It’s time we move past just representation
I grew up looking for myself in media like a lot of other marginalized folks. For me, it was mostly games, but for others, it could be film, tv, etc.
One of the first moments I saw myself in a game, whether I knew it at the time or not, was when I played Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn as a teen. The plot was basically that there was racism in the land between a human race called the beorc and a beast-shapeshifting race called the laguz. The laguz were looked down upon and oppressed by the beorc, but mostly lived in their own societies away from the beorc. However, you put a beorc and a laguz together, and you get someone called a Branded. These individuals are born with a brand that denotes that they are a half-and-half. Rejected by both beorc and laguz, they are somehow lesser, but in the end of it all, end up being the panacea for racism.
Trite as this basic summary is, the story resonated with me as a teen and on some level still does today. Sure, we’ve heard the same-old story about mixed people being the cure to racism, that somehow a white oppressor and the oppressed having a baby together means “oh, we are one now.” But this was a story I hadn’t seen represented enough at the time when I was a teen. Even more resonated with me, as I looked at the Branded protagonist, Micaiah, a woman who knew light magic and had long silver hair. I wanted to be pretty like her, and I obsessed over her silver hair so much that I grew up to dye my hair gray every now and then.
The point of all of this is not to advocate for just representation in games, but to also say that this story does not take into account so many outside factors. Did the developers intend to make a non-binary person like me feel validated with beautiful silver hair? No. Did they intend to represented mixed-race people with the story of the Branded? Eh, maybe, but mostly I felt like they wanted some poignant story about racism and historical trauma. A representation of an identity can be explicit or implicit, but nonetheless, representation for many is often an implicit thing, as the producers and developers of mainstream media aren’t often thinking about representing us.
As a games scholar who got their start in talking about LGBTQ representation (specifically trans representation), I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. I used to enjoy talking about games that had queer characters, characters of color, disabled characters, etc. Now, I dread it. I get tired of Discord server channels filled with people arguing over whether a character is aromantic, gay, or just straight. Okay, Lukas from Fire Emblem is aromantic in my eyes, cool. What do we do from there? For me and many others for a long time, we cling onto that character as someone who represents us in media and makes us feel good about ourselves. We create this idealized imagining of Lukas or Shinji or whoever. And that’s cool, that’s great, but it’s not enough.
We can discuss these representations and queer/trans readings as much as we want to, but that still does not change the fact that these identities still face marginalization and oppression in the real world. Also, because of that, they are still very much marginalized and oppressed in our media. Take Ellie and Dina dancing at the beginning of The Last of Us 2; it’s sweet, it’s queer, it’s wonderful…until a homophobe comes in to yell at them for being too queer at a family event (to which Ellie is forced to make amends later by a straight white woman). Take Krem from Dragon Age Inquisition, one of the only trans men in mainstream games, talking in-depth about his transness at one point and having another character defend him if the player asks transphobic questions. It’s cool to see, until you realize that Krem is voiced by a cis woman, that he can easily die in one sidequest, and that he is still on the peripheries of story importance.
I want to see myself in the media I consume just like anyone else would, but I don’t think having a queer non-binary neurodivergent Vietnamese mixed amab person in a video game is going to stop me from facing marginalization and oppression wherever I go. I don’t think representation is the cure to widespread hatred. Visibility is not always a safe thing for a lot of marginalized people.
Consider the larger industry of gaming and the target demographic. The white cishet gamerbro who may be connected in some way to the alt-right or incel culture, or any other terrible movement. You think a triple AAA company releasing a game with “better” representation is going to change their minds? To expose them to others not like them? Laura Bailey faced death threats for voicing Abby in the Last of Us 2. Twitch streamers of color who are trying to make the culture a better place get death threats and hate raids. To this day I don’t go on any online voice chat or video calls while gaming because I don’t want to be called a f*ggot ch*nk.
I don’t know if the current industry will ever truly represent me or the many other marginalized people I know and love. I know that it will continue to put out bland storylines and lip service to appease the masses. I know that experiences represented in these media will skew white, will skew cishet, will skew able-bodied and neurotypical, will skew <insert fifty other identifiers>. I know that even though a mainstream piece of media will come out representing some Asians, I will still have to deal with events like those that sparked #StopAsianHate.
So, instead of doom typing at 1AM and spiraling into this well of despair, what do we do? How do we move on past representation? The answer isn’t simple and clean (haha) but I suggest that we look at what seems to be producer/developer intent in the representation. What do people consuming the media perceive it as? Who wrote, produced, and developed that media? What is the larger culture of representation in that media industry? What stereotypes or tropes are common alongside certain identities being represented in media? Is there space for joy for these identities? Is there space for meaningful sorrow for these identities, or is there too much sorrow already? Will the people who claim these identities be any safer or any more better off in life?
It’s a long list of questions, and I don’t feel like this even scratches the surface. Representation matters and has mattered, but we have got to move past just arguing for it solely. We need media without the hegemonic biases of the triple AAA game studios, we need media outside of the clutches of whiteness, colonialism, and the elite. We don’t only need better representation; we need better games, better protections for the marginalized being represented, and better worlds, both online and offline.
