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Telling Other People’s Stories: Representation on Both Sides of the Camera
With trending movements like Me Too, Times Up and Oscars So White, considering the racial and gender representation in popular culture is a topic that people consider important, or at least, worthy of discussion. Hollywood is very slowly making changes in the diversification of television shows and films. The Hollywood Diversity Report 2018 conducted by University of California Los Angeles found that positive changes have been made in the last four to five years with growing numbers of “women and people of color in a number of film and television arenas since 2014–15.” This progress is happening very slowly, but it does appear to be happening.
Why does representation of a variety of races and genders matter?
Seeing yourself, or someone who looks like you, represented in pop culture makes the viewer feel that their identity is important, and the more representation that is outside of the typical stereotypes, the more empowered the viewers become, which will saturate society. Representation is important not only for those non-white viewers of pop culture to be able to relate to someone who looks like them, but to allow both non-white and white people to see that stereotypes and assumptions around race and gender are not accurate. In 2016, Michelle Obama explained:
