#RepresentationMatters

Forgive me for writing on something not overly related to San Francisco itself, but given that my last three posts have been more about the city than the content of the class, I think I can excuse this just once. This post is tagging off of the discussion we had in section this Wednesday (6/3) about representation being written by the people being represented. It was sparked by the scene in Army of Lovers where a male character embodies a female character to try to write about her personal experiences and evidently it stepped on a few toes. I haven't actually read that bit, so I don't have an opinion, so please don't think my wording there means that I think people are wrong for feeling that way--in fact, I gotta agree that hearing about it kinda squicked me out a bit. And really, here's my two cents on the matter. I don't really think about it that much when I'm reading, and to be honest, for a lit student I don't read much anymore anyway. I do notice this kind of stuff in television, though. I watch a hell of a lot of television. I think it's really important to acknowledge that certain people are just never going to live the experiences of other groups of people. And that shows in the writing. As someone who fits into a number of marginalized groups, it is damn exciting to see yourself on the screen or a page. When I saw a gif from the the show Sirens explicitly stating that there was an asexual character I went from a complete lack of interest to watching the first three episodes in a row.
 
 It turned out to not really be worth it, I didn't find the show all that funny, but as an asexual person who had literally never heard the word uttered on a TV before in my life, I jumped at the opportunity to have a little recognition. I also can't speak to the writers of the show, seeing as I don't care enough about the content of the program to know if the people behind it are anything like me.
The other show I wanted to talk about is Teen Wolf on MTV, which, yes, I know, looks really silly but I love it and it is actually doing a lot for representation in media. This guy here is the head writer:
 
Jeff Davis. He's an openly gay man, and in that way he really helps the gay characters act like normal people who just happen to sleep with people of the same gender (this does not, however stop him from queer baiting, but that's a different issue). The problem, though, is that although the cast looks like this:

 
 and has Tyler Posey playing a character of Mexican heritage in the lead role in a relationship with Japanese Kira Yukimura, showing an interracial relationship devoid of a white person, even Posey himself didn't realize Scott was Mexican until a fan asked him about it at last year's Comic-Con. And fans have often taken issue with the fact that Arden Cho is not actually Japanese but Korean and that casting her in this role implies that all Asian people look the same. (Perhaps not the writer's fault?)
So, yeah, white men can (and arguably will) write diverse and interesting characters, but it can be hard to write outside of what you know. I wouldn't say they shouldn't try, just that they should try harder. And of course, there's always room for (mis)interpretation, as I know Neil Gaiman has often gotten frustrated when people have come to him with artwork depicting the characters he clearly described as black or Asian or Middle Eastern as white. So what is there to do when even when white men do write non-white characters, people refuse to see them that way anyway?