On the burdens of representing an entire group (aka Why we need more diverse characters)
Corrina corrinalaw Lawson, author and content director of GeekMom recently wrote a post that's... hard to sum up in the single sentence. The basic idea is that she tried to look at why female characters receive backlash from fandom, often from people who genuinely want to see more female characters in fiction. Lawson argues that it has to do with how female characters are depicted and the role they play in the larger narrative.
First Fancy by Isaia on DeviantArt
I would strongly recommend that you read the whole thing, but there is one passage in particular that I wanted to focus on in this post.
Because there are so few women, she has to stand in for all the things. She has to be beautiful, she has to be intelligent, she has to kick-ass, but she has to be warm and supportive to everyone too. This is nowhere more clear than in Age of Ultron. Tony is the impulsive, smart one, Steve is the stalwart leader, Clint is the family man, Bruce is the loner, but Natasha is also the loner, the smart one, the leader when needed, the women grieving for losing the idea of family, and the sexy one. If she were non-white, she’d be the representative for that ethnic group as well. Whew. That’s a lot of things to be all at once.
Lawson then goes on to point out that in a work which has more than one female characters (like, say, the upcoming reboot of Ghostbusters, which has an all-female main cast), the characters are allowed to be individuals. Each of them doesn't have to represent the entire female experience.
To a certain extent, the same thing can be said about a character from any minority group. A lot of times, if the character isn't reduced to stereotype and/or a fantasy and/or an accessory, we wind up with something like that.
Thing is, I think that creators that do it generally mean well. And they are also conscious of something that Lawson touches on later in her post. When you're a member of a minority group and you see a character that shares your race/ethnicity/religion/gender or some combination thereof, you want it to be a great character, because there aren't many characters like that, and so many are already stereotypes. So writers want to please everybody, but we're left with something that's less of a character and more of an avatar of hopes and dreams.
It's perfectly possible to create characters that actually do come across as complex individuals. Lawson cites Peggy Carter from Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and TV shows. There's Grace Hanadarko (of Saving Grace) who engaged in self-destructive behaviors, but who was also compassionate and loyal to her friends Mindy Lahiri of The Mindy Project could be shallow and superficial, but who also cares about her job and her family and tries to learn from her mistakes. There's Jesse Day, of the New Girl, who is feminine and occasionally a bit of a pushover who has some weird quirks but who could also stand up for herself and who, in the end of the day, is mostly happy with who she is.
And almost every single one of those characters was criticized for not being a good representation of women.
(Joan Watson of Elementary managed to avoid it, but I feel it was solely because OMG FEMALE WATSON thing wound up overshadowing everything).
Which, I think, is all the more reason why you should have more minority characters and more women. It reduces the pressure, give a writer more opportunities to define characters and individuals, and explore different facet of what it means to be [fill in minority group]. Not every Russian believes the same things, or has the same opinions about Soviet Union, contemporary Russia and United States. Not every Persian is a Muslim, and not every Iranian is a Persian. There are different denominations withi Islam that have unique customers, traditions and interpretations of certain Quranic passages. And even within the same denomination, not all Muslims practice their faith the same way.
(One of the interesting things about Dragon Age video games is that, unlike many fantasy series, elves and, to lesser extent, dwarves, aren't defined by one culture. When you play the games, you meet elves that follow the ancient ways, elves that reject the old ways completely and elves that assimilated into different cultures to some extent or another. They may all be lithe humanoids with pointed ears, but their attitudes, cultural beliefs and biases can be very different. Much like real-world ethnic groups.)
At the same time, writers must treat minority characters as people. People who are influenced by their gender, religion, ethnicity and social background, but people nonetheless. They must be allowed to be complicated, and they must be allowed to occasionally be unlikable. If nothing else, that's just plain better writing. Those characters may not always be likable, and they may not always represent your experiences, but the same is true for real, flesh-and-blood people.
