All or Nothing Representation (And Why it Doesn't Work)

The United States is a country that idolizes the white man - there is absolutely no debating this subject. Both racism and sexism have existed in our country since before its birth, putting white men (particularly straight, Christian white men) on a pedestal above everyone else. Despite this fact, the United States is also a very diverse nation. Both of these facts, when combined, create a very tricky situation in many aspects of American life. One of the trickiest of these situations is perhaps the problem of equal representation in media.

I will be examining the particular media of film, and two particular examples from the recent cinema: Selma, and The Hobbit franchise. Film is perhaps the media in which racial and sexual representation matter the most, due to its intensely visible nature. When a movie lacks diversity, it's impossible to ignore, because it's huge and glaring on an enormous screen directly in front of the viewer's face.

For a very, very long time, the film industry had virtually no representation for any sort of social or ethnic group that wasn't the white straight Christian male. Straight white Christian women were the only exception to this rule, although not by much - most roles that female characters had to play were sexist, stereotyped, boring, or downright offensive. This wasn't always the case where female characters were concerned (particularly during the period where the Fred-Astaire-Ginger-Rogers type couple dancing movie were popular) but as time progressed, women in film regressed into the state of All or Nothing representation. This is a state that they now share with people of color, sexual and gender minorities, and all religious minorities. 

All or Nothing representation is a spastic pattern of high and low extremes. Either the group in question is not represented at all in the film in question, or the film is entirely about being from that marginalized group.

Two of the examples I've chosen are the Hobbit movies and Selma, two very recent and very different films. The Hobbit is an excellent example of "Nothing" representation. The viewer would be hard pressed to find a single person of color in any of the three movies. I counted maybe two, and both of them were non-speaking parts in the middle of a crowd in the background of a single shot, so I hardly think that counts. In short, every single character in the Hobbit franchise is white. Selma, on the other hand, is a movie with excellent, complex roles for people of color in abundance. However, while Selma may have superior representation in pure numbers, the movie is entirely about the experience of being a black person.

Why is this a problem? By having All or Nothing representation for any marginalized group in our media - especially film - we are teaching people within these groups that the only story that they can be in is one that focuses solely on their role in a marginalized group, and it teaches the more privileged individuals outside of these groups that the people in question (be it women, people of color, sexual/gender minorities, or anything else) aren't a "normal" part of society and are only worth their surface value.

Without a question, "All" representation is far better than "Nothing" representation. In a society where so many people are completely whited out of existence in our media, it's nice to have any sort of representation they can get. However, when was the last time a black protagonist ever did anything in a film besides march on Washington or run away from slavery? When was the last time a woman got to ride in a spaceship and save the world without the hindrance of stereotypical gender roles and obligatory love interests, or having her movie dubbed a "chick flick"? When was the last time a gay protagonist got to fight bad guys and have car chases instead of having an entire two hours devoted to discussing the hardships of their sexual orientation? When was the last time a Muslim, or a transgender person, or a Vietnamese American even got to star in their own movie, much less do something interesting in it? 

"All" representation is still a step up from none at all, but is a far cry away from being anywhere near equal. The people who belong to these marginalized groups are only taught one thing from these types of films: they will never be able to become more than their race/religion/sexual orientation/gender identity/etc. No matter how many interesting stories they have to tell, the only one that's ever worth telling is the one that tells how hard it is to belong to that one marginalized group. When will we finally see a Muslim flying a spaceship, or an intersex individual discovering an ancient tomb and fulfilling an ancient prophecy, or an American Indian making a life changing road trip across a dystopian future wasteland? When will we finally stop defining people by the one trait that doesn't fit our "ideal" model, and instead let them star in the stories we've been letting white men star in for centuries?