More Than an Afterthought: Authentically Representing Intersectionality in Media
HIGHLIGHTS
• It is important to not think of intersectionality as simply adding up multiple identities that have no influence on one another.
• Without taking intersectionality into account, progressive ideas and movements lack substance.
• When creating a character, list out the intersectional elements of their identity and consider how to work these into all aspects of their characterization on-screen.
In college, I was briefly part of an organization that advocated for gender-oppressed people’s rights on campus. The group had themed weeks, like Sex Education Week and Period Awareness Week. The last theme of the semester was Intersectionality Week.
As a woman of color, I laughed. Intersectionality is not something I could wait weeks to live out. It’s my daily life. But too often, I find that advocacy groups and well-meaning people who are trying to support movements do the same thing. Intersectionality consistently shows up as an afterthought when it really should be a part of their mindset from the beginning, given that most movements have been started by the most marginalized people.
Intersectionality refers to the way that different identity markers, such as race, gender, sexuality, and class, interact and affect each other. These “intersections” produce experiences that are distinct to those who have the intersectional identity. Kimberle Crenshaw, the legal scholar who coined the term, wrote about Black women’s experiences in the workplace, saying that “the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism.” Crenshaw analyzed the way that the legal system separated Black women’s identities into “Black” and “woman,” but refused to account for how those two characteristics would overlap in a way that is unique to Black women.
Intersectionality is often treated like an addition problem. Women of color experience oppression because they are women + because they are people of color. A queer woman of color would experience homophobia + misogyny + racism. However, this goes against the foundation of what intersectionality is.
While it may seem like the Addition Problem Approach is a sincere attempt at understanding oppression, it can actually center privileged people instead. This is because there cannot be a universal experience of homophobia added to a universal experience of misogyny added to a universal experience of racism. Each one of these forms of oppression is influenced by the other, and the result is not an overlap of different shades of discrimination, but its own entity.
Too often, when we think about sexism, what we’re actually thinking about is the sexism that white, cis women face. When we talk about homophobia, we’re actually referring to white queer people’s struggles. When discussing racism, we generally think of the ways that it affects men of color. These associations are problematic because we believe that we can then understand intersectional identities and issues, but we’re just adding variables that never fit the equation in the first place.
The Addition Problem Approach has been used to explain intersectionality to people who have never heard about it before, but it cannot be the tool that we use when trying to actively work towards inclusion. Rather, there needs to be a consistent and active focus on intersectionality.
Let’s talk about what that might look like. In the context of gender, the starting point of a conversation cannot be an assumption that everyone understands femininity to be the same thing. A lot of conversation surrounding feminism and gender identity seems to push back against the idea of women being feminine. However, it’s important to understand that our society’s “default” ideas of gender are intertwined with whiteness, and so anyone who isn’t white will have a different interaction with the construct.
For instance, Black women are often hypermasculinized, meaning that their femininity is not just doubted, but rejected. The way that non-Black people enforce gender on Black people has roots in slavery, where the destruction of people’s identities was essential to their dehumanization and enslavement. Hortense Spillers, a Black feminist scholar, famously delves into the relationship between gender in Black communities and slavery in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.”
In media, there are patterns of Black women being portrayed as masculine. Consider the way that media outlets have talked about Serena Williams and Michelle Obama. In movies and television, similar patterns appear. This may manifest as casting a Black woman or girl in minor roles where she is only a prop for a white main character’s development, she is never thought of as a love interest, or her romantic life is a joke to other characters and the audience. In Pitch Perfect, Cynthia-Rose’s sexuality and romantic relationships are made fun of constantly, and the jokes about her make up nearly her entire character. In Sex and the City, Jennifer Hudson’s character, Louise, is more of a pitied character than a fully realized one.
Given the context of Black history, how would shunning femininity be the solution to misogyny? Of course, there are many Black people who don’t want to be feminine. But the point is that society’s current approach to gender is steeped in anti-Blackness and racism, and mainstream feminism’s idea of rejecting femininity as a form of freedom only works for a few people. If we don’t think about the way people with intersectional identities experience gender, then it’s just another case of supporting a kind of activism that doesn’t actually help people who are being hurt.
