THE CARMEL BEAT
Representation in Mainstream Media
Humanities Association
Without a question, the media is the key resource that presently overwhelms the typical individual with diverse material daily. The media has always been a means for disseminating news, whether positive or negative, to the broader public in the quickest amount of time feasible. Even now, with the revolutionary growth and spread of technology, the media has become immensely important due to its accessibility to the public and its numerous sorts of instruments for information exchange. As a result, we can't even ignore some sorts of media since they've become ingrained in our everyday lives. They have devised a variety of methods for reaching out to the public. We may now hear, read, or view the same information at home, via the internet.
In this regard, there is a widespread belief that the media directly or indirectly governs people's lives and has a huge impact on how people view themselves, others, and the environment in which they live. However, the veracity of the material shared by the media has always been called into doubt. The public has frequently debated whether we can rely on the media and the information they provide.
Representation is one such victim of hypocrisy and ignorance. In the recent times where people constantly discuss about issues like gender discrimination, poverty and corruption, double standard content on these issues fuels up the debates and causes unnecessary disturbances. The worst part is that these kinds of films actually attract a massive audience, which ultimately provides momentum to creators for making more projects of this kind.
Representation in Indian Entertainment Media
The entertainment sector of India has given us great moments we’ll forever cherish but is also notoriously known for stereotyping and being outright offensive. While there is scope for evolution with great stories in films and series, with the emergence of OTT platforms and an open-minded audience, we are far from perfect. There are different kinds of projects, but the two major kinds are the mainstream ‘masala’ projects made with a star-studded cast, glamour and a big budget and the Indie Projects which are the complete opposite. While we cannot differentiate these two types of projects as good and bad, mainstream projects can get away with anything with just the right amount of power, privilege, advertising and controversy. The ease of achieving success with these projects has made the creators extremely lazy and less inclusive.
Representing female characters as damsels in distress, gold diggers or being ‘dedicated’ to the male lead instead of giving them an actual storyline, normalising racist comments against north east Indian characters or east Asian characters for comedic relief or normalising stalking and sexual harassment because it’s supposed to be depicted as “love” are some of the things that are portrayed in almost every mainstream project. There are many stereotypes that hurt and offend the sentiments of people but usually go unnoticed by a large number of populations since it is normalised.
A recent example of bad representation would be ‘Meenakshi Sundareshwar’ on Netflix. Along with a boring storyline, they didn’t bother to get the representation right. “The plot was disappointing and it seemed like there was zero effort put into research about the Tamil culture and the writing just felt like bunch of stereotypes put together” says Sakshi, a resident of Tamil Nadu. The cringeworthy performance of the male lead or silly one-liners in Tamil are just enough to prove that they are not neglecting the language. While the film had potential, it just lacked a lot of elements that makes for an impactful movie.
Representation in Hollywood
Hollywood today is soft-power; it has a worldwide impact, which makes them even more responsible with the content they publish. Representation in Hollywood has been a popular topic of conversation. The token black character or the token ‘spicy Latina’, Indian character with an overexaggerated accent, academically competitive or depicting every other country other than the States as extremely poor and ‘dirty’ is enraging, to say the least. The United States being the land of Hollywood and home to a very diverse population yields them a huge responsibility of being inclusive and careful with the stories they choose to show. While there is some progress made with on-screen talent in recent years and several companies in the entertainment sector are starting to focus on inclusivity and diversity, the problem is deep-rooted.
While there are shows like Brooklyn-nine-nine and Sex-education hitting the right spot when it comes to diversity but not shoving in our face that they are diverse, there are many other shows that have diversity just for the sake of it. Characters with no real storyline, but just present to get the ‘diversity pass’ on the internet. The hyper-feminine homosexual male character who is the “gay best friend” of the female lead who has no agency of his own or the black man who is a thug or a drug dealer and that’s all he is capable of. Euphoria is yet another example of good representation while ‘Emily in Paris’ is heavily criticized and hate-watched for feeding into stereotypes.
In conclusion, the content we consume plays an important role in shaping our mindset and representation is an essential element that influences us and our opinions especially, the minorities of society. Many projects have proved to be influential; Black Panther being one of the major projects in the last decade that impacted young black kids and showed them that a person who looks like them can be a superhero, the movie was extremely successful and to this day respected and valued and is relevant or the 2021 release ‘Encanto’ is just as impactful as it realistically portrays a Latino family. Diversity and representation are vital to shaping our reality.