Catharsis and Stories: Why We Talk About Diversity in Media So Much

Amazing clarity can come at the most unexpected of times and from the most unexpected places.

My writing partner invited me to a book signing. I’m not sure why I said yes. OK, I know exactly why: she needed a ride and since she shoulders the bulk of the script writing and is far better at it than I am, I figured it was the least I could do. Plus it gave us a chance to chit chat about character arcs on the way there.

The book signing was for a book about Hollywood, and so it was populated by a fairly average group of folks from the wilds of Hollywood. I’d thoroughly forgotten (or forcibly excised from my mind maybe) how out of place I always am at any Hollywood industry type events. It was a vivid reminder that one of the reasons I founded Our Creative Commons in the first place was because I’m convinced that we need wholesale change in how we approach entertainment.

I was sitting around in the audience feeling sorry for myself and generally being a close-minded dick when the speaker talked about something that reminded me like a slap in the face that truth can come from anywhere, no matter how much you think the people around you can’t possibly know anything about it.

He talked about catharsis. Something I had heard discussed a thousand times. Stories are about catharsis. He described that feeling when you leave a movie theater and you are suddenly lighter, or deeper, or stronger than you were when you went into it. When a story moves you in such a way that your soul finds something it had been seeking, peace or strength or tears or the will to finally let go or…whatever.

The entertainment industry doesn’t trade in stories or movies or tv shows or even celebrity or fame — it trades in providing catharsis to humans. For all our big and small experiences, family and breakups and how we respond when pushed to the edge of oblivion. For what it feels like to love or laugh or weep or lose. Movies and TV, bring us catharsis, some measure of peace or understanding for the things we have known (or wish to know or wish we didn’t know). That is where their power lies.

It wasn’t until that moment, moving against the tide of the kind of people I’ve always struggled to understand, that those very same people, by their very presence, revealed a new facet of the reason Our Creative Commons is important to me.

Stories (especially film and tv right now) are the method by which our culture finds catharsis for their experiences. Sitting in that room of almost exclusively white, mostly male, probably all cis, and likely mostly straight people it hit me:

There are so many people, with stories and experiences nothing like the people in this room,the people who make (or want to make) our entertainment that NEVER get catharsis for those parts of their lives. LGBT people, people of color, people with disabilities, and all kinds of other people never see their stories, never get the gift of catharsis for experiences that are unique to the people in those communities. Sure, we can relate to some more universal stories, but there are entire chunks of our experience that we never, ever get catharsis for through entertainment. Things that are never touched on, truths that are never spoken, understanding that is never found in the media we consume. Catharsis that could only be provided by those stories being told by people who have been there and lived that.

Of all the reasons Our Creative Commons exists, this one might be the most important: We are ALL worthy of experiencing that magical moment when we leave a movie theater or close our laptops at the end of a show and find peace with the things we’ve experienced in the world, to be suddenly lighter, or deeper, or stronger for the aspects of ourselves that DON’T match the experiences of cis, straight, white men that disproportionally dominate all aspects of film and tv.

We are all worthy of that catharsis. We are all deserving of that peace or strength or tears or the will to finally let go or…whatever. Our world is vast. Our stories should be too.