Why Mainstream LGBTQ+ Representation Matters

it's important to remember to cover the basics hey everyone we have reached the point the month where I plan to talk about LGBTQ representation which does mean that to start we are going to swap out the look while I sort of reiterate for anyone new in case you did not already know I do have a dog in this race I am gender-fluid that does put me in as part of the lgbtq+ community and a part of why I talk about it now with that kind of all set it occurred to me recently that in these videos up until this point I've sort of skipped over something that I really should have addressed by now and that is why just representation even matter at all you see every video on this topic that I've done up to this point has been operating on the basis of that representation is important and that the people watching these videos already accept that as a fact well I'm glad I didn't bog down earlier videos in explaining why representation matters every single time I talk about it I do want to do that as the primary focus here because while it may be incredibly obvious to me that representation is important it's actually pretty presumptuous of me to treat that as a given for anybody else who may be watching this now trying to lay it out in a relatable way has actually proven to be a bit harder than I was expecting because if you're someone who has never felt underrepresented in pop culture it's really difficult to explain that experience to you I really couldn't come up with a proper common frame of reference because I could rant any thought experiment I want I could devise a million okay so imagine that type scenarios but that doesn't really make the point that kind of thing I mean they can work on a one-on-one conversation where I can really tailor a thought experiment to a specific person who I'm talking to be sure that I'm linking it to something I know they relate to but trying to do it as a broad universal point of reference yeah yeah I couldn't find one regardless I'm gonna try and do this to the best of my ability and inevitably I am going to still end up leaning on some of those aforementioned thought experiments because I mean I'm only so creative and sometimes I need a crutch even if I know it's not as sturdy as I would like it to be so the first thing that I want to clear up is what I often see as a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of why groups like the lgbtq+ lgbtq+ community even seeks greater level of representation at all because one of the standard rebuttals is something along along the lines of what you can't relate to a character if they're not exactly like you or sometimes a variant like I can relate to gay characters why can't you relate to straight ones and the issue of representation is not a matter of being incapable of relating to characters that are different from ourselves a well written and perform character can be relatable to audiences who don't share many if any of that characters specific traits when it comes to things like gender or race sexuality religious beliefs home life etcetera etc of course we get so early to these characters if they're well done anybody can otherwise there'd be no setting outside of the present because anything set in the past the future or some fantastical imagined world would be unrelatable so please banish from your mind the idea that LGBTQ plus people flat out can't relate to cisgender heterosexual characters because that's not the issue at hand and to claim that it is or pretend like it is misses the point and derail the conversation the thing is even if you are part of the statistically most represented group in American entertainment which is to say white male heterosexual cisgender there's probably been a movie or a show somewhere along the line that spoke to you or your experience in a way that other films didn't and I can happen for any number of reasons let's take a film setting when cities that are infrequently depicted get a proper highlight in a film it's pretty common for that film to become something of a point of pride for that city there's a reason Philadelphia has a statue of the fictional character Rocky Balboa and Detroit has such a deep love for Robocop heck it does not need to be in any way a positive depiction of the city I mean the city of Fargo knows North Dakota has props from the dark comedy that shares its name in its towns visitor center including the wood chipper that was used to grind up Steve Buscemi and it's not that these paint a particularly flattering or pandering images of these plays but the locations are important to the story the residents of the real place feel that the film's captured some truth about their home and the film's then become important to those people who live there you can actually see a similar phenomenon when it comes to occupations even ones that are depicted frequently on film getting the depiction of a character's job wrong is a distraction for anyone who knows what the reality of that line of work is my my mother who was a nurse for her entire professional life couldn't get into the TV show house and a big part of that was well that's about how hospitals work and she knew that so I kept pulling her out of the stories but it's not just getting details wrong getting tiny things right that are so often done wrong can endear a film to a group of people now I don't have statistics on what I'm about to say but anecdotal evidence I do have I've met a couple of lawyers who really love my cousin Vinnie not because or not just because it's a great movie but because it might well be the single most accurate depiction of the trial process that's been put to film it includes so many of the details every other law film you know just glosses over or flatly gets wrong similarly Edgar Wright has said that after the release of his film Hot Fuzz he's been told a number of times by police officers how much they appreciated the depiction of paperwork in the film police paperwork rarely gets more than a one-off mention in most cop films usually it's a it's a joke about how much there's gonna be after you know the end of the adventure but you know it never gets shown and Hot Fuzz paperwork is lingered on it's brought up repeatedly in the end in a way that police officers hadn't seen before on film and they appreciated that but and here comes the crutch of the thought experiment for a moment try to imagine that the thing about yourself that you never see reflected on-screen isn't a career or where you live but a fundamental deep-seated truth about your very existence in the case of lgbtq+ people it's an aspect of yourself that portions of society are already telling you is wrong or evil or is a sickness when almost none of the entertainment you consume acknowledges your very existence as an lgbtq+ person much less your normalcy well you feel wrong you feel isolated you feel alone and the thing when I say representation matters I mean mainstream representation because another thing that gets brought up in these conversations is why do we need representation for groups like the lgbtq+ community in mainstream movies why can't they have their own things made just for them well firstly we do have that Gail it queer films they're thriving subgenres they have been for years and while the existence of these specialized markets is no bad thing it doesn't really help in the way that I'm talking about because it still separates us from society at large the very idea of mainstream entertainment is that it's intended to appeal and speak to the broadest possible audience and if you see yourself reflected in niche product but rarely if ever in the mainstream that sends a message it says you are not like the rest of us or if you're somebody already feeling isolated or confused that message might even come across harsher more like you're not welcome here our absence becomes a statement in and of itself and a statement that a fictional world doesn't have a place for queer people is an implicit statement about society as a whole when that fictional world is intended to appeal to as many people as possible the takeaway is that we don't count and the people who do count don't want to see us this kind of thing it eats at you over time and it has a long-term cumulative effect on both society as a whole and individuals because pop culture is a big part of how most of us perceive the world beyond our own personal day-to-day experiences when we lack first-hand experience in certain areas be it certain living conditions certain kinds of flights joists ways of thought sexualities we gravitate towards other sources secondary sources to shape our feelings about those things pop culture isn't the only source on this do be clear news media is a big one as well and there are others but I'm not about to try and parse out which is the bigger shape of a shaper of our outlooks and I'm pretty sure it's kind of a case-by-case thing anyways if we could just accept that pop culture is at play in this which I don't think is something that's in dispute so if there's a real-world element environment or kind of person that we only ever encounter in fiction but not in our day to day lives that fiction is going to shape how we feel about that thing place or person now even if we know and understand you know intellectually that it's fiction it's not fact that still forms a foundation it's the starting point that future information and experiences is going to end up getting filtered through and if representation is absent or so rare that each instance is really notable it creates a starting point of this is weird why is that there so if you're not LGBTQ TQ plus it can mean that you default to thinking of us as aberrations because your window to the world outside of your immediate experience rarely if ever depicts us and if it does your instinct becomes the question why is it there meanwhile if you are LGBTQ plus yourself this means that there's an adverse effect on your sense of places and acceptance both within the world you live and sometimes within yourself it's worth noting that sometimes even those of us who are are in fact underrepresented don't fully comprehend what this does to us I'm gonna do something I don't normally do I'm actually gonna share a clip from another youtuber um and this is a moment of clarity that she shared that I think ties into this this is from the channel NYX fears which is run by a trans woman May and the clip I'm about to show describes the experience she had seeing a trans character played by a trans actress in a way that spoke to her own experiences when she watched the film assassination nation I was connecting with this character on screen more than I'd maybe ever connected with the character and in that moment it was like all that sort of representative ideas you know about characters representing something larger than that on screen and how those things can mean something to us beyond our own sort of preconceptions it all kind of hit me and I actually had a pretty profound experience it gets on the holiest because holy I didn't know I could feel that way and like I've gone the majority of my life without feeling that way when I connect to people on-screen and it's actually been like sort of a this distancing experience there was something she said that really grabbed me immediately the first time I saw that video I didn't know I could feel that way May's an intelligent woman I have no doubt that she understood the issues with a lack of representation on an intellectual level but it wasn't until she saw that film and had that experience a feeling properly represented for the first time that it truly hit her what she'd been missing for her entire movie watching a life this is how powerful representation can be when it's experienced by those who don't have it and as profound as that experience was for her I think it also helps illustrate and it kind of roundabout way another reason why representation needs to be main stream because chances