- Hello everybody.
It's Rowan back again.
I asked you for some questions for Q&A a while ago.
Turns out, the questions were too good.
So, I'm gonna turn them into these kinda videos,
tentatively called thoughts and stuff 'cause
they're my thoughts on some stuff.
Our thoughts and stuff for today comes from
Violence of Resistance on Tumblr,
who asked if it is better to have no representation
or bad representation.
We are like here in terms of what we know we
should be getting in representation because like,
these people exists and like are us,
and we'd like to be represented, please.
And then this is like actual representation
and it's very frustrating that we can't just go there,
that we have to go through these steps of like
bad representation to get there.
It shouldn't be that way, but I think in terms of
who's getting hired to write, to direct,
who is kind of, what kind of characters they're creating,
what level characters in terms of if they're primey
or protagonists, if they're antagonists,
if they're secondary or tertiary characters.
It's difficult.
So, I have a real tough time with this.
I feel like everyone kind of has a tough time with this.
But I think what we need to look at is why is it
bad representation, right?
So, examples of why something might be bad representation.
Classic example might be the Danish Girl.
It might be a very good film, objectively,
except for the fact that ya know,
there's a cis actor in a trans role,
specifically a cis male actor in the role of
a trans woman.
I think that most people in the trans community agree,
not good, but there are some trans people who are like,
"Eh, I'm kind of quite grateful that they're telling
"trans stories, especially trans history,
"and of course it would've been must more preferable
"to be a trans woman but, if this is just like
"a smattering of films in the history of film history
"which is going to have a cis man as a trans woman
"and then we can progress, I'm willing to
"suck it up for a bit and I think it's difficult because
"we don't know what happens next, right?"
So, we don't know if this is gonna turn into
actually yeah, people learn their lesson and cast
trans women in these roles or if it's just,
"Oh, that did quite well.
"We can continue to do that."
I think that's the difficulty 'cause it's like,
if you didn't respect me enough to do it in the first place,
why do I think you're gonna respect me enough to do it
later on in other films.
So, if we say we're gonna boycott something like Stonewall,
do the funders see, "Oh, this movie didn't make
"a lot of money.
"Therefore, gay and trans movies don't make a lot of money,"
or stories about our history don't make a lot of money.
Or do they look at it and go,
"Hmm, the reason why it didn't make the money
"is because these people who are boycotting it
"for this very specific reason."
I think that it has a knock-on effect
in terms of bad representation or no representation
because potentially, not supporting bad representation
could potentially lead to no representation.
Again, we don't know how it's gonna pan out because no one
can see into the future and no one can see into the
convoluted and completely illogical minds
of people who apparently fund films.
I mean, other bad representation we have is like
gay guys, especially feminine gay guys
being the butt of the joke.
Is it okay for them to be the butt of the joke
if they're still included in there?
What about tertiary characters?
So, characters who are like well-written characters,
but they ultimately are like religated to very, very
side background characters.
Another kind of bad representation might be representation
that's inaccurate.
It might not be offensive, out with the offensive,
but it's just inaccurate and I feel like that's probably
something that we're gonna get as we go through
and start to get more intersex characters,
more asexual characters, more trans characters,
basically characters we haven't seen properly yet.
Like what is the harm, right, in bad representation?
I feel like each of these examples has a different
kind of harm to it and a different propensity for harm.
So, if we have misinformation,
people learn about stuff that they don't know about
by the media and the media comes from many sources,
so it comes from the news and factual media
and documentary, but it also comes from fictional media
and if something is apparently truthful and factual
and then it turns and it presents itself as such,
but it's just very, very inaccurate in the way
it portrays marginalised people.
That's going to spread misinformation
and that isn't good and often times,
it's going to be very difficult to reverse the effects
of when you eventually get it right.
I feel like it's just like, "Who is this for, right?"
I feel like these two solutions have like,
"Do you have no or do you have bad?"
They're just for straight and cis people, right?
Like we know that that shouldn't be how it is
and yet, that's kind of what we've been given.
So I've talked about this in my respectability politics
video about the idea if that that representation,
it's not for the people that it's representing,
it's actually, ya know, trying to bundle it up as
nicely as possible for the straight people.
So what does it matter that this Danny,
this fictional gay white boy in with Stonewall,
with all these queer women of colour
that actually existed because the straight people,
like it tested well with straight audiences.
So obviously, we had to put him in there.
It's so frustrating as a question to think about
because it's like working on this premise
that it's just inherently not satisfactory at all.
It's the reality that we live in, but it's so easy
to fill out not to be the reality, right?
It's not like we live in this world where we can't have
good representation.
We have examples of good representation, ya know?
This question seems a distraction from like working
towards getting to a place where the good representation
actually happens.
So, those are my thoughts and stuff, I suppose.
If you have any more kind of questions or topics
that you want me to do in this kind of format,
then please leave them in the comments.
I'm gonna leave a little video here if you wanna
keep watching and if you'd like to help support me
make these videos, I'm gonna leave the link to my picture
along with all my social media links.
You can find me all over the internet.
Until i see you next time, bye!