Nina Metz: Representation matters. But for TV and film, the conversation should be about more than casting

Despite pressure to diversify meaningfully both in front of and behind the camera, TV and film are still guilty of boxing out nuanced stories about people who haven’t been centered by Hollywood over most of its history. “Representation matters” has been the constant drumbeat in response. Kristen Warner is a professor at the University of Alabama who teaches a course on this very topic: How do we assess what we’re watching and the choices being made?

It’s about more than who you see on screen, she said, but how those characters are written. And who’s doing the writing. And what (if any) studio notes they are required to heed — and what’s motivating those notes.

But all too often, the conversation about representation begins and ends with casting, be it in terms of race or ethnicity or disability or sexuality or gender.

“I call that plastic,” said Warner. “The idea being, if I see someone who looks like me on screen — regardless of whether or not that character jibes with my own lived reality — therefore I matter. That just putting these actors on screen is sufficient.

“But that’s just one part.”

If no race was originally specified for a role (or it was originally written as white) then Warner wants to see writers and producers “think about who they hire after they hire them. And think about what that means for us watching that story on screen. Maybe anybody can play that role. But the experiences that are attached to those anybodies matter just as much, when we’re talking about representation, as the fact that we see them. So I’m not just giving you credit for hiring people; you need to think about who that person is.”

“Good” representation doesn’t mean the characters themselves have to be good people. Or unassailably wise and measured authority figures in the form of judges, police chiefs and the like. That’s the trap of model minority depictions that leave little room for human flaws or compromised motives.

“I always talk about Walter White in my class,” said Warner, referring to the protagonist of “Breaking Bad,” the Emmy-winning series about a white suburban high school teacher-turned-drug dealer.

“Nobody looked at this character and said, ‘I just think it’s terrible how he devolves and what that means for white people.’ He’s not carrying the burden of representing whiteness. He was allowed to be complex. There was a permission for this character to be evil and still be relatable. You might not say, ‘I want to be Walter White,’ but that’s not what the goal of representation is. What you want is something that’s an approximation of the world. It doesn’t have to be me.

“But with most marginalized characters, because complexity is often not allowed, you are relegated to so-called good or so-called bad metrics. So if you’re a drug dealer, you are bad and we can’t really think complexly about your characterization. That’s why Stringer Bell in ‘The Wire’ was such an interesting anomaly — his characterization was not wholly rooted in his occupation as a drug dealer, so whether that’s positive or negative is rendered moot because what difference does it make? There’s more to this character than his job. There’s more to this character than whether or not he can convince white audiences to abandon their racist assumptions.”

Other questions Warner wants viewers to consider: Why do stereotypes exist? And to whose benefit do they exist?

“Historically, the stakes were bound in power,” she said. “In being able to build hierarchies and structures so there would be people at the top and people at the bottom. And how do you delineate who is in those positions? You do that by creating a rationale for why some people should be thought of as less than and not be invited to participate in voting or citizenship or certain jobs. So it’s about reinforcing those power structures and justifying why they exist.”

Early media depictions were shaped by this. “Black people were represented through minstrelsy or the image of the mammy, but we had no say in that.” And stereotypes have a stubborn way of lingering. All of this is important context when thinking about representation on screen now.

I asked Warner which TV shows or films she thought were good examples that go beyond surface level diversity in casting.

“I really like the work that Michelle and Robert King do with ‘The Good Fight’ and ‘Evil’ (both on Paramount+). They don’t assume there’s a monolith of Black identity and they give you this chorus of dissension across generations and points of view. It’s rare to see, quite honestly.

“Taking a slightly different tack, I think a show like ‘Work in Progress,’ which is about queer identity in all of its forms, is also a breath of fresh air. It’s not rooted in a binary of ‘this is a good or bad LGBTQ representation’ because the main character is complex. The show’s approach is: We’re not here to educate you. This is not about us trying to get you thinking about trans folks. You see it, we have conversations around it, but it is accepted by these characters who are sharing with you how they wish to be represented. And I just don’t see things like that. I find it so breathtakingly honest and evocative that, even though I am not a LGBTQ person, there are things about this woman that I completely relate to.”

And what about representation that maybe seems meaningful at first glance, on the surface, but doesn’t go far enough?

“This is going to be unpopular, but I remember the excitement around ‘Black Panther,’ and I’m not saying it’s without specificity, but the focus felt like: Yay, we got it, yay Blackness, yay ‘Black Panther.’ But we also have to think about the context: Marvel’s gonna Marvel. Meaning: What happens to these characters and the choices they make has to be part of the larger MCU, so there’s only so much that is possible, right? There’s a lot of labor that audiences are doing to dimensionalize the film and the characters in ways that it isn’t designed to do.”

But after decades of being rendered invisible by Hollywood, it is meaningful to finally see people who resemble you on screen, especially in major blockbuster movies, right?

“Absolutely. And I do not ever want to dismiss or not recognize that,” said Warner. “These things matter and your feelings about it are valuable. But your feelings don’t translate into progress.

“That’s the bigger thing. I’m also asking people to think deeper and larger. It is valuable for you to see yourself on screen and, yes, that feels good. But that is not the pinnacle. And those good feelings do not dismiss the fact that this is a Marvel film that needs to reach a global audience and needs to adhere to the standards of the company that is producing it — so this is representation with great constraint. How much difference is really allowed?

“So while it is great to see Black and Asian and queer characters in Marvel,” she said, “we cannot allow our good feelings about it to prove progress.

“What it proves is that Marvel is recognizing there is money to be made. But it doesn’t prove progress because the narratives themselves are still bound by the same logic and societal norms as before, it’s just with different bodies.”

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