Why media representation is important

We tend to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions. But what's interesting is, we judge characters by their intentions. Talk to any Breaking Bad fan. We're not talking about what Walt did; we're talking about why he did it. This suggests that we view characters as an extension of ourselves. We don't simply observe their actions. We experience their lives.

And that, in a nutshell, is why media representation is so important. (And why I'm starting a new series of posts on the topic.) Why should we only get to experience the lives of straight, white, cis men?

Well, we get to experience the lives of others as well. But only in movies about (and for) women; in movies about being gay; in movies about being a person of color; in movies about being transgender. These types of movies make the viewer hyper-aware of the gender, race, identity and orientation -- and therefore unable to actually experience this character's life in the honest way we can experience the lives of white, cishet men in most movies. Not movies about white cishet men. Just movies. Movies about a character, an individual. Not about a segment of the population.

Sometimes there are complaints about how realistic it is to have a diverse set of characters. Something like, well, you can't have a black person and a transgender person and a gay person in the same room together. That's way too much. That's "trying too hard."

Okay, yeah. Maybe that isn't super likely to happen in real life. But we're okay with movies not being realistic when they're about superheroes or monsters or wizards. Why is it suddenly a travesty to show people who actually exist in perhaps a slightly higher concentration of "diversity" than we can swallow?

TV and movies don't purport to be representations of real life. And who would want them to be? We can suspend disbelief in order to watch a man become a spider, or a giant lizard destroy Tokyo. So why is it "trying too hard" to include women and PoC and LBTG people in lead roles in the same movie? It's almost like it's okay to have your token non-white-cishet-male in a lead role, but anymore than that, eyebrows get raised: what are they trying to prove?

Even if the level of diversification is unrealistic, it's still important. One day, it probably won't seem so odd. One day, it will probably be negligible. But fiction should always be a few steps ahead of society. Fiction can be a factor in progress -- never doubt it lacks the power. Not only is it important to see people who are unlike you in lead roles, but it's also important to see people who are like you.

I don't think this applies to just me, but as a woman I find it far easier to have female role models. Not that I don't aspire to be the next Vince Gilligan, but for some reason, it's easier to imagine myself as Gennifer Hutchison or Moira Walley-Beckett, two of the fantastic female writers of Breaking Bad. (This is a side note, but I swear, these women wrote all the best parts. *cough* Ozymandias *cough* I am the one who knocks. Ahem.)

The real world doesn't give everyone role-models who look like them. (We're only had cishet-male presidents, for god's sake, and we've just recently been able to erase "white.") It might take a kid looking up to a fictional character, and aspiring to be like that character, in order to break a glass ceiling in the real world once they grow up.

So let's give those kids the kick-ass characters they deserve.