Minorities can find it gratifying to see people who resemble them onscreen. But resemblance is a tricky thing.
It’s a formula that we turn to again and again to affirm the value of inclusion, especially in the realm of popular culture: the importance of people who “look like me.”
The actor Eva Longoria, who appears in the film “Dora and the Lost City of Gold,” in which the principals are played by Latinx actors, has said she had to take the part because of what the film represented “for my community and for people who look like me.” The playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, explaining what drove him to create the new television drama series “David Makes Man,” which follows the life of a black boy in a public-housing project, observed: “John Hughes made several movies that depicted the rich interior lives of young white American men and women. I just want the same for people who look like me.” The comedian Ali Wong inspired the writer Nicole Clark to confess that she “didn’t think she liked stand-up until a few years ago, when I realized the problem was the lack of comedians who look like me and tell jokes that I ‘get.’”
The “look like me” formula appeals because it feels so simple and literal. We can think of a black or Asian toddler who gets to play with dolls that share her racial characteristics, in an era when Barbie, blessedly, is no longer exclusively white. The emotions it speaks to are real, and urgent. And yet the celebratory formula is trailed by jangling paradoxes, like tin cans tied to a newlywed’s car.
For one thing, nobody means it literally. Asians don’t imagine that all Asians look alike; blacks don’t think all blacks look alike. Among Latinx celebrities, Eva Mendes doesn’t look like Cameron Diaz; Sammy Sosa doesn’t look like … Sammy Sosa... (continues)
It’s a formula that we turn to again and again to affirm the value of inclusion, especially in the realm of popular culture: the importance of people who “look like me.”
The actor Eva Longoria, who appears in the film “Dora and the Lost City of Gold,” in which the principals are played by Latinx actors, has said she had to take the part because of what the film represented “for my community and for people who look like me.” The playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, explaining what drove him to create the new television drama series “David Makes Man,” which follows the life of a black boy in a public-housing project, observed: “John Hughes made several movies that depicted the rich interior lives of young white American men and women. I just want the same for people who look like me.” The comedian Ali Wong inspired the writer Nicole Clark to confess that she “didn’t think she liked stand-up until a few years ago, when I realized the problem was the lack of comedians who look like me and tell jokes that I ‘get.’”
The “look like me” formula appeals because it feels so simple and literal. We can think of a black or Asian toddler who gets to play with dolls that share her racial characteristics, in an era when Barbie, blessedly, is no longer exclusively white. The emotions it speaks to are real, and urgent. And yet the celebratory formula is trailed by jangling paradoxes, like tin cans tied to a newlywed’s car.
For one thing, nobody means it literally. Asians don’t imagine that all Asians look alike; blacks don’t think all blacks look alike. Among Latinx celebrities, Eva Mendes doesn’t look like Cameron Diaz; Sammy Sosa doesn’t look like … Sammy Sosa... (continues)
I am not a minority. Quite the opposite, I am a Caucasian male without a minority in my blood for generations. Watching those reactions, working to empathize with our white washed media and entertainment, can even bring joy in others for the inclusion of everyone. Having a respect for culture, tradition, and your neighbor is a foundation to thought and those who do not get raised this way I believe have been given the short stick to not see past their own noses.
ReplyDeleteAndy Miles Section 11