OP-ED: Why Representation Matters: A Response to the Critical Drinker’s “Why the Past Matters”
TL;DR: Representation matters to restore a balance between everyone for the future. We can put the films of the past you wish to save on the Movie History Channel.
I am an intermittent watcher of The Critical Drinker and his cohorts on the long-form YouTube program called “EFAP (Every Frame a Pause)”. NOTE: do not watch those EFAP videos unless you plan on having them on as background noise, the videos run anywhere from 12 minutes to nearly 12 HOURS. In light of the decision of HBO Max to remove the 1939 classic “Gone With the Wind” in light of the protests surrounding the police-George Floyd protests, he made a video about it, titled “ Why the Past Matters “. The video was impassioned and showed a lot of admiration for the works of yesteryear, while hoping for greater restraint on censorship. I will write something in the video’s comment section, but I wanted to place it here first.
I agree that censorship for the sake of appeasing a vocal minority is bad, but if the actions of the silent majority are harmful to the vocal minority, is it not the duty of the minority to speak up and make themselves heard? Subsequently, is it not the duty of the silent majority to hear these complaints — especially if said silent majority holds control? To clarify, one cannot assume a majority holds control in a given body — especially if the majority is improperly REPRESENTED; it’s how revolutions start in a society. Allowing harm to befall a part of a society (in whatever manifestation that may be) hurts the whole of society and disrupts the balance.
Speaking of revolutions, I listened to your stirring speech (damned good!) and I watched your video and I paid close attention to the selected video clips. History should not be erased to match current mores, but there are a LOT of people not REPRESENTED through a systematic exclusion of people based on gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and so-on. Your video showed that in great numbers, as only three people of color with named characters (Bubba, Bart, and Gandhi) were featured and one movie created by non-European or non-Western authors (Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”). If I’ve missed any other examples that fall into those categories in your video, please enlighten me.
Indeed, the past matters: it shows us what was accepted outside of greater knowledge and understanding. Things were simpler, yes, but that was a choice for the majority — consciously or unconsciously. That lack of understanding and comprehension has cost us dearly. Media history has fed us stories of rebellion against greater powers (most of the Star Wars saga) and punching fascists and/or fascists disguised as socialists (most of the Indiana Jones series), but many of its greatest fans would prefer that fascists or greater powers remain in place to thrive in lieu of the unknown, the untried, or the untested. Indeed, the past matters, because the whole world fought a war in the past to confirm the global desire to defeat fascism — and many people have chosen to forget why so many people died to stop it. This is due to a lack of REPRESENTATION.
REPRESENTATION is what people are aiming for — in Western political positions (Andrew Yang), in Western media (FOX News’ Harris Faulkner), in Western music (Frank Ocean, Ke$ha, Big Freedia, Darius Rucker), in Western society (the Black Lives Matter movement, the #MeToo movement). The video clips used in this speech illustrate both of our points clearly: they show your understandable adoration for the past achievements of film history but they also point out an exclusion of people of color over the decades of movies. Please don’t remove the video clips because I want people to see where we’ve been, and I would like them to be preserved as they are-and with context. TO BE CLEAR: I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE CENSORSHIP OF FILM TO APPEASE PEOPLE WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND THE FILM IN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT. Where we can go from here — with proper representation, balance, and understanding about the film’s subject matter AND the people it portrays — is the goal.
The images we put out there can color our perception of the world, and it can have horrible results: for every rebellion of freedom inspired by the antics of Luke Skywalker, there’s a movie that just gave someone a reason or motive to harm another person. That’s why WE HAVE TO CHANGE.
Native people of every country no longer want to be written and seen as noble savages dying to ensure the power of the ruling government; African and African-American people no longer want to be written and seen as dull brutish thugs with low pain thresholds; Asian people of all colors are tired of being written and seen as a “model minority” (NOTE: not a compliment) or subservient sex toys; Latinos are done being written and seen as sex-pot servants and gang-bangers craving power; the people of the Middle East are tired of being written and seen as brown-skinned religious fundamentalist terrorists; White people are tired of being seen as killer cops, wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing, racists, and thieving business-people. None of the peoples listed above are their stereotypes, and we’ve all been hurt because someone in charge subscribed to a stereotype. WE WANT TO BE SEEN, BUT NOT AS THESE HARMFUL STEREOTYPES. I’ve written at length and used the inclusive terms ‘we’ and ‘us’, because this does include us all. WE HAVE TO CHANGE; THIS IS OUR YEAR. We can remember the past to prevent the mistakes of tomorrow, but that does not mean we should continue to make the mistakes of the past to allow the future to exist.
If you want to call this the end of the world or the apocalypse, please do. The word ‘apocalypse’ originally comes from the Greek apokalupsis: to uncover or reveal. Though the common understanding of the word leads to images of mushroom clouds and seven-headed beasts, it is instead a revelation (like the last book in the Bible). It means the old world is being pulled away, and a new one will stand in its place-a revelation that it does not need to be this way. WE CAN DO SOMETHING ELSE. WE CAN BE SOMETHING BETTER.
The arrival of a new world does not mean people will die in radioactive flames or that the planet will become uninhabitable, it means folks can choose to adapt and become part of the new world. We can lobby to see the movies you’ve asked us to preserve as intended as artifacts of the past. They can be in museums, or even on a special cable channel (yes, some people still have cable) or online streaming service. Similar to SHUDDER for horror movies, and Crunchyroll for anime, we can have a Movie History Channel. It can follow in the steps of Turner Classic Movies in its goal of preserving both the media and the context (presented like the Looney Tunes disclaimer about racial stereotypes)-but also providing helpful information like VH1’s “Pop-Up Video”.
There’s no need to mourn the change. Think of it as an evolution from minds and hearts that choose to exclude and made beautiful art to compensate (ex.: Triumph of the Will), to minds and hearts that choose to include and make even better art to enhance our new world. Come join us as actual Asian people play Asian people (no yellowface here) in a role not specifically written for an Asian person in a Western studio system, with full recognition and fair compensation given to all hands involved in the production of the work. The chosen media of the past will be on-demand-including the Kung-Fu TV franchise, as envisioned by Bruce Lee and starring David Carradine (despite the ideator Mr. Lee intending to star in it himself, but was denied because the Hollywood suits didn’t think a five-foot-six Asian guy with a heavy accent could be a viable action star). We shall look back at the mistakes like the one above, learn from them, apply the lessons learned to future productions, and progress into a world where everyone can be happy at the expense of no one else.
I leave you with an image of an 18-year-old Bruce Lee, from the 1960 film “The Orphan”. This young man is symbolic of the promise of the ideas I put forth in this screed: he would prove to be an amazing action star that inspired many, while Hollywood passed on him because he was Asian. We only have a small body of film and TV work of this radiant talent because the world did not recognize him for what he was — one of the greatest martial artists of the 20th Century. I beg you now to see the future of what this world can become and not the minor Triad gang member it is predicted to become. All we need do now is to shape it.
We will make mistakes on the way, but starting the journey is not one of them.
Originally published at https://www.facebook.com.
