Authenticity in Authorship
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Authenticity in Authorship
[title type="subtitle-h6" color=""]Lauren Gonitzke[/title] You will often hear people say, “write what you know,” or “write from experience.” But if that were true, what could be said about the existence of fantasy, science fiction, surrealism, and similar genres? As Nikki Giovanni once said, “Writers don’t write from experience… If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”If authors write from “empathy,” what are the limits of their ability to tell stories? How is authenticity or genuineness an issue? What is the problem?
As an English major, I’ll often hear peers lament, “But why can’t I write about X subject?” or “But why can’t non-X people write from an X perspective?” And when people ask this, they are asking for permission from those marginalized groups. They demand to know why they don’t get a stamp of approval to write the stories of a particular group or experience to which they do not belong. My question is why they want or feel the need to? More importantly, why aren’t the stories of people from those identities being published?The fact of the matter is that these marginalized groups are not the gatekeepers, rather the white publishing industry is. No one will stop a writer from becoming the Iggy Azalea of literature if he so desired, in fact, he’d probably even receive praise for it. He can forcibly use his privilege to write the stories of minorities, just as oppressors have been doing for centuries. But perhaps the real issue at hand is how to stop the self-perpetuation of whiteness and heteronormativity in the industry.“In this year’s annual Publishers Weekly survey of book-publishing employees, respondents — 89 percent of whom were white — found ‘no real change’ in the racial composition of the work force since last year, despite ‘increased attention given to diversity.’”And this extends beyond the literary sphere to TV and movies - most directors in Hollywood are white men. Leslie Headland, a 34-year-old writer and director said, “Without the benefit of Google, ask anybody to name more than five female filmmakers that have made more than three films. It’s shockingly hard.”The director of NBC’s Hannibal, Bryan Fuller, is a gay white man. The show, which ran for three seasons, is rich with symbolism, great acting, and gorgeous cinematography. Fuller reimagines characters from Thomas Harris’s novels and for the most part, has done well with his creative license. Fuller changed the gender of a prominent character from male to female and changed the race of another from white to black. In the third season, there’s a lesbian couple who have a child together, and an interracial couple in which both partners have a disability.
Unfortunately the show killed off its only Asian American woman character, Beverly Katz, in the second season. Beverly was part of the main cast and an awesome character whose place in the story did not revolve around her gender or race. The purpose of her death as explained by Fuller was to be a shock and cause Will Graham emotional pain. The Asian woman in the story existed to die, in order to increase the white, male protagonist’s anguish. Beverly Katz was more valuable to the story dead than alive.Even a high caliber show with great writing like Hannibal falls short. Fuller’s failure reflects that of many others - treating characters of marginalized groups as expendable and peripheral. They are not afforded a lasting place in the main storyline as a multi-faceted human beings, but as a convenient device to move the plot forward for the real protagonists.As a woman of color and feminist, it's often difficult to find and truly enjoy popular media. Or in the case when I do find something in which I want to invest, it's the exception, not the norm. There is a reason why shows like Orange is the New Black and How to Get Away With Murder are so popular. We are starved as an audience – we want diverse characters and stories that aren’t an empty P.C. gesture to add color or meet a “diversity quota.” And in order for that to happen, we need authors of different identities and backgrounds to get more exposure.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]