And, as Lawson's post says, just because the characters don't fit your ideals of what a [member of minority group] doesn't necessarily means those representations are invalid. We are all shaped by our experiences and the implicit biases we absorbed within our respective cultures. Shaking that isn't easy... But it can be done.
And who knows - you might even find something you would've never otherwise discovered.
First Fancy by Isaia on DeviantArt
I would strongly recommend that you read the whole thing, but there is one passage in particular that I wanted to focus on in this post.
Because there are so few women, she has to stand in for all the things. She has to be beautiful, she has to be intelligent, she has to kick-ass, but she has to be warm and supportive to everyone too. This is nowhere more clear than in Age of Ultron. Tony is the impulsive, smart one, Steve is the stalwart leader, Clint is the family man, Bruce is the loner, but Natasha is also the loner, the smart one, the leader when needed, the women grieving for losing the idea of family, and the sexy one. If she were non-white, she’d be the representative for that ethnic group as well. Whew. That’s a lot of things to be all at once.
Lawson then goes on to point out that in a work which has more than one female characters (like, say, the upcoming reboot of Ghostbusters, which has an all-female main cast), the characters are allowed to be individuals. Each of them doesn't have to represent the entire female experience.
To a certain extent, the same thing can be said about a character from any minority group. A lot of times, if the character isn't reduced to stereotype and/or a fantasy and/or an accessory, we wind up with something like that.
Thing is, I think that creators that do it generally mean well. And they are also conscious of something that Lawson touches on later in her post. When you're a member of a minority group and you see a character that shares your race/ethnicity/religion/gender or some combination thereof, you want it to be a great character, because there aren't many characters like that, and so many are already stereotypes. So writers want to please everybody, but we're left with something that's less of a character and more of an avatar of hopes and dreams.
It's perfectly possible to create characters that actually do come across as complex individuals. Lawson cites Peggy Carter from Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and TV shows. There's Grace Hanadarko (of Saving Grace) who engaged in self-destructive behaviors, but who was also compassionate and loyal to her friends Mindy Lahiri of The Mindy Project could be shallow and superficial, but who also cares about her job and her family and tries to learn from her mistakes. There's Jesse Day, of the New Girl, who is feminine and occasionally a bit of a pushover who has some weird quirks but who could also stand up for herself and who, in the end of the day, is mostly happy with who she is.
And almost every single one of those characters was criticized for not being a good representation of women.
(Joan Watson of Elementary managed to avoid it, but I feel it was solely because OMG FEMALE WATSON thing wound up overshadowing everything).
Which, I think, is all the more reason why you should have more minority characters and more women. It reduces the pressure, give a writer more opportunities to define characters and individuals, and explore different facet of what it means to be [fill in minority group]. Not every Russian believes the same things, or has the same opinions about Soviet Union, contemporary Russia and United States. Not every Persian is a Muslim, and not every Iranian is a Persian. There are different denominations withi Islam that have unique customers, traditions and interpretations of certain Quranic passages. And even within the same denomination, not all Muslims practice their faith the same way.
(One of the interesting things about Dragon Age video games is that, unlike many fantasy series, elves and, to lesser extent, dwarves, aren't defined by one culture. When you play the games, you meet elves that follow the ancient ways, elves that reject the old ways completely and elves that assimilated into different cultures to some extent or another. They may all be lithe humanoids with pointed ears, but their attitudes, cultural beliefs and biases can be very different. Much like real-world ethnic groups.)
At the same time, writers must treat minority characters as people. People who are influenced by their gender, religion, ethnicity and social background, but people nonetheless. They must be allowed to be complicated, and they must be allowed to occasionally be unlikable. If nothing else, that's just plain better writing. Those characters may not always be likable, and they may not always represent your experiences, but the same is true for real, flesh-and-blood people.
And, as Lawson's post says, just because the characters don't fit your ideals of what a [member of minority group] doesn't necessarily means those representations are invalid. We are all shaped by our experiences and the implicit biases we absorbed within our respective cultures. Shaking that isn't easy... But it can be done.
And who knows - you might even find something you would've never otherwise discovered.