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I can’t wait until we stop using “relatability” as a metric for a work’s quality. Most of the time, the audience being catered to is white, straight, cis, etc. The gatekeeping around “relatability” is exhausting because no one asks, “relatable to who?”
I’m a queer Black woman. I’ve never fully related to media in my *life*, and yet somehow I have managed to not only consume and enjoy media, but also to create it. Why is it others cannot be expected to do the same?
This manifests in gatekeeping, when marginalized creators + their works are not given the space/resources to succeed because someone, somewhere, has decided that while their work has merit, it is ultimately not palatable to a privileged audience—and leaves them to fail
“Relatability” gives you two options: either toil in obscurity or adapt. Find a way to shape your experience, your *identity*, into a form that gatekeepers find appealing. Privileged creators don’t have to experience this. I wish no one had to experience it. It’s dehumanizing.
“Relatability” is damning from audiences as well. Sometimes privileged audiences refuse to engage with marginalized stories + media because they assume they “can’t relate to” people with different identities. Spoiler alert: you can. Because marginalized people are *human beings*
Anyway, relatability is ultimately meaningless because no one can relate to every experience. Relatability usually centralizes already privileged audiences. Using it as a metric of a works worth narrows the scope of possible stories + new voices to tell those stories
