Sharing the Love: A Round of Applause for Shonda Rhimes and Kerry Washington
John Tintori
We love that Shonda Rhimes is changing our language about changing film - advocating for more voices and visions on screens of all sizes is NORMALIZING the industry to the realities of its audiences.
"You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe. And your tribe can be any kind of person, any one you identify with, anyone who feels like you, who feels like home, who feels like truth. You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe, see your people, someone like you out there, existing. So that you know on your darkest day that when you run (metaphorically or physically RUN), there is somewhere, someone, to run TO. Your tribe is waiting for you...
... The images you see on television matter. They tell you about the world. They tell you who you are. What the world is like. They shape you. We all know this. There have been studies."
And we're gaga for Kerry Washington's call for inclusivity as a resistance to "othering."
"Having your story told as a woman, as a person of color, as a lesbian, or as a trans person, or as any member of any disenfranchised community - is sadly often still a radical idea. There is so much power in storytelling and there is enormous power in inclusive storytelling, in inclusive representations... We need more LGBT representation in the media. We need more LGBT characters and more LGBT storytelling. We need more diverse LGBT representation... And this is big: we need more employment of LGBT people in front of and behind the camera."
Read Shonda Rhimes' Human Rights Campaign Speech here, and watch Kerry Washington deliver her powerful call to cooperative action right here: