- 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!