Conversely, East Asian women are hyperfeminized, and consistently characterized as submissive and only useful for sexual gratification. Examples include characters in Miss Saigon or Memoirs of a Geisha. While femininity is something that East Asian women are given access to, the interaction between race and gender is something that is marred with force and harm.
As a South Asian woman, I know people who look like me are either fetishized and seen as some exotic, sexual toy, or are ridiculed and thought to be sexless. One example that is branded in my mind is an early scene in How I Met Your Mother, a show that dominated my early teenage years. The men of the main cast are sitting in a taxi with Ranjit, a driver who reappears multiple times throughout the series. They ask him where he’s from, and he replies, “Bangladesh.” When Ted, Marshall, and Barney follow up by asking, “Are the women in your country beautiful?”, Ranjit shows them a picture of his wife. The protagonists respond by looking at each other and choking out, “He could have just said no.” This one scene is the only time I have ever heard an American show mention the name of the country that half of my family is from. It made my stomach drop, and as a tween watching the show, immediately convinced me that I would always be laughed at, always thought of as ugly. These aren’t just instances of racism; it is discrimination that works specifically because of intersectionality.
All of these examples demonstrate that the goal of blindly destroying masculinity and femininity as constructs is narrow-minded. The separate associations of femininity to domesticity and sexualization or masculinity with apathy, violence, and machismo undermine the layers of institutional oppression that people of color experience. To be clear, breaking down gender norms and the gender binary is key. However, doing so without actively centering histories of enslavement, genocide, and imperialism is not only irresponsible but harmful.
Problematic representation can also appear indirectly. Netflix's Moxie aims to tell a story about students engaging with feminism, but is ultimately a white feminist portrayal of social justice. Though historically, advocacy movements have consistently been started and led by Black women, Moxie places Black women and other characters of color to the side and characterizes white women as rebels. This not only ignores Black women's prominence in activism, but also paints over the suppression that intersectional people have faced in building advocacy groups.
I’ve given a few examples of the way race and gender intersect. There are thousands of layers within each category, and I haven’t even talked about intersections that involve socioeconomic status, religion, sexuality, neurodivergence, or disability. Intersectionality is not simple. It cannot be something that content creators and writers think about at the end of a project.
Instead, intersectional identities and histories need to be the mission from the beginning. Privileged people need to work more on understanding their roles in creating and contributing to discriminatory systems rather than assuming they know how to talk about or even create content portraying progress. Intersectionality is deeply complex, but it merits prioritization and continuing efforts to educate oneself.
For example, Pose offers insight into the way that the lives of trans women of color are also completely shaped by gender and race in ways that are different from cis women of color. Again, trans women of color often have to fight for femininity. Pose starts with intersectionality, rather than tacking it onto the end. While the show had limited representation of dark-skinned Black trans women, it provides a look into what mindful content creation looks like. Other examples of works that have prioritized intersectionality include Grown-ish, One Day at a Time, Grey’s Anatomy, Moonlight, and Girls’ Trip. While these works vary wildly in genre and tone, all of them include plotlines that are influenced by characters’ identities without identity markers making up the entirety of the characters.
This work extends beyond who’s in front of the camera. In addition to content creators and writers needing to research and learn about their characters’ identities, it is essential that there be diverse representation throughout a film or television show’s development, production, and distribution. For instance, the iCarly reboot has not only cast multiple Black characters, but has also hired Black hairstylists like Cora Diggins. The result has been stunning hairstyles for the characters in the show, as well as an outpouring of praise and support for the show’s decisions. Intersectionality was not just an afterthought here, but clearly something that was carefully considered throughout the process.
Ultimately, intersectionality is key. Without taking intersectionality into account, progressive ideas and movements lack substance. Progress doesn’t begin until intersectionality shows up, so it is critical to consider where in the work the subject is brought in. Shows and movies that attempt to lift up marginalized communities without thinking about intersectionality are only perpetuating different systems of prejudice and oppression. While it may feel daunting or overwhelming to think about the countless identity markers that people and characters have, there is beauty in investigating. Intersectionality isn’t an invisible or elusive concept: there are people with intersectional identities everywhere who live rich and deeply complex lives.
Actionable Insights
Prioritize telling stories with leading characters that have intersectional underrepresented identities.
When creating a character, list out the intersectional elements of their identity and consider how to work these into all aspects of their characterization on-screen.
