might seem to contradict the previous points of the article—I have been repeating that diversity is necessary to include, so why am I now arguing against this inclusion of diversity? Diversity is important to include because of the complex personhood involved with those identities, and multiple histories and cultures that those identities contain. In the case of tokenization, including characters just for the sake of having diversity does not allow them to exist as complete people, and doesn’t allow for treating the identities responsibly and with respect.
A prime example of this is the 2016 movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnificent_Seven_(2016_film)The Magnificent Seven. It already carried with it some problems in being a remake of a remake, the original film being a Japanese film called Seven Samurai. It is a bastardized version of the original, diluted so as to be more digestible by western audiences. This aside, the movie is about seven men who band together to protect a village from a nefarious robber baron. The seven men include a Comanche warrior, a Mexican outlaw, a Korean immigrant, and an African American Marshal. At first glance, it seems that this movie did an adequate job on the representation front. However, it becomes evident as the movie progresses that it included this diversity for the sake of having diversity and didn’t want to deal with the full implications of these identities. “But it’s fiction,” one might argue. And yet the movie does not position itself as a post-racial fantastical Wild West setting. References are made throughout it that root it in historical fiction. A black man and a former confederate soldier fight side by side with barely, if any nods to the conflict that this would produce. Furthermore, the Comanche warrior joins the group despite the fact that this very much takes place in a time when mass genocide of his people was still occurring (and does so in-world, based on comments made by other characters). Instead of dealing appropriately with these identities, the specifics of them are shuffled aside all so that the movie can have a “diverse” cast of characters populating the background.
All this is to say that these identities do not exist as “diversity cards” to be played, but rather should be treated with care and respect.
Responsible Representation
Being presented with a list of all the things not to do, writing responsibly might seem like a daunting task. However, ultimately it comes down to something very simple: write people. Allow these characters the space to be complex, complete humans. This means that their identity as part of a marginalized group is a part of their identity, but it is not the only part. Every person exists at the intersection of identities, and while many of them may be important, they are not defined by a single one. Even if a web were to be drawn of all of a person’s identities, they would still have an abundance of thoughts and emotions that exist outside that web.
It is true that there is a great deal of responsibility involved in writing identities that you have never experience. However, as a writer you do not live in a bubble. Do research, read narratives by people with these identities, and get feedback on your work. If you are told that you have written something that’s wrong, or could be construed as offensive, defer to them. You cannot know that narrative better than they do.
Ultimately, it’s of extreme importance to boost up the voices of those with marginalized identities. However, those with non-marginalized identities should also have thoughts on these things. Their thoughts should not overshadow those of the people who are actually affected, but it is important for them to have thoughts nonetheless, rather than burying themselves in their privilege. Practice responsible allyship and responsible creation. Think, create, discuss, alter, and alter again. Keep creating until our media is as respectful towards differing identities as we would like the world to be. Create a new world.
