been thinking about this and my thoughts are fairly unformed but i’m posting them anyways so i don’t forget. i really like the framing of the target audience and acknowledgement of the self being a target. its a good reminder to think about who we make our content for. and i rlly agree with consuming content outside of one’s lived reality as a method of connection and enrichment to one’s life. at the same time im also poc and i have been thinking a lot about how i hesitate to make work about life as i actually see it and experience it because ive been consuming work from a predominantly white/male lens for my entire life. bc it has had so much influence on me i’ve noticed that i tend to parrot that kind of creation even though it doesn’t match up with my lived reality. ive been wanting to make more work closer to me so that it can be out there… i am curious about other poc creators and if anyone else has that kind of experience or even if they totally don’t i want to hear about it. just my thoughts
Viewing post in AN ESSAYS ON ESSAYS: METHODS OF INDIVIDUALISM comments
glad to see another racialised person here! i'm chinese but i grew up in a western country, so a lot of the stuff i read at school was white lens stuff. at the same time most western media didn't really appeal to me so if i didn't have to, i wouldn't, and i would watch east asian stuff instead.
because of my preference in media and desire to write closer to what i actually know and want to write about, i rarely (if ever) write about stuff with a white audience in mind, and as a result, i don't usually write white characters. that being said, despite being chinese, i have a lot of complicated feelings portraying chinese characters, and am also aware of how people view chinese people, which is why i have refrained from writing about them. this essay was actually originally written with the title of "THE WEST SAYS YOU CANNOT BE CHINESE" but i felt sick writing that, so i scrapped it for this one, lol.
in the future though, i do want to write more about being chinese, as well as actually portraying reality as it is for me. it's complicated and difficult to write about yourself if you aren't white or japanese. i totally understand the struggle.
thank you for the thoughts! i'm glad to have reached you :)