Think about characters with multiple marginalized identities, and tell stories that do not consist solely of their struggles with those identities.
When telling stories of characters with intersectional identities, hire cast and crew members who can draw from their own intersectional identities to positively influence the authenticity of the overall storytelling.
When telling stories that aren’t “part of the real world,” like fantasy or science-fiction works, ensure that intersectional identities are represented without writing marginalization into their characters (i.e., make sure the characters are not just representations of their real-world oppression).
5 Content Creators to Listen To:
@kennathevampireslayer (TikTok)
@daejahtalkstv (TikTok & YouTube)
@crutches_and_spice (TikTok)
Khadija Mbowe (YouTube)
@thecounsciouskid (Instagram)
Jasmine Baten
Master’s student in Media and Communications, American University
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog belong solely to the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers.
On screen and on stage, disability continues to be depicted in outdated, cliched ways
This article originally appeared on The Conversation on November 2, 2020.
The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements have forced Hollywood and other artists and filmmakers to rethink their subject matter and casting practices. However, despite an increased sensitivity to gender and race representation in popular culture, disabled Americans are still awaiting their national (and international) movement.
“Disability drag” – casting able-bodied actors in the roles of characters with disabilities – has been hard to dislodge from its Oscar-worthy appeal. Since 1947, out of 59 nominations for disabled characters, 27 won an Academy Award – about a 50% win rate.
There’s Eddie Redmayne’s performance as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”; Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of Christy Brown, who has cerebral palsy, in “My Left Foot”; and Dustin Hoffman’s role as an autistic genius in “Rain Man” – to mention just a few.
In recent years, however, we’ve seen a slight shift. Actors with disabilities are actually being cast as characters who have disabilities. In 2017, theater director Sam Gold cast actress Madison Ferris – who uses a wheelchair in real life – as Laura in his Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” On TV and in movies, disabled actors are also being cast in roles of disabled characters.
Despite these developments, the issue of representation – what kind of characters these actors play – remains mostly unaddressed. The vast majority of characters with disabilities, whether they’re played by actors with disabilities or not, continue to represent the same outdated tropes.
As a professor of theater and media who has written extensively on the elements of stage drama, I wonder: Are writers and directors finally poised to move beyond these narrative tropes?
Breaking down the tropes
Typically, the disabled characters are limited to four types: the “magical cripple,” the “evil cripple,” the “inspirational cripple” and the “redemptive cripple.”
Magical cripples transcend the limitations of the human body and are almost divinelike. They make magical things happen for able-bodied characters.
In many ways, the magical cripple functions like “the magical Negro,” a term popularized by director Spike Lee to describe Black characters who are usually impoverished but brimming with folk wisdom, which they selflessly bestow on existentially confused white characters.
Like the magical Negro, the magical cripple is a plot device used to guide the lead character toward moral, intellectual or emotional enlightenment. The magical cripple doesn’t learn anything and doesn’t grow because he already is enlightened.
In film, examples include Frank Slade, the blind army colonel who guides young Charlie through the perils of teenage love in 1992’s “Scent of a Woman.” Marvel’s Daredevil character is a perfect example of a magical cripple: A blind person imbued with supernatural abilities who can function above and beyond his physical limitations.
Evil cripples represent a form of karmic punishment for the character’s wickedness. One of the most well-known is Shakespeare’s Richard III, the scheming hunchbacked king.
In a 1916 essay, Sigmund Freud pointed to Richard as an example of the correlation between physical disabilities and “deformities of character.” The trope of the evil cripple is rooted in mythologies populated by half-man half-beasts who possess pathological and sadistic cravings.
More recent examples of the evil cripple include Dr. Strangelove, Mini-Me from “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” and Bolivar Trask in “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
Then there are inspirational cripples, whose roles equate to what disability rights activist Stella Young calls “inspiration porn.” These stories center on disabled people accomplishing basic tasks or “overcoming” their disability. We see this in “Stronger,” which retells the story of Boston Marathon bombing survivor Jeff Bauman.
In the inspirational narratives, disability is not a fact of life – a difference – but something one has to overcome to gain rightful sense of belonging in society.
An offshoot of the inspirational narrative is the redemptive narrative, in which a disabled person either commits suicide or is killed. In movies like “Water for Elephants,” “Simon Birch” and “The Year of Living Dangerously,” disabled characters are sacrificed to prove their worth or to help the protagonist reach his goal.
