Representation is the act of depicting someone or something in a particular manner. This could be both possible in a positive or negative light. At times, even though the manner in which something is being represented could be unintentionally negative, unrest could still be stirred up amongst viewers.
We have to ask ourselves: Can the premise or scope of a text be truly representative of any group holistically? Frankly speaking – it isn’t possible. This is simply because it is impossible for anyone medium to encompass every single aspect of what is being represented within its various limitations. The act of representation is problematic in the sense that it will never be able to fulfill everyone’s expectations, meaning there will always be someone to criticize it. Texts are made accessible to audiences to convey a certain message. This also means that representation in texts is open to public scrutiny which makes it vulnerable for audiences from a whole range of backgrounds to dive in head-first with their own opinions. There will always be an aspect unexplored that people will be able to critique. Take films for example. The medium itself is considered as mass media, meaning it has the potential to reach a much greater audience compared to other mediums. This causes films to be especially heavily weighted as films can be viewed internationally and have the potential to receive widespread reactions.
In our class discussion, we touched upon the film Crazy Rich Asians and discussed the controversies that arose. In one direction of the discussion, we spoke about how the film had been held to a realistically unattainable burden of representation when they used the term ‘Asian’. The film had received an onslaught of backlash from people accusing them about lacking diversity in depicting its chief setting of Singapore. They were accused of succumbing to only representing the Asians of Chinese descent, leading to the argument that they ‘fell out’ on their broad promise of representation in the title. Certain viewers were outraged that the film had supposedly built upon stereotypes which inadvertently only reaffirmed millions of people’s impressions of Asian people and their culture.
This is one of many examples of how representation can be problematic. Within a text and its limitations, one must accept that it is simply impossible or at least incredibly difficult, to satisfy the opinions of everyone at once.
