The Representation Paradox

I recently watched the fun and all-around wholesome teen dance movie Work It and was struck by something interesting. One of the negative characters in the film, Juilliard, played by Keiynan Lonsdale, was queer. This portrayal of a queer individual as a villainous character hit upon an important paradox when it comes to meaningful representation of minorities in film, or indeed, any art form. The paradox is simply this: For representation to be meaningful, it is essential to show minorities as layered individuals, flaws and all.

But here is where it gets tricky: Generations of moviegoers recall lazy tropes—a Muslim character, if they existed in the movie at all, would be a terrorist; a gay person, if they existed in the movie at all, would be exaggeratedly effeminate and mined for laughs. And then came the generation that tried to correct this lack of representation by doing something that was perhaps well-intentioned, but equally harmful. I've lost count of the number of films I've watched that had a token minority character, who was, well, just there to check a box. Token gay best friend? Check. Token Asian character who has just five minutes of screen time? Check.

While at first glance, it might seem like these two generations of filmmaking—stereotyping on the one hand and representation for the sake of it on the other—do not have much in common, they actually share a very basic trait: They're both lazy.

The focusing illusion and lazy representation

I've written previously about the focusing illusion, or the tendency to focus on one distinctive aspect of a person's condition, essentially reducing them to a uni-dimensional character rather than someone with any depth at all. The focusing illusion is our lazy brain’s way of making sense of the world and the people in it at little to no cost to ourselves. Why spend the time trying to understand the layers of a person when defining them by one characteristic is just so much easier?

The focusing illusion is a direct cause for both types of lazy representation: If filmmakers of yore (which was not that long ago) chose to ignore all layers and nuance and define any brown character as a terrorist, more recent filmmakers also have the focusing illusion to blame when they choose to define their token characters simply by the group of people they are meant to represent.

What is encouraging is that creators are finally beginning to get representation right. One reason why Schitt’s Creek did so well is that it was set in a fictional land where people's sexual preferences simply didn't matter. The David-Patrick relationship is not defined by the fact that it is a gay one. It’s simply a relationship between two people who love each other, and their relationship comes with the same kind of baggage that a heterosexual couple’s would.

In the movie Work It, as well, the Juilliard character’s queerness is merely secondary. There is no mention of his sexual preferences because they do not matter. In the same vein, his villainy has nothing to do with his sexuality. He is simply, like the rest of us, a complex human being with layers of life experience, who refuses to be put into a narrowly defined box.