Storytelling is universal. It is an essential aspect of the human experience. Right now, television is the medium of storytelling that captures the most attention in the public consciousness. There is a lot of discussion and debate about who gets to tell the stories we see on all the various platforms that encompass the term 'TV.'
The writer, director, and actress Issa Rae could not catch a break in Hollywood. She created her own web series Awkward Black Girl and found an audience hungry for her funny take on life as a young woman in Los Angeles. In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill of The Huffington Post, Rae expressed skepticism about the entertainment industry's sudden interest in showcasing people of color on TV. "Until you have people in positions of power that have varied experiences, nothing will change. Honestly, we're not on their radar. They don't know. They're not really thinking about us. If you have people in positions of power that don't have very many black friends, that don't understand the black experience, they're not thinking about it and there are not enough people concerned with it."
Television veterans and relative newcomers have recently had many opportunities to talk about telling stories from different perspectives.
Norman Lear on Good Times:
"Just imagine this: There are no African-American families on television. Suddenly, you- Esther Rolle and John Amos- represent the first African-American couple with children on American television. You are the TV role models of your community's people. That's heavy responsibility. I'm not sure at the time I understood this as well as I understood it some years later. But I kind of understood the heaviness- the weight on them."
Regina King of American Crime:
"[American Crime director] John Ridley uses the word 'reflective,' often, and Shonda, with 'normalizing,' I think those two words are so much better than using the word 'diverse.' I think when you look at American and what America is made up of, it's not what we see on TV. So as the stories start to get more broad, as they start to be told from different perspectives, then TV starts to become more normal. You start to have art imitating life more, and I am so excited that I get to be fully present during a time when this is happening."
Gina Rodriguez of Jane the Virgin:
"One: you need to write for human beings- that goes for any underrepresented ethnicity. We're human, we all want the same things, we all want love and success, we're afraid of failure, we want people to like us... You write for a human being, that's cracking the code, for any ethnicity..."
Constance Wu of Fresh Off the Boat:
"I don't think identity is purely determined by race and if a story wants to focus on other things that are important to the narrative, that's great. But it's not harmful to say that ethnicity plays an important part in identity and that that part of the story matters. It's not fodder for humor, it's just another unique element of humanity. Hopefully, we celebrate that. And we're also a comedy!"
Does anyone lose when television looks and sounds and feels a little more like America?
