I have seen so many sentences start with that three-word phrase lately.
It's just a joke
It's just a cartoon
It's just a song
It's just a TV show
It's just a book
It's just a costume
It's just a movie
Stop it.
It bloody isn't.
Cultural expressions (which I am going to use as a catch-all for the things listed above and anything like them) do not spring out of a vacuum. They not fall from the sky, devoid of earthly context. They are not meaningless, they are not neutral, and they are certainly not harmless.
Cultural expressions are exactly what it says on the tin: ways of expressing the culture from which they spring. They are firmly rooted in the mores of that culture. They define in-groups and out-groups: even if they take a counter-culture stance and push back against those classifications, they must still define them in order to pick at them. They are the way in which a culture maintains itself, both promoting its beliefs and policing them.
Nothing is "just". The subtext is everything. And it's okay to ask questions about that. In fact, it's crucial that we do.
We need to ask why it's funny to joke about how women are "bad drivers" when its provably incorrect. What does that mean about our society?
We need to ask why calling a cartoon racist upsets people more than a cartoon being racist. What does that say about who we wish to protect most?
We need to ask why we're not uncomfortable with creepy songs about men stalking women in the name of romance. What are we as a society hoping to achieve with these songs, and to benefit whom?
We need to ask why the first sacrificial character in yet another TV show is the sole representative of a disability group, whose disability exists in the story to make them vulnerable to the attack. What does this story teach us about who is valued?
We need to ask why a book where a woman's consent is repeatedly overridden in a heterosexual relationship is considered a titillating fun read, while books about consenting same-sex relationships are banned as obscene. What moral standards matter to us?
We need to ask why using a real culture as a Hallowe'en costume is a standard while members of that culture wearing their own costume in daily life is frowned upon. Whose skins are for wearing and whose are for being worn?
We need to ask why a children's movie franchise can be dripping in complicated and largely unnecessary heterosexual relationships but a hard line is drawn against showing one same-sex relationship in the same franchise. Who decides what's 'safe' for children to see and know?
... I mean, we know the answer to all of these, don't we. Our society is still sexist and racist and ableist and homophobic at its core.
That's why we must ask, and ask, and keep asking.
We need to ask whether it's good enough.
Is it good enough for children and adults with disabilities to only see themselves represented as inspiration porn or sacrificial lambs?
Is it good enough for non-straight people to only exist as tragic outcomes or dirty secrets?
Is it good enough for children and adults of colour to only see themselves in big franchises on the periphery or on the side of evil?
Is it good enough to relegate women to the same roles and tropes again, and again and AGAIN and AGAIN?
Is this story... this comfortable old story about straight white mostly-male people with some token others thrown in to be lost in dramatic circumstances or to stand in as shorthand for evil... the way we want to see ourselves?
Is it good enough?
Cultural expressions deserve our closest scrutiny. They are our deeply-held beliefs leaking out at the seams and making themselves manifest in the world. At the very least, we owe it to the vulnerable and the oppressed and the under-represented to examine how we include or exclude them from those stories. At the very least, we owe it to ourselves to ask the hard questions and hear the hard answers.
Stop making excuses when people scrutinise cultural expressions and ask whether their representation is good enough. Stop getting defensive when people criticise racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia and the rest. Stop having hysterics just because someone asked you to see it from someone else's point of view, or to put yourself in their shoes and consider how it might look to them.
It's just a question.