These characters serve as dramaturgical steppingstones. They are never partners or people in their own right, with their own drives and ambitions. They are not shown as deserving their own stories.
The persistence of these tropes underlies the urgent need to reevaluate the makeup of writers and production teams. Who writes these parts is perhaps more important than who acts them.
Beyond the hero’s journey
There’s a reason these formulaic roles are so prevalent.
For much of the past century, Hollywood storytelling has operated according to the hero’s journey, a dramatic structure that places the white male able-bodied character at the center of the story with atypical characters serving as “helpers” to support his goals.
This narrative model has conditioned audiences to see the helpers as purely functional. The tropes based on this framework define the categories of belonging: who is and who isn’t human, whose life is worth living and whose isn’t.
The one narrative journey that historically allowed the disabled to play a central role depicted them as working toward the symbolic reclamation of their dignity and humanity. In tragic narratives, this quest fails, and the characters either die or request euthanasia as a gesture of love toward their caretakers.
“Million Dollar Baby” and “Me Before You” are two good examples of films in which disabled characters choose voluntary euthanasia, communicating the socially internalized low value of their own lives.
But what if disabled characters already had dignity? What if no such quest were needed? What if their disability weren’t the thing to overcome but merely one element of one’s identity?
This would require deconstructing the conceptual pyramid of past hierarchies, one that has long used disabled characters as props to illuminate conventional heroes.
Carrie Mathison in the series “Homeland” can be thought of as representing this new approach. Carrie, played by Claire Danes, struggles with mental illness, and it affects her life and her work.
But it is not something to overcome in a dramatic sense. Overcoming the disability is not the central theme of the series – it’s not the main obstacle to her goal. Carrie’s disability does give her some insights, but these come at a price and are not magical.
“Homeland” further breaks the mold by giving Carrie a helper who is an older white male – Saul Berenson, played by Mandy Patinkin.
As we move towards greater gender and race inclusivity at work and in the arts, disability should not be left behind. More complex, more sophisticated stories and representations need to replace the simplistic, outdated and cliched tropes that have been consistently rewarded at the Oscars.
Associate Professor of Theatre and Dramaturgy, Emerson College
This article originally appeared on The Conversation.
How Activist Audiences Are Changing the TV Industry
This article originally appeared on Shondaland.com
Television, like all other art forms, has gone through various eras over the years. Often the era corresponds with what is happening within the culture, particularly the generations coming of age during that time. We are now in the streaming era of television, the a la carte programming boom that allows users to watch whatever they please, whenever they please. Gen Z, the politically active and outspoken adolescents of today, have different TV habits than previous generations. Even when binge-watching Friends, this group is unafraid to poke holes in the television industry’s framework and call for content that respects their values.
I work with UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS), where we harness the power of storytelling to help the next generation thrive and grow. In the lab, we study adolescents to understand their media habits and the effects that media have on young minds. Social media is a fixture of daily life, particularly during the pandemic, and it has become a place for activism and political engagement that allows young people to become informed on causes happening around them.
Gen Z is more racially diverse, educated, and queer than any of our previous generations. This group uses social media to develop their identities and engage with heterogeneous peers that might not be living in their hometowns. As a result, this progressive group has become interested in representation in media and social impact entertainment, seeking diverse and authentic casting and storytelling on- and off-screen. They are vocal about wanting to see themselves and their peers reflected back to them on-screen, carrying the torch from Millennials and Gen X’ers — notably Black women — who spearheaded movements like #TimesUp and #OscarsSoWhite.
“Storytelling thrives when audiences sense the truth and lived experience driving what occurs on-screen.”
In recent years, content has been shifting to be more diverse and inclusive, particularly when looking at adolescent-focused shows. Diverse programming in this space is not new — I grew up with That’s So Raven and True Jackson VP — but these series did not capture the attention of adults. Now, spaces that have been vehicles for complex adult programming such as Netflix and HBO are producing shows that feature adolescent characters that appeal to wider-ranging audiences — and might even prompt parent-child conversations.
