The Everyone Else Project

The predominant controlling factor in media ingested in North American - or indeed much of western societal - culture is that of the cishet white male. Cishet is the shortened form of 'cisgender heterosexual' and refers to folks who live as the gender they were born (cisgender) and whose sexual identity is straight. Statistically speaking, cishet white men are the creative or decision-making force behind the majority of films and television we watch, books we read, podcasts we listen to, and popular music we hear. Are there other voices in these fields? Of course! But in the din of media culture, the loudest voices are the ones who hold the majority and those voices are cishet white male ones.

The Everyone Else Project is an idea that sprung from this realization. Without dismissing cishet white men and their achievements, we want to make space to hear the voices of, well, everyone else.

From February 2020 to April 2020 inclusive, myself and my partners Greg (himself a cishet white male) and Sylvia, will take in only that media created and/or controlled by folks who are not cishet white men. Through this project we aim to discover a broader selection of directors, producers, writers, novelists, journalists, musicians, and hosts within the ranks of what defines everyone else: Indigenous, LGBTQIA2S, POC, women, women of colour, disabled... every other voice possible in culture. This blog will serve as our place for reviews, for recommendations, for being transparent with what we choose and how those selections are made, and for sharing with any of you who wish also to have a ready list of other voices at your fingertips.

There is nothing wrong with cishet white men. But there is something wrong with a society that listens to them above and before anyone else and that gives them an overwhelming majority of a platform on any medium. We need to hear from everyone.

Some Guidelines

When starting this project we discussed at length what it would mean, what we hope to achieve, and how to go about it. Here are some guidelines we came up with.

1. We aren't here to bash white men. We're here simply to seek out all the voices we may not be hearing from often enough.
2. When considering which films and television would 'qualify' we will examine the key creator roles: producer, director, writer. Just having someone queer as the star, for example, isn't quite good enough. We want to see who is controlling the story. We will be very transparent about who those roles are filled by.
3. We will make recommendations that may be different from things we've had time to read or watch: we will be compiling lists of everything we find and what we actually ingest/observe we'll review but we won't leave out anything else we find.
4. The hashtag for this project on all social media (especially Twitter and Instagram) will be #EveryoneElseProject and we encourage everyone to join in.
5. At the end of the three months, the goal will be to have widened our understanding of and exposure to all other voices enough that we can head back into the world with a much clearer balance in our media. To naturally take in more other voices going forward and balance out the predominance of cishet white men.

1. Directed by: Leslye Headland, Jamie Babbit, and Natasha Lyonne
2. Created by: Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler
3. Written by: Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler, Allison Silverman, Jocelyn Bjoh, Flora Birnbaum, and Cirocco Dunlap
4. Executive Produced by: Lilly Burns, Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler, and Allison Silverman
5. Series Music by: Joe Wong