There are tons of movies, tv, books, and video games made for different audiences that come out every year. Each of these is usually specifically tailor-made to appeal to certain audiences to ensure success and a standard minimum amount of profit for anything that is created.
Looking at this idea of demographics, it becomes much less confusing as to what exactly ‘good representation’ is.
Representation usually deals with the portrayal of different aspects of identity and culture in a piece of media to perform one or more of the following:
Resonate with those an identity belongs to
Educate those whose identity is not the same as the one being represented
The idea that one looks or is called a certain identity is not all that representation falls to, but rather how characters are developed and presented to audiences to achieve one or more of the goals above.
Let’s take a few examples to solidify this idea.
Dear White People is a show that attempts to portray the lives of different students of the African American community in an Ivy League college.
It takes an approach to not just include an incredibly diverse set of characters but also attempts to represent the ideological principles each student takes to land a stake in an institution that was not intended to be accessible to them without extraordinary access to resources and circumstances. Each of them represents different methods of approaching the system based on their personal experiences with racism and the show portrays how dealing with issues of discrimination and racism do not necessarily follow a single ideology or approach.
The beauty here is that it can resonate with others who also face the same struggles, and also provides the variety of ideologies that one can take.
This is just but one bit of representation, which instead of doing Goal 2(to educate viewers), it does Goal 1(to resonate).
Let’s take a contrasting example.
Itaewon Class is a show about an ex-convict whose aim is to also attempt to win in a system rigged against him and how he forms strong bonds with others who want to do the same and together attempt to start and build a successful business despite their backgrounds.
One particular character, Toni Kim, who is written as someone of both Korean and African descent, is often cited as a ‘bad’ kind of representation. I don’t necessarily think this was true. Admittedly the show ended up making the character the butt of jokes, a character who exists for a plot device and little to no insight on his personality- as opposed to the rest of the cast. But I don’t think we can call this ‘bad’ representation because the point was never to resonate with those who share the character’s identity but rather bring attention to an issue in Korean society- racism. There is an entire episode dedicated to Toni Kim facing discrimination and how the group deals with it in an attempt to support him.
The idea here is not to resonate with audiences, but rather educate them on something they don’t understand yet. Until the first barrier of education is overcome(which in this case is recognizing that people with darker skin tones are not different from the common populace), representation can’t achieve anything better.
This is why the context of representation and providing a sort of value on it being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ takes more than just the outcome. The intended audience is incredibly important as well. Dear White People was exclusively on Netflix- mainly aimed at American audiences. Itaewon Class was aired on South Korean national television by a company known as one of the three main television news networks in South Korea- JTBC. It is incredibly clear from this that when trying to analyze representation, we need to look at who the media speaks to rather than how it may affect the representing audience.
When you look at representation through this lens, it becomes a bit easier to see what bad representation actually is.
A fair example of actual bad representation would be Boys Love shows and media. Especially popular in Asia and produced in Korean, Thai, and Japanese, many shows that come under this genre portray homosexual relationships between men but often put off themes that could possibly resonate with LGBT audiences in order to appeal to their main demographic- straight women. Plenty of studies have concluded that these books and stories were written more towards appealing to a straight woman’s fantasy and very few of them are written with the intention to resonate with audiences who share identities with the main characters. This is an example of bad representation for two key reasons:
The characters’ identities are used to sell and make money, which is particularly malicious if they are oppressed in reality (as in most societies presently).
It neither resonates with relating audiences(Goal 1) nor educates those who do not share the identity(Goal 2)- it could even do the opposite and make people further misinformed.
From this, it should be pretty clear that we can define things and call it bad representation.
But in the end, what exactly is ‘good’ representation? This is purely based on how one would judge the two goals I put above and whether a piece of media does either and how much they try doing of it. The extent of a piece of media’s attempt to reach a goal also matters, which brings up an important question.
Can you do both goals?
The answer to this is yes, but it’s difficult to do so. In order to establish a story, characters, and settings that can resonate with those who share identities as well as be palatable enough to educate others is harder said than done. A writer would have to be very specific about what aspects to not go as deep into as others to not make audiences feel like they are getting into too much while also giving enough many to resonate with. It’s a fine line that’s easy to miss the sight of. Some stories end up awry in their writing- leading to a story that is incredibly light on representation but has hints of a deeper agenda but can’t go any further because of audience constraints. Other times the story may contain themes only those who share identities can relate to and could alienate others who may not know enough as a result of not living those same experiences.
Again, we can’t call this ‘good’ representation either. Unless a piece of media were to somehow achieve both goals to their fullest extent, it’s impossible to be seen as a perfect representation. The best a piece of media can do is take one goal and act on it in the best way possible. That’s a more likely and achievable scenario and much easier to create meaningful change.
The reason all of this is so important is that the metrics of representation are not so simple, there are a lot of factors to take into account before putting up a story as good or bad representation and more importantly, depends on a viewer and whether or not a story was meant for them. There isn’t such a thing as ‘good’ representation, but we can certainly create media that can represent and cause change to make someone feel better or show them how to treat someone else better.
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