are you folks didn't see assassination nation you probably didn't even hear of it it was not a mainstream hit it didn't get a wide release but it also had a very limited marketing campaign and ultimately it didn't even recoup it's rather paltry seven million dollar budget people didn't see it most people didn't know about it and it didn't seem like the studio was really expecting them to it was a niche product but when representation is present in truly mainstream media it increases the possibility for the people who need to see it actually will for them and the populace at large it increases the sense that they are not some bizarre outlying strange and unknowable thing but just another part of the world it's a world we're watching on a screen yes but when it happens on enough screens it can make the real world feel a little less hostile for those who can't help but sense and be aware of their own other necessitate matters first so many reasons the hardest thing about being part of any marginalized group is the sense of isolation that comes with that and the lgbtq+ populace has that factor inherently amplified by the fact that until you go out of your way to seek it out if you're even able to do so there's no guarantee that you'll encounter a single other person like yourself in your day-to-day life even within your own family members of say a racial minority they're usually able to at least look at their immediate family mothers fathers siblings and see the thing that makes them a minority in this country reflected back to them by at least a few people lgbtq+ people don't have that or at least it's less of a certainty and I don't I don't want to compare or rank the hardships of one group against another but it's a factor for us which adds to that sense of isolation or just flat-out feeling wrong an lgbtq+ person can't tune into a TV show or a movie and see somebody on there that speaks to that part of them and to see a character simply existing like it's a normal life but if they can if they do see that that can be a lifeline it is a tiny reassurance that maybe you're not a monster and that there's a place for you but if you go to the movies and turn on the TV and you take in the entertainment that you know most of the country is watching and enjoying and you don't see yourself anywhere on an action movies not in sci-fi adventures not in epic fantasies and not among the superheroes that possibly reinforces every depth you have about your own existence that you are so alone or so much of an aberration that even in films as detached from reality as those showing people flying around in capes there's no point in representing you there is no place for you that there's nothing to do but retreat into a corner where you won't bother anyone and that corner can become a hole and that hole can become a pit and not everybody can climb out of their pit this is not the experience of every lgbtq+ person but is the experience of many of us and hopefully I've been able to shed some light on how it can feel when you're an lgbtq+ person in a world where it's just so dicey that that ever gets shown in the mainstream I mean think about it whatever it happens it makes headlines that's how rare it is and unless you believe I'm just lying about how this feels then I hope maybe you understand a little bit better the potential and vital good the representation can do if you want to question the value of a specific depiction that's a conversation I'm more than happy to engage in but I don't have the strength to keep justifying my presence my mere existence not in the fictional world not in real life we're here we exist and knowing that the world realizes that is what keeps some of us going representation is hard it's hard to do right and it can sometimes feel like when you try and represent a group all they do is pick at what it is you're doing but another part of that is there's so few instances of representation of us how can we not pick at it you don't see people picking at every single problematic representation of this white male I mean some people do but it's not the standard conversation that happens because there's so many instances of sis white male straight heroes that if this one isn't to your liking there's a bajillion others for you to take in we don't have that so I know I get nitpicky and I know I can get upset with the representation that does happen but I don't want that to ever make it seem like it's not worth it because representation matters and if it doesn't exist at all then it can't get better because you can't fix something that simply isn't there so that's my little treatise on why representation as a thing is important thank you for listening if you enjoyed this video I would encourage you to check out the patreon I'm hoping to do more in depth videos not necessarily on this subject matter I mean I do this monthly but not necessarily more videos on just the subject matter but I'm trying to find the time and the means to get more in-depth into things and the patreon is a big help towards that there's other links down there beside I'm on social media all that sort of stuff I have a book that is relevant to this part of my life there's a link for that so you can look at all that but you don't have to because if you're this far into the video then you listened and thank you for that so whatever your thoughts on whatever I've said are drop them down the comments respectfully please and we'll talk about it so until the next video please remember you are valid you are loved you are welcome on this council and until the next time the Council of geeks is adjourned [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Council of Geeks

Views: 13,661

Rating: 4.838356 out of 5

Keywords: lgbt, lgbtq, lbgtq+, representation, mainstream media, mainstream, trans, queer, genderfluid, transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual

Id: XLPw5piB69E

Length: 23min 49sec (1429 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 19 2019