Do you have any pet peeves about representation in movies?
Do you dislike how older people, or women, or gays, trans folk, or Latinos are portrayed?
Do you think that there's under-representation of a certain gender or ethnicity or disability group?
Do certain stereotypes bug you when they come up?
Tell us about such representation bug bears here
I think things are getting better, gradually, but there is still a long way to go.
A recent example that bugged me a lot was the movie Mortal Engines, which was based on the book of the same name. I loved the book, and was a particular fan of the writer's work, and of the central character - Hester Shaw. She struck me in particular because she's got the kind of personality that female characters are generally dissuaded from having in a lot of writing; she was violent, hot-tempered (though not clumsy or emotional), capable, individualistic and driven, and actually had a powerful motivation (revenge) and an excellent character arc (learning to allow herself to rely on others, fall in love, let go of revenge, and be happy). And while her development did center on her relationship and eventual romance with a male character, the way it was framed in the story was that Tom - her love interest - was in need of her protection, and she learned to lower her guard around him and make herself vulnerable to love and protect him, which is generally an arc you only ever see men go through.
She was also unfathomably ugly.
This may seem like a small thing, but it isn't. See, Hester's whole motivation is driven (at least, in the first book) by her desire to enact revenge on a man who killed her parents and horribly disfigured her with a sword. She is described as having a horrible scar all the way across her face, going from her chin, through her lips (giving her a "permanent sneer"), severing her nose (making it look like a "mashed snout") and up through one of her eyes (so she only has one). Most of the time she hides this behind a scarf, but her outward appearance is a significant source of her character's trauma, with people regularly horrified just to look at her, and Hester regularly being treated with disgust and disdain from her appearance alone. It was a permanent marker of the wrongs done to her, and a physical display of the trauma that changed her life and she her on a path to revenge.
To me, this is an extremely important part of the character. Sure, she doesn't need the facial scar in order to be a positive, driven character. But the scar fundamentally changes and informs her role within the world. Fact is, a woman who is horribly disfigured will always be treated and looked upon extremely differently to a woman who isn't. It is just a fact that a Hester who has lived with these scars would have had a significantly different life experience than a Hester who wouldn't, and I felt this represented a very specific group who are very often overlooked - not just the non-conventionally attractive, but the actually disfigured. She was a positive representation not just of a woman, but of a woman horribly disfigured and able to not let her condition define or restrict her. In many ways, the scar is a defining trait of the character. She physically cannot smile. She is missing an eye. People look at her and their first thought isn't "scarred human" - it's "monster".
So, when it came time to cast the movie adaptation, how did they make the character look?
I have refused to watch the movie since I first saw how Hester looked, and from what I've read and seen I haven't missed much. What made it worse was the book's writer's response to the change. I've met him, and greatly admired a lot of his work, but when he wrote about the change he basically said "I didn't want them to change it, but they told me that her being so badly disfigured would make her unlikeable, and so I agreed".
I mean, think about that for a second.
The movie executives in charge of this movie basically said that disfigured people don't deserve representation, because their disfigurement makes them harder to like.
It doesn't matter if there are a few kids out there who are disfigured, or differently-abled, or just not conventionally attractive who would have felt a little better about themselves by having a character on screen who shows them that they can kick ***, find love and can be accepted for who they are. Those people don't deserve it. You know who needs this more? The people who will only sympathize with her as long as she ISN'T disfigured, differently-able or anything other than conventionally attractive. Those are the people we need filling our cinemas.
Of course, the executives were wrong, and the movie tanked horribly.
Still, doesn't reinstate my faith in humanity.
