It’s interesting how the media often portrays minorities as the enemy or the villain. But most of the time, the hero is white and charming. This happens because these villains were morphed from society’s fear at the time and corporations like Disney have capitalized on it.
English Language Arts teacher, Alex Schaper, has a strong opinion on this ongoing villain theming.
“I think as time has gone on Disney continued to diversify their protagonists but not the antagonists,” Schaper said.
This leads me to believe that we are teaching our kids to fear these things because of our misguided understanding of them. Which could furthermore teach them that they are bad and evil because that’s what they are being exposed to.
“As someone who understands the power of storytelling, I think stories are incredibly influential. I grew up with movies as a kid, and kids are very perceptive, and are going to notice a trend,” Schaper said.
It’s also important to note that the “villain” is used as a tool to make the hero look good when the hero would be nothing without them because if there is no villain the hero has no purpose, they are the story. Moreover, the show would be boring and no one would want to watch it. This connects to the quote “Behind every great man, there’s a great woman” well, behind every great, honorable hero, there is a great villain.
To further illustrate, “Not a very good one because we like to channel our animosity through that character. What would be the ‘Lion King’ without Scar? What would be the ‘Little Mermaid’ without Ursula?” Scapher said.
This mirrors our very society, how minorities are the very backbone of this fragile America. But we continue to get no credit, are shunned into the darkness where they think we belong, and labeled with misconceptions.
Schaper had some very profound ideas about what stories mean in our society.
“They are deeply embedded in our society, stories can have the same purpose across the world, and are trying to teach the same things or moral lessons. They come from your head and can be foundational building blocks in how we interact with other people,” Scapher said.
The backwards way of thinking of how villains are made to put the hero on a pedestal when these people are just being vilified who they are, for something they can’t control, continues to happen in the media. That’s why we need to relay the message to our kids that the world is not black and white. No one is just good or just evil. We all make good and bad decisions.
A student, Kay Cooper (9), had an excellent solution on how we can pass this idea onto our kids.
“Have characters to show the gray areas, somebody that can show the overlap between ideologies,” Cooper said.
Yet, we continue to mislead our kids by just making a villain evil just for the sake of it or portraying a hero that’s completely perfect.
To further elaborate, “Fear can infiltrate in subtle ways. For example, it can cause people to write spiders in all their books as bad and evil, the same can happen with people,” Cooper said.
Furthermore, respect is given when you take the time to add up the layers into a perfectly complex character with good and bad deeds that will invoke feelings and experiences in us like no other.
So, how can we begin to write a hero who is relatable enough without losing their substance?
“Add laws so that they don’t relate to everyone because this makes the characters feel flat. Flaws are an important part of making a character seem real,” Cooper said.
Every character should have their own unique story, which might connect more with some people than others and that’s okay because you can’t truly make a character that’s relatable to everyone without taking away what makes them unique as a person.
We should be proud of these differences and what really matters is if you are able to take away something that is important and impactful to you.
So, the big question remains; how can we make our stories more inclusive? Have characters that can show different representations, but not front and center or the main point, normalize the differences because they should not be every story. In other words, we need balance.
Minority representation should not be completely ignored, but it should not be the absolute highlight of every story either because at the end of the day, these things are normal, basic, everyday occurrences that should not really even be debated in the first place.
