Is anyone actually saying that art needs to be educational?
Well, to my mind, these things are related. Reminds me of all the talk that Rockwell shouldn’t have got his Oscar because his Billboards... character is racist. It’s easy to blur the lines and begin to argue only ‘good’ or ‘positive’ portrayals of all sorts of things should be allowed, which then does make art educational, because we are implicitly telling the viewer, ‘See, everyone is represented equally, women are strong and independent, etc, etc, this is how we like the world to be.’
This is actually happening, the younger generation will listen to Eminem for the first time or watch
Pretty Woman and ask in earnest (usually on Twitter), ‘Oh my gosh, how is this ALLOWED? It’s negative about women! Call the police!’
And in terms of bearing in mind that attitudes can be shaped by art, that doesn't become an issue if you have a wide diversity of representation. The problem is when someone wants to put a stereotype in their film (even if it is a stereotype that is true of some actual people) and doesn't reflect on whether that same stereotype has already appeared in a ton of other films.
Consider a subgroup to which I belong: teachers. Teachers in film range from self-sacrificing saints to evil power-hungry abusers. But what if 95% of teachers in films were portrayed as abusive or child molesters? I would argue that if a writer/director was writing a film with yet another teacher character like that, it might be good to reflect on why that character is being written that way. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum, and I think that it is a responsibility of a creator to consider context. Is the character you are creating true to your story, or is it just an easy crutch to get a predictable reaction out of an audience?
I’ve just had to remind myself you haven’t seen
Breaking Bad. Talk about blowing up teacher stereotypes with a grenade. It’s a serious point, by the way: sometimes something so good comes out that it affects stereotypes about the said thing for a very long time.
And this is especially the case if you are not a member of the demographic you are portraying and don't have any real understanding of the impact of the stereotypes you are perpetuating.
This, of course, is mostly incontestable. But I still feel it places an unnecessary restriction on art. I think it’s come up already at some point but take Lionel Shriver. She has no kids. I was at a seminar a few years back where someone with two kids marvelled at how accurate Shriver’s take on the struggles of motherhood is. The same applies to the Ramsay film. But Shriver is technically perpetuating some very uncomfortable and tired stereotypes about having kids, especially the classic one: you have a child and your life is over. I think it can happen regardless of authorial intent. And people around me IRL, all of them with kids, have said,
Oh, she’ll make people not want to have kids. I think it can, actually, for once, but is that Ramsay or Shriver’s fault? I do think if you think like that in advance, you won’t get anywhere.
Besides, it’s very hard to judge what causes which reaction. I watched
Dante’s Peak when I was about 11 with my father and soon after we went to Germany. When he was driving around mountains, I remember thinking one of them would turn out to be a volcano and erupt. Not even necessarily being scared, just bringing the film into real life in a totally inappropriate way.
Anyway, there’s no denying that if a director can do away with stereotypes, the film will quite possibly be all the better for it.
Quite a few films that came out in the last few years feel like they were designed to shatter stereotypes, such as
The Heat... we discussed this in the feminism thread. I think people should focus on making a good piece of art, full stop. Often the concern to not perpetuate the wrong stereotypes bleeds into the narrative, the characters, bleeds into everything, and you end up with a half-baked thing that doesn’t say anything except,
Oh, we took all the possible repercussions into consideration before we even got started.