Life in Plastic is Fantastic
A Perspective Shift Long Overdue in Mainstream Media
What are some of the best books you’ve ever read? Some of your favorite authors? One of my favorite things about the literary world is that it has long been a place for people to share other points of view. Maybe it doesn’t always land with me, but it does help me understand where someone is coming from.
A great book will show you how a poor black woman in the post-reconstruction world has to navigate sexism and racism I’ll never experience. How assimilation for an immigrant into an unwelcoming world feels. My favorite book is about a telepathic gorilla explaining their views on the evolution of civilization from the perspective of a caged animal. Probably not from lived experience, but a little magical realism never hurt anyone.
Books give you a window into the mind of different people. Music can as well, especially once you get past the surface level. Popular music tends to conform to certain world views, but there are countless examples of “counter-culture” breakthroughs. Unfortunately, the biggest media forms in America currently - TV (44b), Movies (77b) and Video Games (134b) - have long been dominated by a rather singular perspective.
While the white, male view is present in ALL media forms, it dominates the mainstream. Video games are massive. Massive. Bigger than TV, Movies and Music combined. That said, those three are currently experiencing a bit of a perspective shift sorely needed.
A Barbie Girl in a Ken World
Barbie is obviously the story of the hour, with it eclipsing 1 billion as a pop feminism masterpiece it has firmly planted itself in history. I saw it, it was great. I think it came from a similar place as the Daniels’ masterpiece Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. Barbie blended many male driven movie genres into a nice piece of easily digestible commentary on the state of being a woman in a world that hates them for existing.
Did every moment land? No. And this movie is certainly going to be unfairly criticized for the moments that miss. I’m glad it exists though. It tells a story I need to see and hear, because I won’t ever live it. We’re finally starting to see a swelling of mainstream media that don’t tell things from the white perspective. Sure, we still get white savior media, The Blind Side is back in the news because (surprise, surprise) it was built on a lie. But we’re also getting Moonlight. If Brokeback Mountain came out today, it wouldn’t be revelatory (but, still fantastic).
We’re getting women and people of color being messy. Having lives that are human and independent from the white experience. And we’re getting it in the mainstream. Yes, people are still making performative statements about how they won’t expose their children to the realities of other people’s world. Just look at the suburban response to Barbie. But more than that, you’re getting people that do stay through the movie and are shown a world that they don’t experience. Or that they do experience and don’t understand how to navigate.
People are going to find the words, the language to speak to the things they experience. Doubtless, we will continue to see a bevy of media that centers the Star Lords of the world - Straight White Men who pine over women who don’t want them and other geek fantasy fulfillment. And we will still get the Captain Marvels, heavy handed attempts to show “powerful women” without moving beyond the surface of what that means.
But we’ve also gotten Ms. Marvel, which is both a powerful story of the immigrant experience in the modern world and a touching coming of age story centered from a young, brown girl. It’s one of the best pieces of Marvel media to date, rivaling Jessica Jones and WandaVision as the best of the marvel TV shows.
The Silver Screen is Shining Bright
Television is definitely having a moment. We seem to be hitting the decline of prestige television. And we still have to suffer through the likes of White Lotus (rich white people being awful and winning). We still have sanitized tv like Black-ish, which feels a lot like a modern take on the Cosby Show with a healthy dose of modern social commentary.
Along with the aforementioned Ms. Marvel, we’ve also gotten Kim’s Convenience. A show about a Korean family running a mom and pop store in Canada. A family sitcom that doesn’t shy away from the good, bad and ugly. The characters aren’t always likeable, but they are always real. And they aren’t model minorities.
Paper Girls, which is getting a shoutout here more for the graphic novel, a story that tells a classic 80s Sci-Fi preteen adventure from the perspective of young women. The book is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read and I sobbed in multiple places.
I Am Not Okay With This - which is the best retelling of Carrie I’ve ever seen. Sophia Lillis suffers from existing at the same time as Sadie Sink, who got a huge pop from Stranger Things, but I personally think she is one of the best up and coming actors in the world. I honestly think Stephen King’s influence on popular media has created better works than he ever did and that’s beautiful. Two of the stars of this show were also in the most recent adaptation of It.
Even shows that historically would have pandered to the white cishet crowd are getting nuance.
Cobra Kai, whose band of teenage protagonists is centered on a young, Mexican boy. A show that directly attacks the idea of toxic masculinity. It does still have an abundance of white people being white people, but it never pulls punches. Take a scene where Daniel Larusso is trying to bond with his daughters date Kyler. Kyler is Asian American, emphasis on the American. Daniel-son tries to share a love of Japanese cuisine, especially through raw sushi and Kyler is both not interested and not Japanese.
The Magicians features a diverse cast, a gamut of sexuality and some of the most moving moments in television history. I can’t say enough about this show, which is ultimately about a white man unlearning cultural conditioning. The books are worth reading, but do require some suffering through. They pay off in a huge way at the end of book three, but the journey is rarely fun.
Midnight Mass has a Muslim sheriff in a small, very Christian community. His struggles with faith and identity are human and real. He’s not a villain or a caricature.
These shows are finding mainstream success. They aren’t hidden gems, they are on major platforms. Still a long way to go, but that our stories are starting to be reflective of our world and not just a small sliver is wonderful.
The Biggest Elephant in the Room
Video games still have a long way to go, though. While there are some of the GREATEST stories I’ve ever encountered in this space, it is overwhelmingly sexist and racist. Caricatures still exist and stories are mostly centered from the white male perspective.
Call of Duty is massive. So much so that Sony is fighting a futile effort to keep the franchise from being a Microsoft exclusive. Madden continues to be a huge money machine. Even things like the Witcher feature a white man fighting and fornicating his way through an admittedly amazing story. Gamergate is the most glaring spotlight on a huge issue in the video game industry, but there are healthy cracks starting to show.
Undertale was a huge breakout hit that challenges a lot of standards of roleplaying games. Your actions have very real consequences on the world. Baldur’s Gate 3 is making waves right now and it features a diverse cast with inclusive options for character creation. And some much needed diversity in romance options. Telltale’s the Walking Dead told a similar story to The Last of Us, but centered on a black man and his black adopted daughter.
Games like Spec Ops The Line are forcing people to ask themselves what the cost of the dead lives in video games really is. It evokes a similar feeling to Heart of Darkness or All Quiet on the Western Front. One moment in the game requires you to make a choice. A choice so hard it made me quit playing the game for a week after to process it. And a choice that says, if you want to keep playing this game you have to accept the consequences of your actions.
Life is Strange was a minor breakout hit that deals heavily with the moral fabric of our very world. It is another powerful coming of age story that uses a fantastic time travel mechanism to help you shape the world of two young women. Stardew Valley creates a world with real people living real lives and lets you live with them in a way the Sims never could.
The Persona Series is breaking through to the mainstream in large part to a wider audience for the phenomenal Persona 5. It’s a game that encourages you to build relationships with people from all walks of life and see the world through their eyes. Heroes and Villains alike are nuanced. The good guys hurt people and make decisions that make sense to them, even if the outcome was foreseeably bad.
A long way to go, but so far from where we started.
On that note, our next round in the music league is on aggressive break up songs, and I am really struggling. Here’s my playlist so far and I don’t know if I’ll even pick one of these songs: