A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: Northern Lights by Tungsten

Everything in this is from my perspective based on what I know, and is not meant as a commentary on global issues that may concern issues that I don’t face as a white person living in Canada.

Within the Western social sphere, media have traditionally (at least for the past 1000 years or so) overrepresented Christianity, and especially cishet white Christian men. Now, while cishet white Christian men aren’t inherently bad people for existing, this overrepresentation leaves many minority groups wanting something more.

My personal understanding of why this dichotomy exists is because the media we consume in Western countries has for so long been dominated by cishet white Christian men, and when creating stories and fictional worlds, people tend to see themselves in the position of the main character or hero. This is a fairly common thing, anyone who has taken a creative writing class would probably say something similar. It’s not something that happens every single time, nor is it a bad thing, but it is common.

Leaving minority groups underrepresented in the groups that have the most control on media (Marvel, Nintendo, Disney, etc.) leaves out a lot of voices that could help with authentic representation of these minority groups and avoiding some of the common stereotypes and potentially harmful tropes that may have been created for the comfort of the dominant group as a result of implicit bias. And this can happen anywhere in the world, it’s not restricted to modern Western society. For example, while there is more queer representation in the media, much of it is still based on tropes and stereotypes created by and for cishet men, and doesn’t reflect the experiences of the majority of queer people. This includes lesbian relationships where both partners are traditionally feminine women, gay relationships where one is a tiny twink and the other is a hulking bear, bisexual people who keep getting told they’ll “pick a side eventually”, trans people just getting represented in a way where their being trans is a bad thing or just not getting written at all, ace people being incapable of love, and so many more. There has, however, been an increase in positive queer representation, mostly due to queer people writing our own stories and being consulted for our opinions by cishet writers who may not understand our experiences (thank you, Brandon Sanderson, for creating my favourite canonically asexual character), but that’s a rant for another time.

Within the context of religion, this leads to practitioners and, in some cases, deities being reduced to caricatures and stereotypes that are often either wholly inaccurate or with any truths so obscured or muddied by inaccuracies that they may as well be wholly inaccurate. Examples of this include the Marvel versions of the Norse deities (riddled with inaccuracies, but ultimately more annoying than actually harmful), sensationalisation of the old Norse people and TV shows about them (also riddled with inaccuracies, but that’s to be expected with fictional TV shows), Muslims being terrorists (a blatantly untrue stereotype that is very harmful), and many others.

There is also potential for harmful stereotypes to come from within a community directly. A perfect example of this is white supremacists and neo-Nazis taking the mantle of Norse neo-paganism, tainting the entire faith and making their far right ideology the main public perception of the faith.

But how does all this tie into representation of paganism in popular media? Because popular media is the quickest way to spread information, whether true or false, about entire demographics, whether that is the intention or not. But many stereotypes are the way they are because that was the first representation of minority groups shown in popular media and many, especially in majority groups, get really uncomfortable when stereotypes and preconceptions are challenged.

To get to the point of this meandering ramble, more people should be open to challenging the preconceptions they have about minority groups and more willing to elevate minority voices and stand with minorities in challenging stereotypes portrayed by popular media.