Some recent examples are Sex Education, Never Have I Ever, Euphoria, and We Are Who We Are. All of these shows feature people of color prominently in the principal cast and deal with mental health and racial, sexual, and gender identity. HBO Max’s most recent debut Genera+ion, is an intriguing addition, as it was created with significant contributions from a 19-year-old. As a new socially conscious generation comes of age, more change must be on the horizon for the industry, even outside of adolescent-focused programming.
In order for this to happen, entertainment companies have to take a hard look at their hiring practices and slates of content. One company that has been doing this is STARZ. While the global media company serves an adult demographic (with a majority coming from the 18-54 range), their programming captures the attention of some Gen Z viewers in the stage of late adolescence. Through my work with STARZ, I have come to see that their leadership team understands the necessity to make changes within their organization to be more inclusive of underrepresented groups, both in front of and behind the camera. STARZ recently launched the #TakeTheLead initiative, which kicked off in February with a research report that I co-authored, and will continue with a series of monthly “Transparency Talks” throughout the year leading up to an industry-wide summit in the fall focused on representation that STARZ will host.
In late 2020, STARZ asked CSS to assess the diversity within their shows — both in front of and behind the camera — and their leadership team, relative to the rest of the television industry. Our team began by reviewing all of the recently released industry reports analyzing representation in front of and behind the camera to get a sense of the landscape. We chose three reports to illustrate the comparative numbers for the industry: UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report 2020, Part 2: Television, the Writer’s Guild of America West (WGAW) Inclusion Report 2020, and Boxed In 2019-20: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television from San Diego State University (SDSU). We then dove into the numbers for STARZ, focusing on race and gender for their senior leadership, showrunners, executive producers, directors, writers, series leads, and series regulars. In order to provide more accurate comparisons to the industry, we used the criteria from the industry reports to better define the data analyzed for each category. We were encouraged by our findings.
The numbers showed that STARZ exceeded industry hiring practices for people of color by more than 123 percent at the showrunner level and more than 85 percent at the executive producer level. People of color also make up over 53 percent of the writers’ rooms on STARZ’s series and nearly half of all episodic directors. As a result, many of the stories that STARZ is telling — the Power Universe franchise and the upcoming series Run the World and Blindspotting — are refreshingly diverse and representative of communities often ignored by Hollywood.
A standout is the STARZ original P-Valley, which showrunner Katori Hall adapted from her play with an uncensored name, about the inner workings of a strip club in Mississippi, The Pynk. The show received critical and audience acclaim when it launched last summer for its nuanced depictions of the dancers and the southern strip club scene. The secret to the success of P-Valley is how the series puts the spotlight on women of color on-screen and behind the scenes, including in the director’s chair and writers’ room. The show demonstrates that when the people who are telling stories behind the camera truly represent the actors who bring those stories to life, what we gain is a richness often only seen in stories about white men.
Recent research reports from SDSU and UCLA have demonstrated that more diverse representation in leadership roles translates to more diverse representation at every level of production.
In our work at CSS, we analyze Authentically Inclusive Representation (AIR), taking a deeper look into the substance of the storytelling and noting intersectionality, tropes, and stereotypes. We used Mediaversity’s extensive grading system to create a sliding scale to rate where a work ranks relative to the norm of having some — often stereotypical — representation across gender, race, and LGBTQ+ or disability. Films and TV shows score above the norm for AIR much more often when members of underrepresented groups are heavily involved in the storytelling process, as with P-Valley.
What is most important is that executives and content creators work together to make AIR a priority within their shows or risk negatively affecting perceptions of self within audiences of color.
Viewer habits and appetites are changing. Content creators looking to capture the short attention span — about 8 seconds — of Gen Z need to focus on making their stories authentic reflections of the world as this young audience experiences it — diverse, inclusive, and honest.
Demand for this kind of content is also increasing rapidly amongst Millennial and Gen X audiences.
An important first step toward change is to invite underrepresented groups into the rooms where decisions are being made and to give these individuals real decision-making power.
Storytelling thrives when audiences sense the truth and lived experience driving what occurs on-screen. Actors, writers, directors, producers, showrunners, and executives all have a part to play here, and when their voices come together in a positive way, it can shift audience attitudes and promote tolerance. Organizations like CSS can offer guidance on how to make changes to promote more responsible storytelling, but ultimately it is up to the leaders in the entertainment industry to make the decision to start the process.
Program Director, Center for Scholars & Storytellers
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog belong solely to the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers.