Who gets represented

The Artdog Quotes of the Week

Who gets represented? In my opinion, that's one of the most important questions any writer, visual artist, actor, or other creative individual can ask. 

So who gets represented in your creative work?

Who wins the final battles? Which character earns their true love's heart in the end? And how does that true love look? Who plays the villain's role? Which characters die horribly and get cast into the outer darkness? 

The stories we tell and the pictures we create matter. Because who gets represented is a vital question for all of us.

Amandla Stenberg quote-image courtesy of the Huffington Post.

Art is essential to our understanding 

There's an essential reason why art matters, in whatever of its many forms and media. It matters because the stories and the visuals that surround us help us define ourselves and our world.

I have blogged before about art creating bridges of understanding between cultures, but it's broader and deeper and far, far more important than simply reaching out between cultures, important as that is.

Sonia Manzano quote-image courtesy of The Huffington Post.

Representation is important

Representation helps people answer the question, "where do I fit in?" This is especially important for children. They understand the world in the way they see it explained to them, both verbally and visually. They respond to the representations they see.

As Lupita Nyong'o has said, when a child sees a representation of him-or herself in a work of art, "We plant the seed of possibility," which may not have existed before. It can unlock doors to complete new realms of potential.

But it really is a question for all of us throughout our lives. Just look at the assorted reactions to the recent "OK Boomer" fad. If people hadn't cared how they were being represented, would they have reacted the same way?

Lupita Nyong'o quote-image courtesy of The Huffington Post.

Who gets represented signals power

Now we're getting to the base-level reason why representation is important. Why the question "Who gets represented?" is so urgent. Representation signals and is an outcome of power.

The power dynamics of representation are too big and important a topic to address in the final paragraphs of this blog post, so look for more on this topic in blog posts to come!

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to The Huffington Post, which published two features that provided all of these posts. They are "18 Times Black Actors Nailed Why We Need Representation in Film," and its sidebar slide show (scroll to the bottom), "16 Times Latinos Were Brutally Honest about Hollywood's Lack of Diversity." 

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day!

Please join me in celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day today.

The official Federal Holiday that has allowed my Beloved to be home today is Columbus Day. Traditionally, it's been celebrated as an Italian-American ethnic celebration, and I heartily believe that Italian-Americans have good reason to be proud of their heritage.

But as anyone who reads this blog regularly is aware, I have serious problems with the idea of making Christopher Columbus the hero of anything. So while I uplift the idea of Italian pride, I'll be celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day today.

I support pride in Italian heritage--but definitely not the glorification of Christopher Columbus, whose arrival sparked a rolling disaster throughout the Americas.

The "Columbian Exchange" created disruption all over the world, some of it positive and some of it negative. There's a strong argument to be made that while it benefitted much of Europe, its effects on the so-called "New World" of the Americas, and ultimately on Africa (especially via colonialism and the slave trade) and the rest of the world were not so benign. It could even be called a disaster for the 90% of indigenous Americans who died from plague after plague for which their immune systems were unprepared.

It was enormously consequential--but it's been egregiously misrepresented in school curricula for literal centuries, although many teachers have begun to grapple with the gaps in the traditional narrative. Still today, however, this information from Scholastic is representative of the kind of things being taught.

It's time to push for a more complete view of history, and more balanced representation. It does need to take root in schools, certainly. But if it's only confined to schools we'll have a "diversity backlash." Some people persist in seeing the narrative of a dominant monoculture as the "most important" part, while anything else is just political correctness run amok.

We have enough of that kind of thinking already. Countering it is a long, slow process, but for me it will include persistently celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day.

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to "World of Wellesley" from Wellesley, MA, for the Indigenous Peoples Day design; to Freedonia State University of New York for the "Columbus Day X-out" image; and to Illuminatives for the infographic about Native American representation in the school curricula of the United States.