During class I keep thinking of the recent film Birdman during many of the discussions we’ve been having.  It’s been relevant in several situations, most notably during our conversation on Monday about the burden of representations that you yourself cannot control.  Is it better to be represented poorly by someone who doesn’t belong to your particular demographic, or not be represented at all?  Is it better to have bad press rather than no press?  We talked about it briefly as it pertained to black representations in T.V. as white producers would be responsible for churning out popular content involving the gross stereotyping of black people.  We also talked about it in the context of homosexuality in film, where the mere transition to any representation at all on screen was enough to be considered a step in the right direction – even if homosexual characters were better characterized as caricatures.

In the context of Birdman, the main character, Riggan, is obsessed with recapturing the fame that he once had on screen playing a famous superhero (called Birdman).  He struggles to accomplish a level of sophisticated popularity by writing, directing and acting in a stage production, but he is constantly antagonized by a younger, stronger and more fit version of himself wearing the Birdman suit.   What Riggan is dealing with here is the desire to define his own existence in the entertainment world.  He wants to put his own image of himself out to the public, and gain a more desirable level of fame that he himself can come to terms with.  Riggan’s attempts to represent himself through entertainment are beaten and battered into the dirt at almost every corner – he can’t get a smooth production of his show at any point during the previews.  In one particular instance, he finds himself locked out of the theater in just his underwear after he had stepped out for a minute or two to have a cigarette.  In a crazed effort to get back into the theater in time for the final scene of the production, he marches straight through Times Square in front of hundreds of onlookers.  Within minutes, he is caught on dozens of outstretched camera phones, and he has unwittingly just starred in a youtube video that will go viral in a matter of days.

The irony is tangibly thick – despite his best efforts to avoid meaningless fame on screen, he is thrown right back into the midst of reluctant celebrity status.  Representation is funny in that way – no matter how hard you try to present your own image, or the image of those around you, the dominance of popular opinion will easily break the delicate path towards self satisfaction.  It feels this way with social justice in film – in spite of deeply emotional and concerted attempts to correctly and fairly represent the opinion of those who have failed to hold a voice, there will always be a more dominant effort to crush that movement and feed consumers what they want to see, and what they’re comfortable seeing.