The Power and the Story

GROWING UP, my pop culture heroes were all nerds. I gravitated toward the quippiest, smartest characters I could find; misunderstood geniuses with an arsenal of world-saving ideas and killer one-liners, who swaggered off awkwardly into the sunset, toting books the same way Clint Eastwood did his gun.

These characters are still important to me, but here’s the problem: Nearly all of them were men. In idolizing Ghostbusters’ Egon Spengler and Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcolm, I grew up thinking that, if I wanted to be like them, I had to reject all things girl. It took me a long time to realize I could be cool and smart and feminine.

Movies and TV teach us to love good guys and hate bad guys. But when heroes only look a certain way, says writer and Pepperdine University professor Craig Detweiler, we come to believe certain population groups are the only ones who can inhabit those roles. “Movies paint people in...stark categories, and those categories transpose into everyday life,” Detweiler said in an interview with Sojourners. “If you only see one kind of hero, you only have one kind of heroic role model.”

A narrow definition of heroism is as much a race issue as a gender issue. Leslie Foster, a black filmmaker, says he’s often grappled with the impact popular culture has on what society deems normal.

“I’ve realized that it had an effect on what I found aesthetically attractive, and I’ve had to untangle that as an adult,” Foster told Sojourners. “I tell people to look at the makeup aisle, and see what colors get categorized as ‘nude.’ It’s always white.”

The power to change minds

The stories we encounter can reinforce or damage how we see ourselves, and how we categorize others. When done well, they can encourage understanding between different races, genders, or sexual orientations. Research into parasocial relationships (the feeling of emotional attachment to fictional characters) and intergroup contact theory (the idea that ethnically diverse social relationships decrease prejudice) has shown that good representations of these groups in TV and film positively affect viewers’ opinions of them.

To help our understanding of each other, we need diverse characters. To get them, we need diverse storytellers. Unfortunately, we aren’t getting enough of either. Last August, a USC Annenberg report, Inequality in 700 Popular Films, revealed that from 2007-2014, the top-grossing movies in the U.S. were overwhelmingly white, straight, and male-centric. In the 100 movies surveyed in 2014, 73.1 percent of characters were Caucasian. Only 28.1 percent of the speaking roles were women, and only 19 total characters were lesbian, gay, or bisexual (none were transgender). Of the 700 top films from 2007 to 2014, 28 had a woman behind the camera.

The movies reflect one reality, but they don’t reflect actual audiences. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2014 women bought 50 percent of film tickets, and Latinos, who make up 17 percent of the population, were responsible for 23 percent of tickets sold.

“It’s like the Wild West”

So, if having diversity respected in what we watch is good for us, and diverse audiences are buying tickets, why is the industry so reluctant to change?

Foster says one reason is the misconception that there’s a limit to how many stories about minority experiences need to be told. He cites a meeting he had with a studio to pitch a project on the life of Frederick Douglass before his escape to freedom (Foster asked Sojourners to omit the studio’s name from the story).

“[The studio] told us, ‘This sounds like a really great project, but we already have a slave property,’” Foster said. “Their feeling was that they just needed one; they didn’t need to tell these other stories.”

An ongoing investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) provides further insight. The EEOC is investigating allegations of studios discriminating against women directors and failure by the Directors Guild of America (DGA)—the industry’s union representative—to ensure equal hires actually happened.

This comes after years of campaigning by filmmakers such as Maria Giese, who spent four years gathering data to present to the American Civil Liberties Union, who then campaigned for the EEOC to investigate. “It’s like the Wild West,” Giese said. “[Studios] are making movies and TV shows, and they feel no compunction to hire anyone other than their own individual aesthetic choices.”

While parts of the DGA’s legal agreements with studios require them to make diverse hires, these vague statements place women and ethnic minorities into the same category. Meaning if a studio needs to fulfill a diversity requirement, they can—and, Giese says, often do—exclude women.

“What became evident was that the studio executives and showrunners could hire ethnic minority men only, and keep in compliance with the agreement,” Giese said. “They were making their good faith effort to increase the hires, but they didn’t have to hire any women.”

Studios look for loopholes because, as director and producer Angela Robinson told Southern California Public Radio in a 2014 interview, the financial risk involved encourages them to make “safe” choices.

“It’s one of the rare professions where you give somebody...$50 million to $100 million to go make something,” Robinson told SCPR. There’s “a culture of fear around relinquishing any sort of power around that.” She thinks that people are frightened to “go even an inch outside of their comfort zone at all, literally, for class, race, gender, sexuality.”

Unjust for filmmakers—and viewers

Culture colors our perceptions of ourselves and of others. It can also influence how we encounter God. Detweiler, who said he traces his spiritual roots to watching Raging Bull as a kid, says he finds profundity in film that he doesn’t always find in church.

“Film touches my heart in ways that sermons can’t,” Detweiler told Sojourners. “Seeking out stories about people who aren’t like you is one of the easiest ways to expand your heart, mind, and experience—and all you have to do is press ‘play.’”

Foster says he also experiences film as a way to see others compassionately. “Movies allow us to walk in someone else’s experiences,” Foster said. “They can take down barriers that exist in an academic argument and make their point in a gentle and subversive way.”

If TV and film have this much influence over us, then discrimination in Hollywood isn’t limited to the injustice of shutting out diverse voices. It also means we’re missing out on stories that can change conversations and help dismantle prejudice. We’re missing potential cultural moments that could allow us to better understand and minister to our neighbors.

The studio offices of Hollywood may seem distant and unreachable, but audiences still have an impact. Because the industry is built on what makes money, we must be intentional consumers if we want real change. Pay attention to what movies and shows get recognition, and who makes them. Support projects that come from underrepresented voices, and abstain from ones that reinforce stereotypes.

We can also support organizations working to encourage diverse, culturally sensitive media. One, The Representation Project, produces films (2015’s The Mask You Live In being the most recent) about the role of media stereotypes in promoting gender inequality. Another, Media Rise, connects filmmakers with activists and social scientists to help their messages reach audiences. The 2014 Media Rise Festival brought together more than 700 established and emerging voices for the chance to share their stories and pitch ideas.

I’M STILL reconciling the long-term effects of my early movie heroes. Maybe having more women to look up to would have changed my trajectory, maybe it wouldn’t. I’ll never know. But, Giese says, making sure there are more protagonists of every race and gender—as well as parity reached in who gets to tell their stories—can ensure future generations won’t risk being negatively affected.

“We have to think about what the ramifications are for women, girls, men, and boys all over the world,” Giese said, regarding female filmmakers. “We are not getting our best voices out there. Those best voices are going to come from everywhere.”