We’ve been sheltering in place for months, full of concerns about ourselves, our jobs, our loved ones, even our pets. One thing that we haven’t had to worry about: finding something to watch on TV.
Many say we are in the “Golden Age of TV,” with new streaming services popping up almost every day, releasing original television series and full-length features. The scope of what we are watching spans genres, decades, and quality. You can watch doctors, lawyers, time travelers, and cops, living in San Francisco, Scotland, Los Angeles, or the middle of Kansas—a million different constructs are available.
But whom we’re watching is much more limited.
One would think all these television series and movies would create opportunities for diverse roles showcasing how vast and varied the human experience is. However, in its most recent report, the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that mainstream films made virtually no progress from 2007 to 2017 in their portrayals of gender, race and ethnicity, the LGBTQ community, and people with disabilities. But why does this matter, and what are we doing about it?
We are what we see
Many of the parts traditionally available to minority actors rely on character tropes and stereotypes—the Asian math student, the feisty black sidekick, or the cold female boss. These portrayals of minorities on screen directly affect the way we see them off screen. A 2011 study found that media representation of black men and women contributed to a variety of reactions—from the black men and women themselves to everyone else.
The study states that “the ‘media world’ can be mistaken for the real world, unless audiences have sufficient personal experience to counteract its effects.” Because of how black men and women are portrayed in media, viewers felt a general antagonism toward black men, exaggerated views of criminality, and a lack of identification or compassion with African Americans. Because black men and women are also consumers of media, they struggle with internalizing these stereotypes.
Eugenia Rodriguez, Psy.D., LMFT, a core faculty member in the Marriage and Family Therapy Latinx and LGBTQI+ specializations, agrees. “Whether it be racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or other, being able to see someone who looks like you helps you not feel so alone in the world. Looking at those who share similar features, similar identities, similar life experiences helps lend to a sense of validation in oneself,” she says.
If adults are unable to draw the line between the real world and the silver screen, it’s no wonder that children have an even more difficult time. As young as the age of 3, kids start to recognize race and the way people are treated because of their skin color. First studied in the 1940s and then replicated many times since, psychologists had African American children choose between white and black dolls. The children overwhelmingly chose to play with the white dolls and described them with more positive traits.
Pacific Oaks human development professor Carlene Fider, Ph.D., explains the important role representation plays in development. “Children’s early experiences shape what they imagine could be possible,” she says. “As such, the saying ‘seeing is believing’ is very true as it relates to children seeing people who look like them—be it gender, race, or different ability—portrayed in media.”
Dr. Fider also says that the relationship between self-representation and brain development suggests that the temporal parietal junction (TPJ) of the brain can be impacted as a result of media representations of self.
“This portion of the brain is responsible for numerous aspects of social cognition, which means what we think and the relationship between our thoughts and our (social) behavior. One may then be able to see the necessity of representation for children as they develop, since the TPJ helps them make sense of themselves and of others as well as of their social environment, and this thinking has impacts on social behaviors,” Dr. Fider says.
Another study published by The University of Michigan in 2012 analyzed the effect of media representation on the self-esteem of white and black pre-adolescent boys and girls. The study found that the only children who didn’t experience a drop in self-esteem were white boys. In the late 70s, researchers George Gerbner and Larry Gross, who studied media representation, coined the term for the lasting effect: symbolic annihilation. “Representation in the fictional world signifies social existence; absence means symbolic annihilation,” they wrote.
It’s clear in study after study that representation matters. So what are we doing about it?
The numbers are in
At the Oscars in 2018, Frances McDormand called for actors everywhere to demand inclusion riders or equity riders. “I just found out about this last week. This has always been available to all—everybody who does a negotiation on a film—which means you can ask for or demand at least 50% diversity in not only the casting but the crew. The fact that I just learned that after 35 years in the film business—we aren’t going back,” McDormand said in her acceptance speech.
Many actors throughout the industry have now made this a standard practice on their contracts, which has helped make progress to address under-representation and negative portrayals for minorities. GLAAD’s 2019 “Where We Are on TV” report, for the first time, shows progress in representation of LGBTQ characters, actors of color, and female roles. LGBTQ characters of color outnumbered those who were white. Females represent 43% of all regular characters, and people of color representing 47%.
The report also showed LGBTQ characters comprise 10.2% of all series regulars on primetime scripted broadcast shows and that women are 46% of the 879 series regular characters counted on primetime television shows. Of these broadcast network LGBTQ characters, 22% are black, 13% are Latinx, and 8% are Asian Pacific Islander.
However, characters with disabilities are still greatly underrepresented compared with their presence in the actual U.S. population. Only 2.1% of characters on broadcast television with disabilities, compared with 13.3% in the U.S. population.
“There are moments when it seems we take two steps forward and one step back. On certain shows, you do see an increase of racial and ethnic diversity, as well as orientation and gender identities. But within that there is also backlash,” Dr. Rodriguez says.
“Representation often comes with the backlash that identities are ‘forced’ on others who do not identify as such, when in fact, this has been an aspect of everyday life and part of what makes a person who they are. The more ‘differences’ we see, the more opportunities we have to normalize what has always been there.”
A litany of outliers proves the success of such progress: Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, Moonlight, A Wrinkle in Time. However, the key is to not make them outliers but the mainstream. After Black Panther, black children everywhere begged their moms and dads for the superhero doll that looked like them. Not to mention it was the highest grossing singular superhero movie of all time. There is no lack of demand from consumers for more diverse representation on the screen. Now those in power just have to keep up.
“The world has become more diverse and as such we are demanding more from entertainment so that representation actually represents the global context of human development. I believe that representation should be equitable,” Dr. Fider says. “Again, this is not just about race and ethnicity. We have to consider gender, religion, and different abilities to name a few. When I think of the latter, I am reminded that everyone has strengths and challenges. Because of this, portrayal of the various ways individuals navigate the challenges of life in order to demonstrate strength can be beneficial to humanity as a whole.”
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