One of the hardest questions; is it better to have clumsy representation, or less representation? Because no matter what, a greater effort requirement amounts to a higher barrier of entry. We don’t owe an artist anything, but at the same time should we say “If you don’t understand a group of people well enough to represent them, you shouldn’t be doing art.”?
JRR Tolkien notoriously has very few very impressively represented women, which kind of just gets a shrug from the fandom. But you can only tolerate so much of that before you just have a small selection of archetypes on pedestals. You get the sense from so much media produced by men, that they think women only (should) make up <25% of society. If they don’t matter to a male protagonist then they don’t matter. I think it should be fine to clumsily represent a group, as long as it expands representation rather than restricting it. And continuation should be dependent on an expectation to grow.
Case in point; The Apu Problem. Despite Apu from The Simpsons being the worst of both worlds, by virtue of originality he was acceptable at conception. Failure to grow with the franchise’s popularity, however, means that he established his own stereotype and by extension The Simpsons created it’s own racism. By the boiling frog effect, The Simpsons creators just get to dismiss is it as a product of it’s time “Oh you know things that weren’t racist are suddenly racist now shrug what’re you supposed to do?” But they’ve had the power to do better for a long time, if they were willing to face the problem long enough to learn and address it permanently.
The USA still hasn’t had a (official) female president despite multiple opportunities, because women in America don’t want “that kind of representation”. Society can keep representation from slacking, without letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Apu is kind of the exception that proves the rule in a way, and ends up being quite an interesting case study. You have the same problem with speedy Gonzales in the sense that most of the stereotypes being conveyed are neutral to positive, and those characters actually tend to be favored within the group they represent. So when we make fun of, say European stereotypes, we get away with a lot more because the power dynamics flow in the other direction. In a weird way, the entire thing can kind of circle back on itself such that Apu or speedy being accepted as a stereotype actually demonstrates exactly the kind of multicultural integration we want to see. Also, about 90% of the controversy was that the voice was done by a white guy.
In that sense, clumsy representation kind of does the opposite - it embodies the way marginalized groups are bracketed on both sides by conflict with their native culture and host culture. This is why, eg, something like Modern Family was such a step gain for LGBT representation, because they actually leaned into full characterization without feeling like they needed to walk on eggshells. In contrast, having some lesbian smurfs share one on screen kiss and then never revisiting the topic feels like being invited to a party where you don’t know anyone and everyone is actively avoiding you.
If the clumsy representation is just rainbow-washing then you wind up with some sanitized corporate gayness and when that starts influencing impressional young gay people then it removes a lot of the self-determinism that was a pillar of gay counterculture for decades or even centuries.
Instead of formulating their own identities in small cohorts linked by a common identity, they start looking up to stereotypes as depicted in the media and emulating those. That’s not exclusive to gay people, it’s endemic to young people in general in this age of corporate and algorithmic media.
Maybe it depends on how bad the representation is. A setting where everybody is deaf and always has been isn’t a good place to do the struggles of deaf people in a mostly hearing society.
There absolutely is a limit on bad representation. Eg, when it crosses over into bigotry/discrimination it has gotten way past clumsy into evil. (Minstrel shows are most evil for being the limited “representation” of the time.)
I like the nuance of your example though; Because it doesn’t explore a most major facet of being deaf, does that mean the story shouldn’t be told? If there are already stories about being deaf in a mostly hearing society, then a story about an entirely deaf society explores another angle of being deaf or what it could mean to be deaf. Imho I think that should still count as valuable representation. While it’s fair to criticize it as not representative of the entire experience of being deaf, it’s not fair to criticize it as opposition to deaf interests. You can read/watch the two side by side and get greater perspective. Yet in a vacuum, it would be bad representation.
In contrast Menwritingwomen content gives an expression of how certain men perceive of women. Many of these men being perfectly amicable and good to women in their own life while harboring these toxic/bullshit perspectives we wouldn’t even know about. Despite that many even write some women well, they absolutely deserve to be criticized for opposing women’s interests. Some aren’t even useful for getting a perspective on how the author perceives women, being that individually they seem so normal until the overall writing reveals a pattern of bad representation.
They all absolutely ought to be reconsidered for women writing women mediocrely in the same space wherever possible. Accepted for the representation (in context) they are otherwise. Excised, canceled, buycotted only when the work functions to explore & validate the author’s bigoted values.
On one side “Disney villain” has not crossed that threshold even if they aren’t the female representation (some) women want, at least they’re novel and diversify representation; whereas “There’s one woman and she’s cool and hot” has crossed the bad representation threshold even if she represents how every woman of that demographic wants to see herself.
(Sorry I’m mostly referencing women’s representation in art, it’s an accessible example because there’s so much variety in failure for what should be statistically easy representation).
