Issue 26 Creation HopeBlog | Films to preach about – What does a hero look like?
Films to preach about – What does a hero look like?
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 13.03.21
What does a hero look like?
Perhaps more to the point, what does normal look like? Film and television have the power to shape our collective answers to these questions.
Some of us will have grown up seeing people who look like us and live like us reflected back in popular entertainment. Unconsciously, this reassures us that our stories matter. Success, fulfilment, adventure, even heroism may seem more open to us because we’ve seen people like us attain them on screen. The opposite is also true. If we don’t see ourselves, it creates an unease that maybe we’ve never quite put into words. We learn, deep down, that we don’t fully belong. The best stories happen to other people: we’re destined to be supporting characters, or written out of the script.
This take on the power of inclusion may seem like too strong or simplistic a view. But it’s backed up by research. ‘Prolonged television exposure predicts a decrease in self-esteem for all girls and for black boys, and an increase in self-esteem for white boys,’ says Nancy Wang Yuen, author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism. ‘These differences correlate with the racial and gender biases in Hollywood, which casts only white men as heroes, while erasing or subordinating other groups as villains, sidekicks, and sexual objects.
The outpouring of joy which greeted the release of Black Panther (2018), a superhero blockbuster with an almost entirely black cast, speaks to a hunger for something better. The film blazed past box office expectations, becoming the highest-grossing solo superhero f ilm ever. But more importantly, black communities all over the world took it deeply to heart. Online, videos showed audiences cheering and dancing in packed screens, while the #BlackPantherChallenge raised money so that disadvantaged young people could see it for free.
