Further Representation Research

Representation Returns

Representation is such a wide scope category that it needed a second posting. However, this time I want to investigate representation in a more specific way. Instead of looking at the film's industry representation as a whole, I want to delve into how this would apply to my project. That being said, I want to research who makes up homeless people. Leandro and my goals are to know the group we are representing well. We want to see how our film challenges or represents the group.

Luckily we did some minor research during one of our brain storming sessions (aka a couple of google searches). We looked up the race/ ethnicity that makes up most of homeless people. We saw that white males were most popular. This is when Leandro and I got the idea to add some Hispanic elements into the film. Of course our actor Leandro is a white male, however, we know that the film industry is already crowded with white male actors. So we decided to have the character speak some spanglish in the film opening and we also incorporate some Spanish snacks and even a Puerto Rican Flag (luckily Leandro is also Puerto Rican). We think this was a smart idea because it allows us to stay true to the group we are represented but also stepping out a little.

Additionally, we want our film opening to take place in South Florida. This place (also where we live) is made up of many latinos. So having the actor be of Spanish origin just made sense.

Common Puerto Rican Snack we
featured in the car.

Phone accessory that has the Puerto Rican
flag on it. (Placed on back of phone
while making phone calls.

When coming up with the idea for our film we also considered having a family live in a car instead of just one person. Although this may have been a unique concept, we thought it would be difficult to find another committed actor. Luckily the majority of homeless people are on their own. According to  The 2018 Point in Time Count , individual men make up 67% of the homeless population. This means that our film opener would represent the majority in this category.

From rampages.us. Shows demographics of homeless people.

Obviously, we did decide to have a male actor. This was more because Leandro is a better actor than me, however, again is true to most homeless people. The majority of homeless people are males. So call it coincidence or planned but it works.

Overall I would say that Leandro and I don't mind going against some of the film's industry stereotypes. We want to take a different approach and show homeless people in a different light. However, we also want to ensure that our film is representative of homeless people as a whole. We don't want to further our film too much from the norm. By creating a hispanic white male, we believe we are reaching this happy medium.

Sources:

“Demographic Data Project: Gender and Individual Homelessness.” National Alliance to End Homelessness, endhomelessness.org/demographic-data-project-gender-and-individual-homelessness/.

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Health Care for Homeless People. “Who Are the Homeless?” Homelessness, Health, and Human Needs., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Jan. 1988, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218239/.

stephanieps21. Univ 112 Stephanie Saavedra, 29 Aug. 2015, rampages.us/stephanieps21/2015/08/29/why-the-homeless-need-stories/.