Write a reflection in your learning log about some of the ways in which marginalised or under-represented people or groups could be badly or unhelpfully portrayed

.● How might being an insider help combat this?

A friend and I were recently discussing my recent departure from my job through redundancy and whether or not I missed the field in which I had worked for nearly 32 years. My answer wasn’t a straight-forward one as there were elements of the work that I really enjoyed, but not so much the increase in the mediocre administration that the company expected of people at my level. My friend was struck by one part of my answer though, which was about feeling out of date with the increasing number of younger engineers and budding managers coming through the business. I explained that although I was only 48 years old, I had been working since I was 16 and had seen a great deal of change during that time. I had always felt that I had an affiliation with the younger crowd because I remembered what it was like to be like them at a time that felt like it was not all that long ago. During my last couple of years, I had felt like I understood this less than before.

We explored the reasons why that might be the case and I realised that it was driven by the advent of communication of ideas. Mobile phone technology coupled with the emergence of social media meant that people of the millennial and Generation Z age-groups had different ways of anchoring their ideas to my generation (X) and perspectives through technology and the culture that it establishes. Every subject has a new set of references upon which it is established, which means that the younger generations often don’t often feel the need to learn directly from people in my age group. This sense of disconnection coupled with the enhanced sense of social equality and questions around how to solve the climate crisis, make me feel like my input is somehow not as valuable as the popular views circulated online. For me, this has been brought into focus during the pandemic, where some age groups took COVID-19 to be more or less serious than others. False data and disinformation put some of the socially vulnerable groups at enhanced risk as a result.

I thought about how my generation is represented and how it could be improved. The middle age generation has experienced national strikes in the 1980s so are often either very suspicious of union representation or whole-heartedly embrace it. We experienced the financial boom and bust period of the 1980s which cost people who had been brought up to want to be homeowners to lose huge sums of money as a result. We also saw the introduction of personal computers and their rise to being in virtually every home, as well as the Internet, mobile phones and online shopping becoming the norm. I once asked a group that I was training at work whether they had ever booked a holiday from a travel brochure and they all looked at me as if I were mad. My perception of how my generation is represented is similar to how I viewed my parents as a teenager. They couldn’t understand because their life experiences didn’t directly mirror mine. I think the same is true for the generation below me.

In terms of how groups are represented, we have looked at the works of artists who assumed a role in either their cultures or lives in a variety of different ways. When considering Nicky S Lee’s Projects series’ [1] where the artist took on the physical characteristics of a culture or age group and photographed herself in character, there are two arguments that can be made. The first is that imitation could be read as complimentary and ridiculing in equal measure. Certainly when Lee masqueraded as an elderly women and kept the truth from her ‘friends’, it could be said that there was a strong sense of mockery involved. The second is that as a South Korean woman, Lee was saying something about what it’s like to be different, but in the case of probably her most controversial series where she posed as a rap fan, she is potentially mocking the stereotype that they are all black and live in deprived inner city areas. In a way, the act of reinforcing stereotypes, which I think Lee did with that series, makes it harder to see that community as anything but intimidating and offensive. The truth is, of course that rap music is loved my millions of people across the whole spectrum of society. In this case, a true insider would need to contrast with that perception of the culture and represent it from a wider point of view. I believe that key to representation is the respectful way that a subject is treated. In the case of representing the middle aged, I would pay more attention to how they still drive the direction of technology and political fairness with positive examples as opposed to the traditional narrative that they are out of touch. More focus on the way that they embrace the modern world and its conservation as opposed to being somehow grumpy, irresponsible and uninterested would help support the new narrative also. In considering this exercise, I thought about Brotherus’ Suites Françaises and how it chronicles a blending of European cultures in a sympathetic way. Brotherus’ use of French words to describe individual items in her apartment not only reveals her challenges in grasping its complexity but also reveals the beauty of the language. Her later revisiting of the work includes long, triumphant texts that show that anything is possible with hard work. This representation is both respectful and insightful, without being obvious.

References

[1] Fletcher R, 2020, “3) Project 2: Masquerades”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2020/08/21/3-project-2-masquerades/