Minority Identity:
In Mainstream Art & Culture
By Trevor McNeil
#OscarsSoWhite
Minority identity in mainstream art and culture is often illusive. Everybody wants to be seen. Everyone wants to be recognized. Now in the age of branding, group identity is held up as the most important part of a person. As such, the notion of “Media Representation” has become a hot topic in recent years. The #OscarsSoWhite campaign has highlighted the issue. As with most things however, not every situation is the same and there needs to be some nuance.
Fear of a Black Planet
The #OscarsSoWhite campaign had a legitimate point to make. The point being, most Academy Award nominees/winners have traditionally been white. Those numbers make no sense. There is now, and always has been, a giant reservoir of talented and creative people of color working in the arts. So why are people of color so poorly represented in the awards department, I wondered. I believe that particularly in terms of acting, there is the ever looming issue of tokenism. Tokenism dramatically affects the dynamics, by limiting the type of roles offered to black actors. The hipster cabby. You know the image.
Sidney Poitier’s Status
Sidney Poitier is one of America’s iconic actors. A large part of Sidney Poitier’s status is his stellar acting. However, he was the first black actor to really break type and play well-rounded characters. Obviously, people of color aren’t demanding a 50/50 representation in the awards department. It is, however, time to admit that there is racial, sexual and gender bias in the system.
Female Troubles
Women in media also face tokenism and bias. Generally speaking, female characters have had a similar history to blacks in cinema. Only being allowed to play a particular set of stereotypes limiting their impact. This is a continuing problem for women in films. It is so dramatic in fact that there are glorious choruses of gratitude when something even resembling a real human woman appears on-screen.
Realistic and Well-Rounded Characters
Gene Roddenberry made an epic effort in the original 1960’s Star Trek to present real women behaving as real women. Clive Barker has created realistic, well-rounded characters of all genders, ages and races since the late-1980’s. A particular stand out is Laurie in Barker’s 1990 horror film Nightbreed. Fully dimensional female representation is still limited. Solid female characters can only be found in the much maligned Horror, Sci-fi and Fantasy genres.
We’re Here
Perhaps the most egregious example of lack of positive representation is the LGBTQ community. Until the 1960’s it was illegal to engage in homosexual activity. And, to add insult to imprisonment, homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder in the DSM. The DMS comes out every decade or so as a classification of mental disorders. It is fairly easy to see why LGBTQ folks might be happy for anything they can get in terms of media representation. Using the term “gay” was actually a violation of the censorship code for decades. It was also taboo, if not openly illegal, to have a “gay” story end well. Gay characters, for the most part, being characterized either as predatory villains or characters destined for a tragic ending.
They Try
To be fair, it is likely that Hollywood studios, and other media companies, are actually trying to give authentic representations. Unfortunately it is in it’s basic nature to pander when possible to the widest audiences. As a result we get “queer-baiting.” Queer baiting is the phenomenon in which straight characters hint at romance with each other. The author tells the audience that the character is gay even though there is no evidence anywhere in the text.
Devil May Care
One of the first to smash through the queer taboos, and risk arrest, was the infamous filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Anger was as well-known for his unorthodox views on religion as his film making efforts. Anger was making short films with overtly gay coding as far back as 1947. Ironically, the current problem with “queer-baiting” is an unintentional effect of the understandable push for representation. Not because LGBTQ community are wrong to ask for representation, but because they are asking the mainstream media for such representation.
Independent Films
Going back all the way to the 1940’s in fact, Anger’s debut film, 1947’s Fireworks, was a self-funded indie film. That independent tradition was carried on by Clive Barker, also a gay man. While still in college, he created and toured a theater group performing plays he wrote and directed. He put this experience to good use in his first few independent films including the first Hellraiser film in 1987. Hellraiser itself was a self-funded independent production costing an even then minuscule $1 million. Jordan Peele and Boots Riley are recent examples of this ethos, their films Get Out (2017) and Sorry To Bother You (2018) gaining well-deserved acclaim.
Do It Yourself
The “Punk” movement was known for its scrappy, “can-do”, DIY or die attitude. Early punk rockers built a scene from the ground up that many of the most famous bands used. This attracted the attention of major labels. These bands had created their own an identifiable brand; and that branding allowed them to keep up their signature sound. Creative voices from under represented groups in all the arts have used independently financed projects to present themselves more realistically. While the stereotypes continue in mainstream film, and music these films reached larger audiences. In essence, artists have for years, been taking matters into their own hands in terms of representation.
The Little Web-Series That Could
One of the most heart-warming success stories of recent years is the U-Tube web-series Carmilla. The series is based on the homophobic 19th century novel of the same name. The show turns the Victorian tropes on their heads. Not so much a case of “made by gay women, about gay women, for gay women,” the series is made by gay women. It is about lots of different kinds of people, for everyone.
An Unlikely Love Story
No pandering or tokenism is required or even attempted. As series star Elise Bauman put it, Carmilla is “a small, non-union web-series centered on an unlikely love story between two women. Unlikely not because they were both women, but because one happened to be a vampire.”
The L Word
Homosexuality is taken as a given in Carmilla. The word “lesbian” came up exactly once, in the third season, and not in a negative way. Gay relationships are being treated like any other, without a hint of pandering, tokenism, stereotyping or fetishization. This fresh approach really hit a nerve with the audience. The strong positive fan reaction has taken a show that was not expected to go past one season to four. Four successful, award-winning seasons, a feature film, and a prime-time series in development as of 2018.
Fear Not
It can get really frustrating having one’s identity ignored by the greater culture. Believe me I understand, I’m a pagan. The best we have in terms of mainstream media representation is the original version of The Wicker Man. On the upside, there are many great examples of positive representation to be found. They are just more likely to exist in the independent and cult fringes of the culture, particularly in the digital realm.
For more T.K McNeil follow the link to “The Alphabet Soup of Sexual Identity”.
https://www.calamitypolitics.com/2019/02/03/alphabet-soup-sexual-identity/
