I am guilty of making excuses for people who will never deserve second chances. It is probably because of bad parenting and society happily supporting the thesis that everything is somehow my fault if I look at it from the right angle. If I squint and take a step to the right, I can see why I should be an afterthought who doesn't deserve to be treated like a person, the injury that has upset me is allowed because it is what I get for expecting the bare minimum. This thinking became a coping mechanism that got me through an awful three years of grad school where sexism and racism were palpable and constant. It helped me find the humor when being told that I write “too many women,” or that I should “play up stereotypes” to help the supposed professor remember character descriptions, or that my leads can’t be Black if I want to be produced outside of the predominantly white university, and that I was chosen to “write the Black scene” for a project based on a person that was not Black. It helped me navigate some awful years in the Chicago theatre scene where I was still naïve enough to fall for the “We pretend to be a family so you won’t talk about what goes on here,” business model.
What I am just now realizing is that I am not the only person that does this dance. I am not the only person who is never really surprised when the person/group/company fails us even though I have done the mental gymnastics and laid out a forgivable storyline for whatever the slight was. I did all of this work and they assume I will keep doing it because that’s the “polite” thing to do. We are ingrained with this notion that rocking the boat is worse than whatever the actual problem is. As a society, we like to deal in absolutes, which means it is always all or nothing with no middle ground. We do not want honest criticism. We cannot handle, “the movie was good, but it was an all-white cast...,” because then we have to have a conversation, and the conversation might not be polite. We might have to scratch the surface of what it means when someone creates a world without the rest of us. Because most critics (who can make an honest living as critics) are older white men, who either see no problem with the all-white worlds, or constant racial tropes this never comes up when they sing the praises of a film. Perhaps a few have a fleeting thought to talk about issues, but they are not equipped to tackle the intricacies of a problem that they are not always on the right side of due to their privilege. So, we keep watching these movies collect tomatoes, thumbs, awards, etc. while these creators get another pass to do it all over again. We watch the same problems year after year, film after film, critic after critic, and are told it “just takes time,” as if entertainment is this new venture that has not had more than enough time to correct these glaring problems.
I have been thinking a lot about the media I consume and how it begets more media that does not support the global majority and the outlets that perpetuate this cycle. I have decided that I do not want this anymore. The kid who grew up reading every Stephen King and getting numb to the hundreds of times a novel a slur gets dropped, the kid who lived in front of a television but hardly saw anyone who looked like her in mainstream media is tapping out. I am no longer giving passes to people who do not deserve them anymore. I am done pretending there is a good reason for anyone to forget we exist and then watching them turn around with a sequel is possibly more problematic. A sequel that only includes Black people as the minor characters who will immediately die because it is somehow worse to be Black in this made-up world than anything that we established would get you killed in the first movie.
I am no longer subscribing to outlets that do not hire POCs to write honest reviews, and I am no longer supporting any media that does not have BIPOC creators or a cast that looks like the world we live in today. A cast where BIPOC can make it to the end of the movie and have lines. I only want to support media that does not just use us in the smallest roles and then discard us. I will especially not be engaging with content that lets us know that no Black person was involved because they find convoluted ways to put a noose around the neck of one of the very few Black actors for any reason. I have caught three genre situations putting a noose around the neck of a Black actor within just the last five years and immediately researched the production team that allowed this each time. Please fucking stop!
I am going to miss a lot of popular media, but popular does not always mean quality anyway. Just look at how Living Single was a better show than Friends but was ignored by white people until it hit Hulu a few years ago. Think of how Tales From the Hood is still criminally overlooked for literally any other anthology. Like, if the Oscars gave Matt Damon an award, then we were never going to agree on anything anyway, so why should I keep trying to engage with what they think is art? I am personally more worried that I will have to endure some spoilers to protect my peace than I am that I will miss the next opportunity to watch people flip for something that needs actual criticism. I hate that, but I also hate throwing my time and money at people who can "accidentally" continue creating worlds without us.