How Hollywood Should Do Better

By starrymag | February 22, 2017

By: Kathryn Trammell

 

When 9/11 happened, the 2001-2002 television season was just beginning.  For weeks, networks and broadcast companies delayed season premieres and pilot episodes so that their channels could be used to supply the American people with a steady stream of news related to the attack.  When TV programming delays ended and people became less afraid of visiting theaters again, the public looked to the entertainment industry to both reinforce their newfound patriotism and to help them escape from the reality of the attack.  The industry responded in kind and shifted its focus to suit the changing morale and sensitivities of an American audience it had for decades sought to entertain.

 

As with any major political or social event, we can also expect a similar shift to occur as a result of Donald Trump’s polarizing presidency. While it’s difficult to speculate about the ways in which content creators will respond to this moment in our American history, it should be easy for many of us to list the ways we hope they do.  So, we decided to start a list below of the ways we truly hope TV and film helps usher us through this new political era.

 

Make Entertainment an Escape Again

 

This one is mostly for the TV show runners out their who have lately come under the distinct impression that the best way to generate profitable buzz is to employ as many tropes possible while killing off characters whose death they thought would come as a shock to us.  Because at this point, the most shocking thing a show runner could do is let a character survive a deadly situation, especially a character who is not white, straight or male.

 

We see enough doom and gloom every day when we turn on the news, scroll through our social media feeds and exist in a world that seems to tolerate very specific kinds of us.  TV (and movies) should be a way to escape from the real world when we need it most, but there is no escaping a world so ugly when our only options are filled with the same such ugliness we see and experience daily.

 

So, keep filling your shows with angsty teens, dystopic settings, heroic story arches and love triangles.  We’ll watch them and maybe we’ll even enjoy some of them from time to time.  But ask us to continue supporting your show after the characters with whom we were willing to relate and care about are continuously harmed, tortured or killed and we will resolutely say, “No.”  No, we will not watch these kinds of shows.  Not this year or next.  Not until the majority of us feel safe in our own skin and in the world around us because when students are bullied in school hallways for not being abled-bodied, white, straight, cisgendered kids, they should have a story to run home to that allows them the chance to see themselves as someone capable of standing up for themselves; that when a man grabs a woman by her genitals on the Metro ride home she has a story to watch the minute she locks her front door that empowers the strength she will need to ride that Metro again tomorrow. Do this so in a nation inundated with the news that our democracy is crumbling, we a have a hero to embody the ways we hope to build it back up again.  Give us a story like this and we will watch every episode.

 

Hire Marginalized Voices to Tell Marginalized Stories

 

Some networks have already discussed the ways they intend to respond to a Donald Trump presidency and that is to specifically make content that seeks to appease the particular blue-collar, middle class constituents who made their voices known this past election.  For broadcast companies like ABC, this means creating more shows that resemble this niche group by shifting focus away from stories about upper middle class and wealthy families/people.

 

That said, ABC never mentioned an intent to stop telling the “diverse” stories that received a small yet noticeable surge in representation during Obama’s presidency. If this is true and they still leave enough room for marginalized stories to appear in their new blue-collar-centric programming, then we hope that ABC and those who follow suit will hire people who are befitting of the stories they intend to tell. I can assure you there are plenty of blue-collar marginalized stories that need to be told by those who experience them daily.

 

So, if it is your goal as a filmmaker or showrunner to tell a story about a transgender woman living in North Carolina during the enforcement of HB2, then hire transgender women to write this story and hire a transgender women to portray the lead character. If it’s your goal to produce a show about a once happy-go-lucky community that experiences upheaval and division after a white cop shoots a black teenager, then be sure to hire black writers and directors to tell the black half of the story. And if it’s your goal to ensure ALL audiences find your show relevant and meaningful, then make sure that actors and actresses you hire to portray your inspiring heroes and protagonists look like everyone in this diverse, beautiful country.

 

Create Empathy

 

If you achieve the former, then you will most certainly be able to evoke empathy not only within your target audience, but within your outliers as well.  By ensuring that more stories about marginalized people are told, those who have very little opportunity to be exposed to stories outside of their own race, ability, socioeconomic status, sexuality and gender might just learn something about the beauty of diversity.

 

It is true that we fear what we do not know and for the people who do not have the opportunity to travel beyond the filmed settings that their TVs and local movie theaters offer them, it should be the responsibility of the entertainment industry to provide them with the chance to share in the perspectives of the cultures they would otherwise prefer to fear and judge rather than understand.  Only then – when your story takes them outside of their prejudicial bubble – does your film or TV show have the chance and opportunity to create empathy within your audience.

 

Listen to Your Audience

 

Showrunners and filmmakers also have to be empathetic towards their audience and the best way to do this is to listen when audiences react, whether positive or negative.  When women vehemently said that they loathed the storyline of Passengers and hated even more the way that it was portrayed prior to its release, they weren’t whining, being sensitive or speaking from a point-of-view that doesn’t understand the way the sci-fi genre works. This was, of course, how their reaction was largely reported within the sci-fi community and it totally dismissed what these critics were actually saying: that a story should be straightforward about their plot without deceiving the audience into thinking it is possibly a love story.  But because the critics who pointed out the misogyny of this advertising and storyline are not considered to be the target audience of science fiction films and the media outlets that review them, their legitimate critiques went ignored. And this is an issue.

 

When voices that seek to point out socially insensitive storylines get ignored, those who ignore them give strength and justification to the people who exercise social insensitivity.  This is why in 2017 a story about a white, Christian, wartime hero written by an anti-Semite can be celebrated and a man accused of sexual assault can accept the Golden Globe for Best Actor.  By ignoring the voices that speak out against that which is fundamentally wrong, we indirectly forgive the wrongdoers.

 

But I am hopeful.  If in response to our current political climate the entertainment industry decides to listen to and therefore represent all of its audience members empathetically, we will no doubt have any issue finding enough stories for the next few years into which we can escape.  So until this political era ends and our need to escape is not as extreme as it is now, we would like for you to chime in and tell us how you hope to see filmmakers and showrunners respond to our current political climate.