Last week, a fellow Her Campus member went on to write an eye-opening piece on the power of diversity. https://www.hercampus.com/school/usfsp/why-crazy-rich-asians-need-be-shown-our-society After I read her article, I emailed her and told her how much I not only enjoyed reading it, but I also thanked her for writing so. As a Bhutanese growing up in Bhutan, we did not and even now don’t have cinemas where Western films are shown. No, it’s not like North Korea. But that did not mean that we never got to watch all these films that came from Hollywood, where majority of the stories were limited to, or focused on a singular culture’s experience. We had cable television, CD’s and DVD stores, and plenty of torrent sites where we had access to watch movies. I watched Home Alone, Mean Girls, Sixth Sense, and Chronicles of Narnia. Never did I once question why someone who looked like me were not in these movies or the fact that there weren’t movies out there on people who looked like me. After all, someone who looked like me in America could also be an American (Asian). I think part of this was because we were never bombarded with Western movies in the cinemas that we had. The West was always foreign to us in many ways; they were the ‘other’.
Cinemas in Bhutan only show Bhutanese movies, while the few in the South show movies from India. So, in this way, we never really took movies from the West too seriously.
However, once you step outside of Bhutan, and come to America, a country that is a melting pot for varied cultures, and has always been, it’s almost sinister to know that majority of the films that are being made here are not representative of that varied culture. In America, as an American, imagine watching movies where majority of the cast is Chinese (American) and where the story is limited to their struggles and experiences only, and where every now and then, a movie about a White girl struggling with her self-identity comes out. No thank you, right?
I say this because many people whose stories have been represented do not get what’s it like to be on the other side of the fence, let alone acknowledge the fact that representation matters. And I assume that this is only natural, to not know how it feels like to feel something that you have never felt. Whether you can process that (the scenario) I just put or not, it’s been the reality since the inception of Hollywood, except that instead of the Chinese, it was White.
Fortunately, the status quo is being shook. What began as an unpopular (indie movie revolution in many ways) method is now making its way to popular culture. Now, individuals like Riz Ahmed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1k3Guk1QpQ and Ken Jeong are not only that token character you see on a heavy budget movie, or an indie film about depression, but they are taking hold of more mainstream movies in general. Having said that, we still have a long way to go. Diversity is good, but representation is better.