We always hear nowadays that representation matters. Issues of representation arise quickly with works of fiction, especially if creators highlight its representation prior to its release. But what is it exactly? Why does representation matter? How can we define good and bad representation?
What is represenation?
Representation is when media reflects people’s life experiences. There’s a metaphor that posits a story can fit three different roles: doors, windows, and mirrors. A door would be when the reader discovers a new world along with the POV character. Windows give us insight into someone else’s experience, and mirrors show us our own. Windows and mirrors are generally what we look at when it comes to representation. A story that’s a window for one person should be a mirror for another. Otherwise, representation doesn’t really work.
Why is it important?
A big part of representation is how we understand the world. Insight into experiences that are different from our own helps us to be more accepting and understanding. Additionally, seeing similar things reflected in stories can help us to make sense of our own experiences. It gives us something to latch on to, letting us know that our experiences are normal. It can sometimes even provide a basis for how to deal with situations that may arise.
When directed at younger children, it serves to give them role models. We always hear stories of people not considering careers where they didn’t see anyone like them. Lack of diversity in certain fields can be an annoyance at best, and at worst can actually be life threatening. Countless studies and testimonies show how marginalized groups are treated differently in healthcare settings. When it comes to queer representation, this looks a bit different than how we usually think of it. An example might be a queer professional knowing not to out someone and how better to go about that than a straight person might.
Representation is also important for mental health. The Human Rights Campaign found in 2018 that queer youth were at a higher risk for mental health issues. This was attributed to feeling unsafe on account of their identity. Having supportive people in their lives helped to improve this situation. Representation helps to create those supportive environments. Good representation can humanize certain experiences that people may have little to no exposure to in their lives, appealing to their sense of empathy.
Finally, it provides validation. As much as allowing people to learn about different experiences is good, sometimes people just need to know that they’re not alone in what they’re going through. Representation can help to build communities through virtual networks when in person ones don’t exist.
Tokenism
Tokenism is a concept that comes up frequently in discussions of representation, both in the media and outside of it. It’s a performative attempt to add representation. In real life, this would be having a group of men in charge of something with one woman and/or one person of color that they can point to and say they’re not discriminatory, even though chances are there are even more people out there who would be insanely qualified for whatever the position who get passed over because they’ve already filled some diversity quota.
In fiction, this tends to work pretty similarly, with the added element of characterization. Generally, token characters are either defined by their marginalized identities or they don’t come into play at all. Both of these are a problem. First off, it’s not really representation of an identity if that identity can be easily replaced without disrupting the character all that much. However, it’s not realistic for someone’s whole personality to revolve around one aspect of their identity either. There’s a balance that needs to be struck, in order to avoid token characters. Characters should feel like real people. This means that when developing a character with a different life experience from their own, creators will need to take more care in thinking about what might impact their personality.
Representation Tests
In an effort to try and persuade the media to include diversity, various tests arose to see if a piece of media included adequate representation. The most well known of these was the Bechdel Test. This test focuses on women in media. A story passes the Bechdel Test if it includes two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. Personally, as a child, I was never interested in anything that failed to clear that bar, but I didn’t make that choice consciously. However, the thing about the Bechdel Test is that it’s the bare minimum. The bar is on the floor.
The equivalent for queer representation would be the Vito Russo Test. The standards for this test are higher than those of the Bechdel Test. To pass the Vito Russo Test, a story needs to have a character who clearly identifies as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans. Said character also needs to have a personality outside of that and must be relevant enough to the plot that they can’t be removed. Basically, it requires creators to not do a tokenism.
These tests are good and all, but there’s not really a clear cut way to measure representation. As mentioned, the Bechdel Test sets the bar very low. While the Vito Russo Test has much higher standards, it’s not without its issues. GLAAD acknowledges this on their Additional Recommendations page discussing the test. Just because something passes the Vito Russo Test doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good representation. As I discussed here, representation has to be relatable. Human experiences are diverse, and intersectionality heavily affects them. While not everyone who shares a certain identity is going to relate to every character who shares that identity, there at least needs to be a consensus.
What makes good representation?
Good representation can be tricky to define. The tests certainly help to ensure that it’s present, but that doesn’t speak to its quality. Ultimately, representation quality needs to be determined by the people being represented, but there are certainly some pretty universal guidelines for representations of historically underrepresented groups.
Positive Light
Historically, marginalized groups haven’t been portrayed all that positively. From harmful racialized stereotypes to queer-coded villains, there’s a clear precedent for fictional works condemning certain people. Good representation can’t stick to these historic principles. This isn’t to say that all marginalized characters have to be good and villains can only be cishet white men, just that there can’t be a clear divide. You can’t only have cishet white men heroes against everyone else, because that’s harmful. Portraying groups of people only as villains in fiction can lead to people seeing those groups as such in real life.
Fully Developed
Just having characters with certain characteristics isn’t enough. I talk more about that in the blog post. It’s not good representation if characters have certain labels, but don’t feel like characters. That’s tokenism. One could argue that not developing characters is bad writing, and it certainly is. However, a lack of development of marginalized characters can only be excused by bad writing as long as their counterparts are also underdeveloped.
This means that creators have to do more work when writing characters that are meant to represent certain groups. It’s not good if a character’s whole personality revolves around their marginalization, but it still comes into play. The goal of writing characters is to make them feel like people. A creator will have to think about how different aspects of one’s identity affect their personality and their day to day life, and if a creator doesn’t personally share that identity, there’s more research and care that needs to go into this.
Experience
This doesn’t mean that writers should only ever write characters who share their personal experiences, just that a character’s experience, particularly as it relates to marginalization, has to be rooted in someone’s real life experience. If you know nothing about the experience of a certain group, then you probably shouldn’t be writing a character from that group. The fun thing about that is that you can always learn new things! While the fact that certain groups have little to no representation in media, people from those groups still exist, and do certainly have life experiences. If tracking down someone who’s willing to talk about certain things in the name of representation proves to be difficult in person, the internet is a great resource to turn to for that.
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