The Importance of Representation in Hollywood
On September 20th, 1976 a new sitcom premiered on prime-time CBS. Called The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it focused around titular actress Mary Tyler Moore (who had previously co-starred on the Dick Van Dyke Show) as a single, 30-something woman who moves to the city looking to reinvent herself. A premise that today, as the show celebrates its forty-sixth birthday, sounds predictable and tired. Then, however, it was something revolutionary: a prime-time sitcom fully centered around a career-driven woman and devoid entirely of “housewife” character tropes that were commonplace throughout television in the sixties. Suddenly, broadcast television was projecting an entirely new kind of perspective: that of a well-rounded, ambitious woman with interests and goals beyond domestic life. In fact, that same fall heralded the premieres of three other shows all with similar premises, none of which made it beyond the first season. (The New York Times noted this shift in broadcast entertainment with the headline “Out of the Kitchen, Ladies”). Over the course of its seven year run, The Mary Tyler Moore Show shattered both glass ceilings and industry records, claiming an overall total of 29 Emmys, and would be remembered as one of the best-written sitcoms in the history of American television.
Much of the social impact of the show can be attributed to circumstances off camera. The premiere of the show came hand-in-hand with the rise of the “Women’s Liberation” movement of second-wave feminism. Pressing social issues integral to the Women’s Lib movement—equal pay, birth control, children, marriage—were often confronted through plot lines in the show. Additionally, the show made huge strides for women in the industry off-screen. CBS became the first major network to appoint a female broadcast executive during the show’s second season. By 1973, a third of The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s writing team was female, the highest proportion ever at the time.
The social impact of the show is undeniable, as it also broke ground for sitcoms centered primarily around women and even led to more well-rounded female characters in all genres of television. The Mary Tyler Moore Show is one of the earliest examples of the importance of media representation. The entertainment industry has been a long-standing force in American pop culture, giving television writers a unique power to dictate our social dialogue. Hollywood has a particular responsibility to increase visibility and representation of all people in the media. American society is not the same as it was in the 1970s—I really do believe, even in just the last 30 years, we have made admirable progress for historically oppressed minorities in the US. Yet somehow, television today often fails to reflect this progress.
Everyone deserves to find representation in mainstream media, to connect and empathize with characters on screen.
Under-representation in the media is by no means consolidated to any specific minority group. At the 2016 Academy Awards, every single actor nominated in the top four categories was white, prompting the #oscarssowhite movement as many prominent black or minority actors boycotted the awards. Furthermore, out of the highest-grossing films of 2015, 5 percent of speaking roles were played by black actors. This crisis of representation was highlighted again throughout the 2016 Emmy awards. The night honored a diverse group of actors, writers and directors. Rami Malek became the first ever Egyptian-American to win Best Actor, and the first non-white actor to win since 1998. VEEP, a show based around Julia Louis Dreyfus as the first female president of the United States, and Game of Thrones, which boasts a diverse ensemble cast with powerful and complex female characters, both took home major awards. While the winning casts reflected the undeniable progress in Hollywood since the 20th century, their acceptances speeches left little doubt that there is still work to be done. Jeffrey Tambor, the lead of acclaimed series Transparent, lamented the lack of opportunity for transgender actors in Hollywood. (Tambor is a cis male who plays a transgender woman, for which he won Best Actor in a Comedy Series). Tatiana Malsya took home best actress in a drama for Orphan Black, in which she plays over a dozen different main characters, thanked her writing team for allowing her to finally work on a show “that puts women at the center”. Lastly, Alan Yang—head writer for Netflix’s Master of None—called out the industry for its historically poor and offensive portrayal of Asian-American characters.
Social rights activists have worked tirelessly to make countless strides for minorities, women, and lgbtq peoples since The Mary Tyler Moore Show premiered in 1970. Yet somehow, our entertainment industry continues to reflect many of the biases and inequalities of that era. Everyone deserves to find representation in mainstream media, to connect and empathize with characters on screen, and Hollywood has a responsibility to bring people who have long been marginalized by society into the mainstream. The television industry needs to take advantage of its opportunity to bring positive change to the lives of millions of people around America regardless of their gender, race, age, or sexual identity.