To Watch or Not to Watch: A Follow-Up

It’s been a while since I started my new practice inspired by Pete Davidson’s SNL proposal on how to deal with problematic media: pair consumption with donations to relevant charities. As I said in my original post on the subject, I tweaked his idea a little for my own purposes, as well as expanded it to include representation issues in addition to Davidson’s suggestion, which was specifically focused on sexual predators. In the time since I’ve started doing this, a number of things have emerged for me, and that’s what I’d like to look at today.

First of all, to repeat my disclaimer from my original post, I’m not saying at all that this is the one and only way to deal with media involving problematic people and/or issues with representation. This is a big, complicated subject, and attitudes vary widely on it. I do my best not to judge others for their viewing choices, because I know that mine aren’t above reproach either. This is just the method that works for me.

Now, onto my findings!

To begin with, the larger scope of my personal spin on this method has allowed me to diversify the number of organizations I give to. I keep running tallies of whatever problematic media I watch and typically make a donation once I reach $50 for a particular “category.” It might be RAINN (sexual harrassers/predators,) it might be the National Center for Transgender Equality (cis actors playing trans,) it might be Theatre Mu, an Asian-American theatre company in my state (Asian roles being whitewashed,) and so much more. When I hit the $50 mark again in the same “category,” I might give to the same organization again, or I might research a different one and make my donation there.

Next, putting money behind my viewing is having an effect on some of my choices. Part of this is just the intentionality of it: when I need to specifically identify a movie/show as profiting someone with sexual harassment allegations or inappropriately casting a role that should have gone to a marginalized person, it brings that aspect of it more to the forefront of my mind, and that makes it harder to ignore. This has turned me off of certain new stuff, and I’ve also started looking through my DVD collection and identifying some that I realistically will probably never watch again. Especially when it comes to sexual harrassers and predators, there are some people whose faces I just don’t want to see anymore.

By the same token, I find there are certain movies or shows that I’ve looked at and decided, “No, that’s not worth an extra $5-10.” Not that I’m opposed to giving to charity, and as I said, I like that I’m giving to a wider variety of organizations – that’s not what I’m saying. However, as we’ll get into more later, there is no shortage of problematic media out there, and if I choose not to spend money on one show/movie, there will unfortunately be another one soon enough.

This leads me to my next point: there’s just so much media to identify as problematic. The presence of sexual harrassers and predators in Hollywood is bad enough – I’ve had definite moments where I’ve sat down to watch something, and I went, “Wait, Harvey Weinstein produced A Single Man?! Why??” or, “Ugh, I forgot T.J. Miller was in Big Hero 6.” But when you add in representation issues too, it just explodes. When you’re specifically keeping track of them and literally paying for them, you realize that there’s problematic casting all over the place. The worst offender, I’ve found, is able-bodied actors playing characters with disabilities. While most characters in movies and on TV are able-bodied, the vast majority of the few characters with disabilities out there are played by able-bodied actors. Since I started doing this, I’ve given the most money to disability rights organizations and advocacy groups, by far.

My last point is probably the biggest reason I’m glad I’m approaching these issues this way: a lot of media that’s getting plenty right and doing important things still gets stuff wrong. Again, this is especially true when it comes to representation. BoJack Horseman explores mental health issues, sexism, and substance abuse (among many other engrossing topics) and gives me the only storyline I’ve ever seen of a character discovering their asexuality, but it also features a white actress voicing an Asian-American character. Mad Max: Fury Road is a radically feminist story about a group of survivors escaping their abuser, but it also stars an able-bodied actress playing an amputee. Supergirl stars my absolute favorite superheroine, uses aliens to examine attitudes about immigration and refugees, and provides LGBTQ representation (including the first onscreen trans superheroine!), but it also cast a white actress to play a Latinx character. To quote Sirius Black, “The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters,” and I would miss out on plenty of strong, meaningful media if I cut out anything that didn’t meet my standards. With my donations, I can appreciate these works for what I love about them while still recognizing where they fall short.