![Ahem [TinyBaer]](https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/a37867aa-4f71-41c1-bfb9-99daf214539e.webp){kind=link}
One of the hardest questions; is it better to have clumsy representation, or less representation? Because no matter what, a greater effort requirement amounts to a higher barrier of entry. We don’t owe an artist anything, but at the same time should we say “If you don’t understand a group of people well enough to represent them, you shouldn’t be doing art.”?
JRR Tolkien notoriously has very few very impressively represented women, which kind of just gets a shrug from the fandom. But you can only tolerate so much of that before you just have a small selection of archetypes on pedestals. You get the sense from so much media produced by men, that they think women only (should) make up <25% of society. If they don’t matter to a male protagonist then they don’t matter. I think it should be fine to clumsily represent a group, as long as it expands representation rather than restricting it. And continuation should be dependent on an expectation to grow.
Case in point; The Apu Problem. Despite Apu from The Simpsons being the worst of both worlds, by virtue of originality he was acceptable at conception. Failure to grow with the franchise’s popularity, however, means that he established his own stereotype and by extension The Simpsons created it’s own racism. By the boiling frog effect, The Simpsons creators just get to dismiss is it as a product of it’s time “Oh you know things that weren’t racist are suddenly racist now shrug what’re you supposed to do?” But they’ve had the power to do better for a long time, if they were willing to face the problem long enough to learn and address it permanently.
The USA still hasn’t had a (official) female president despite multiple opportunities, because women in America don’t want “that kind of representation”. Society can keep representation from slacking, without letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Apu is kind of the exception that proves the rule in a way, and ends up being quite an interesting case study. You have the same problem with speedy Gonzales in the sense that most of the stereotypes being conveyed are neutral to positive, and those characters actually tend to be favored within the group they represent. So when we make fun of, say European stereotypes, we get away with a lot more because the power dynamics flow in the other direction. In a weird way, the entire thing can kind of circle back on itself such that Apu or speedy being accepted as a stereotype actually demonstrates exactly the kind of multicultural integration we want to see. Also, about 90% of the controversy was that the voice was done by a white guy.
In that sense, clumsy representation kind of does the opposite - it embodies the way marginalized groups are bracketed on both sides by conflict with their native culture and host culture. This is why, eg, something like Modern Family was such a step gain for LGBT representation, because they actually leaned into full characterization without feeling like they needed to walk on eggshells. In contrast, having some lesbian smurfs share one on screen kiss and then never revisiting the topic feels like being invited to a party where you don’t know anyone and everyone is actively avoiding you.
If the clumsy representation is just rainbow-washing then you wind up with some sanitized corporate gayness and when that starts influencing impressional young gay people then it removes a lot of the self-determinism that was a pillar of gay counterculture for decades or even centuries.
Instead of formulating their own identities in small cohorts linked by a common identity, they start looking up to stereotypes as depicted in the media and emulating those. That’s not exclusive to gay people, it’s endemic to young people in general in this age of corporate and algorithmic media.
Maybe it depends on how bad the representation is. A setting where everybody is deaf and always has been isn’t a good place to do the struggles of deaf people in a mostly hearing society.
There absolutely is a limit on bad representation. Eg, when it crosses over into bigotry/discrimination it has gotten way past clumsy into evil. (Minstrel shows are most evil for being the limited “representation” of the time.)
I like the nuance of your example though; Because it doesn’t explore a most major facet of being deaf, does that mean the story shouldn’t be told? If there are already stories about being deaf in a mostly hearing society, then a story about an entirely deaf society explores another angle of being deaf or what it could mean to be deaf. Imho I think that should still count as valuable representation. While it’s fair to criticize it as not representative of the entire experience of being deaf, it’s not fair to criticize it as opposition to deaf interests. You can read/watch the two side by side and get greater perspective. Yet in a vacuum, it would be bad representation.
In contrast Menwritingwomen content gives an expression of how certain men perceive of women. Many of these men being perfectly amicable and good to women in their own life while harboring these toxic/bullshit perspectives we wouldn’t even know about. Despite that many even write some women well, they absolutely deserve to be criticized for opposing women’s interests. Some aren’t even useful for getting a perspective on how the author perceives women, being that individually they seem so normal until the overall writing reveals a pattern of bad representation. They all absolutely ought to be reconsidered for women writing women mediocrely in the same space wherever possible. Accepted for the representation (in context) they are otherwise. Excised, canceled, buycotted only when the work functions to explore & validate the author’s bigoted values.
On one side “Disney villain” has not crossed that threshold even if they aren’t the female representation (some) women want, at least they’re novel and diversify representation; whereas “There’s one woman and she’s cool and hot” has crossed the bad representation threshold even if she represents how every woman of that demographic wants to see herself. (Sorry I’m mostly referencing women’s representation in art, it’s an accessible example because there’s so much variety in failure for what should be statistically easy representation).