Essay: Own Voices

One of my final papers for Electronic Media Criticism course details some changes I'd like to see in the media industry, specifically how marginalized individuals are portrayed on television.

OWN VOICES

It may be a generalization to simplify the cultural impact of television as either positive or negative. If you go for the negative route, some may assume that television can only do more harm than good. What it means is television hasn’t unlocked its full potential yet. As we continue to move forward in this era of television, we are entering our “own voices” form of storytelling, where diverse content has a diverse ensemble of creators behind it. Marginalized social groups now have roles that exist in front of and behind the screens. Diversity provides space for good storytelling, but there’s still an expectation for the work to comfort the cultural norms of today’s society. While the television industry continues to strive for representation and diversity, its prime will collapse if those narratives work to appease modern society which expects tragic stories for oppressed groups.

To appease modern society, a story must reinforce the stereotypes we have about those social groups. Arguably, it is not television’s job to create world peace and solve inequality, but creativity is a concept that moves away from the standard. Many stories that include or center marginalized groups do it in the context of tragedy and trauma. Feelings of guilt and other emotional excess are expelled from the masses when confronted with a story that involves a marginalized group experiencing extreme pain or abuse. For shows such as Game of Thrones (2011-2019, HBO), The Boys (2019-present, Prime), Euphoria (2019-present, HBO), and Them (2021-Present, Prime), violence inflicted upon characters of LGBTQ, female, and non-white identities at their hands of oppressors are frequently used as part of their character arc. While these emotionally jarring and unsettling scenes are critically acclaimed and described as educational and realistic, it raises the important question: Is trauma a fundamental and central part of a marginalized group’s lives? Serious concepts such as racial, gendered, and sexual violence being boiled down and repackaged as story tropes are dangerous. It places a form of systemic abuse into the hands of an entertainment industry that has a history of reinforcing cultural hegemony. It is a form of “othering” if marginalized social groups’ stories are frequently stained with hardships modern society often associates and inflicts upon them. It is an unbearable disturbance to modern peace for a storyline to involve the constant confrontation of the distressing realities of their historical and present lives. Because diversity sells, the television industry continues to create characters in new and continuing shows whose gender, race, and sexuality in the characters are underrepresented and their defining characteristic. There’s an immense amount of pressure for directors, writers, and producers, even of marginalized groups, to partake in this oversimplification of their identities and gratification of their shared sufferings. The othering takes advantage of the disempowered by having their stories be just that. The purpose of trauma and tragedy in television is subjective, but it’s painfully evident that they are not spared from the most harrowing plotlines. These repetitive and shocking plot devices are black and white analogies of the marginalized person’s experience. Television is another sculptor to the mold of socially constructed identities therefore it contributes to victimizing marginalized social groups, the groups modern and current society continues to be subject to its own brutality so it feels perverse that content made for escapism and other entertainment purposes is not without an excessive amount of violence.

Marginalized people in the industry continue to fight back against the expectation to create evasive stories that are mainly about their suffering. Storytelling has the opportunity to fight back against societal norms rather than recycling them, television should be disruptive, not disturbing. While the television industry continues to strive for representation and diversity, its prime will collapse if those narratives work to appease modern society which expects tragic plot devices for oppressed groups.