If your initial reaction to diverse representation in Hollywood is more skeptical than supportive, your feelings aren’t unfounded. There have been too many well-intentioned faux pas as content creators attempt to feature people of color. Seeing Black characters function as human catalysts for a white protagonist’s self-fulfilling journey to racial awareness in “The Blind Side” or “Green Book” was enough to make me steer clear of every Hollywood attempt at meaningful “representation.” Not only are these portrayals distasteful, but they also have real and painful ramifications for minorities, specifically Black and Indigenous communities.
Recent outpourings of promising films and shows, however, foreshadow an optimistic future for diverse storytelling and the possibility for creators to do their characters and viewers justice. In 2021, more people of color took the mantle in screenwriting and directing, and actors of color were represented in casts at levels proportional to their presence in the U.S. population. As a result, people of color are less frequently being sequestered into cultural pigeonholes, spending airtime painstakingly explaining their identities or serving as the token fill-in-the-blank. Peacock show “We Are Lady Parts” characterizes this cultural moment in its depiction of a British Muslim all-female punk band, epitomizing the pull and promise of subversive and resonant content for viewers of color. It features Muslim women doing things—like playing in a punk band!—that do not relate back to their cultural backgrounds, offering a necessary antithesis to some overtold narratives about their relationship with religion.
Unfortunately, this uptick in arguably “woke” content has regretfully awakened the “woke” critics. Digital ecosystems like Twitter are bursting with officious users who castigate POC-centered media by penning self-righteous diatribes and thriving on the negative welter generated in their wake. From the precincts of their social media pages, they wreak considerable damage on the reception of these multimedia, discouraging other viewers from watching and uplifting the work of creators of color. Worse, in clamoring for “authentic” representation, detractors place disproportionate burdens on storytellers of color to create work that is all encompassing and unintentionally reinforce perceptions that minority communities are monoliths. Consequently, creatives of color are often dissuaded from writing, producing, and portraying POC narratives. The result is a frustrating retrogression to Hollywood’s square one: the comfortable dynamic of white characters and white stories overwhelming our television screens. After all, digital critics don’t brew Twitter storms about the portrayal of a white male protagonist.
The rise of these “woke” pundits has placed the new, important onus of conscious viewership and discernment on consumers of contemporary media. With the upsurge of individuals who excoriate diverse content comes the increased necessity for viewers who can both identify unfair criticism and prevent themselves from becoming discriminatory consumers of POC media. Such a calling requires gaining insight into the insularity of the “woke” critics themselves. What exactly are they nitpicking, and why? How well-founded are their arguments, and when juxtaposing the criticism POC media receives with that of their white counterparts, can we truly say “woke” viewership is championing an even playing field?
Before we can address these questions, we must clarify that calling for increased understanding of POC multimedia is not analogous to exempting it from criticism. What is essential, however, is analyzing the nature and degree of criticism being levelled towards POC media, and specifically how it varies from that of their white counterparts.
For instance, one of the most common patterns of criticism reserved exclusively for POC media is that the perceived stereotyping of a racial or ethnic group does more harm than good. Cultural experiences portrayed in the media are immediately subject to scrutiny, and often these moments are decried as stereotypical or inaccurately portraying a minority community. Stereotypes and reality, however, are not binary entities. They can be rooted in truth and reflect real patterns that exist in communities. For instance, when protagonist Kumail Nanjiani in “The Big Sick” introduces his white girlfriend to his Pakistani parents, the tense encounter recalls an experience that holds true for many people of Pakistani heritage who face resistance in choosing partners outside of their ethnicity.
More important to consider in this context is whether the perceived stereotypical experience is portrayed with the necessary nuance, and whether such depictions offer a fresh outlook that rejuvenates a seemingly tired trope. After all, if a show or film disincluded these so-called stereotypical experiences, then the critics would be equally as unhinged by the lack of “authenticity.” And if the critics were to see experiences that resonated with them, they would cease their criticism, even if all the same criticism about “stereotypical storytelling” continued to apply. Clearly, then, the alleged stereotyping itself is not what’s truly driving a detractor’s motivation to criticize.
Further, in presenting one experience, a show or film isn’t implicitly negating other experiences. Critically-acclaimed HBO show “Ramy” subverts the binary portrayal of brown men as an Abrahamic prophet or “Al-Qaeda Terrorist #4” through its titular Muslim Arab American protagonist, who is flawed and perpetually struggles with being a “good Muslim.” Amidst the outcries that creator Ramy Yousseff was appeasing white audiences through “Westernized” depictions of Muslims, the response from Yousseff was simple: “This is not all Muslims. There’s so many Muslim experiences. There are Muslims who will watch this and be, ‘that’s not my experience,’ and I think that’s great because I think we all have a different way that we come at it.”
On the topic of “stereotypical storytelling,” critics are also outspoken about “negative” portrayals that can be harmfully misconstrued. As a result, creators of color often feel the need to dilute their stories to avoid such criticism. In a moving essay written for British newspaper the “i”, creator of “We Are Lady Parts” Nida Manzoor laments the pressure she’s felt to portray marginalized characters through a solely positive lens. Still, she resists, maintaining that it is our “dark parts as humans [that] make us interesting and cool and relatable” and that she can only commit to responsible representation by being “honest” and “true.”
Manzoor’s nuanced portayal of Muslim women in “We Are Lady Parts” further indicates that, if POC themselves are sharing stories about the community to which they belong, a full spectrum of experiences—the good, the bad, and everything that falls in between—can be depicted responsibly and appropriately. In turn, their content will reflect that characters of color are equally as three-dimensional and flawed as their white counterparts.
The unjust barriers that Manzoor and other creatives of color face must motivate us to be thoughtful consumers of POC media and to acknowledge the context and purpose of POC content. For example, rather than joining the “woke” critics in berating perceived superficiality in comedies like “Ramy” and “We Are Lady Parts,” we should instead consider that these shows cannot address dense identity issues without detracting from their light-hearted and comedic tones. In evaluating POC media through the same metrics by which we measure all other media, we’ll ensure that creators of color aren’t forced to be the singular mouthpiece of a spotlighted community and that their creations are appreciated for what they are rather than what they are not.
Within the context of an article about films and shows, it’s appropriate to channel some melodrama in the following assertion: the future of the media industry rests in our hands as content consumers. In refusing to join wanton social media onslaughts, we’re committing to forging a more diverse, enriching creative arts industry, one where our skepticism for diverse representation is instead replaced with unbridled joy at seeing our experiences reflected back at us on the big screen.
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