Is friendship truly the greatest gift of life? This week, Our Body Politic guest host and acclaimed radio journalist Celeste Headlee interviews psychologist, educator and author of the forthcoming book Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make– and Keep– Friends, Dr. Marisa Franco, who shares insights on the mental and physical benefits of social interactions and community building and how in times of loneliness, people are prone to inadvertently sabotage these critical bonds. Then, Headlee speaks with award-winning journalist and TV critic Eric Deggans about how the legacy of racism and exclusion and its continuation in fantastical mega-franchises like Star Wars serves to threaten any future fandoms, as newer generations are increasingly diverse.
Celeste Headlee:
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Celeste Headlee:
This is Our Body Politic I'm Celeste Headlee sitting in for Farai Chideya. Strong adult friendships are hard to get and hard to keep once you have them. And over the course of the pandemic, many of these relationships have really been strained sometimes to the breaking point. Loneliness is on the rise and between social distancing measures and the increase of remote work, we are interacting less with our coworkers and also acquaintances at places like the post office or the grocery store. Even friends who live in the same city or town that we do who maybe live within a few miles of us sometimes feel like long-distance friends.
Celeste Headlee:
So since our close friendships actually keep us grounded and healthy and they play a major role in the battle against loneliness and social isolation, what can we do to keep these bonds intact? I sat down with Dr. Marisa Franco, psychologist, writer, and friendship expert. She's the author of the forthcoming book Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make–and Keep–Friends as an Adult. It comes out in September of this year. And I guess that means, Dr. Franco, the first thing I needed to say is congratulations.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Thank you so much.
Celeste Headlee:
Obviously, the isolation of COVID did a couple things. I think one of the first things it did was many people realized they weren't the introverts they thought they were. Have you found that as well that people have suddenly realized that they need social interaction?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Absolutely. We have this like misconception about introversion that you don't want any social interaction, but all of us need some, even the introverts amongst us. And I think we did find that out when things got really, really extreme and we weren't seeing anyone at all.
Celeste Headlee:
Yeah. So what other kind of changes have you seen in the relationships between people since say December of 2019?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. This is a good question, because I feel like the impact on social networks has been sort of split. Because the people that you feel closest to that you're really vulnerable with in times of crisis, they tend to bring us together because we're vulnerable and we feel like we really need people, and we're receiving support and we're giving support. And these are all things that tighten our relationships with that sort of most intimate circle.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
But once you get out of those intimate circles to our sort of more fringe friends, our companionate friends who we meet up to do things with, but we're not necessarily the most vulnerable with and who we sort of require I think that in person experience together to keep the relationship alive, because we're not used to like just sitting down and chatting so we really couldn't meet up during the pandemic. I think a lot of us feel like we've lost some of those friends that are the less intimate ones, but the ones that still feel really important to us.
Celeste Headlee:
You know, there's a lot of relationships that some social psychologists have pointed to that they refer to as weak-tie interactions, those casual waves to a neighbor across the street or asking your barista at the coffee shop about the weather, or your grocery store clerk. And the pandemic means that those weak-tie interactions weren't happening. All of those dozens of interactions that used to happen on our way to work or from work, or over the course of our daily lives. What impact might that have on people?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
A lot of things. I think we've increasingly been becoming a loose-tie culture. So a significant chunk of people, I think it's about 12% of us actually report having no friends. And so those loose ties, those acquaintances, those people that we bump into can sort of be all we have. And while quality connections, close connections are one of our strongest preventers against loneliness, that quantity still does something for us. Like having someone a chat with still does give us that sort of uptick and feelings of connectedness and that boost and mood.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
We also know that, for example, these weak-ties tend to give us opportunities more so than people that are in our stronger tie network. So when people are searching for jobs, weak-ties tend to be particularly important. And so I think we'll have less resources and opportunities as those weak-ties tend to shrink. And then lastly, those weak-ties can really expand our sense of identity. We tend to keep these weak-ties alive, particularly in our young 20s when we're looking to expand our sense of self, when we're still figuring out who we are and we sort of interact with people and they expose us to different things and that might resonate with us.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And that's how we come to figure out who we are. And so I think there's this experience that we've all had in this pandemic where we felt like we're kind of shrinking a little bit. We feel like sort of less of ourselves because all the people around us tend to bring out all the different sides of ourselves. And so we feel not just disconnected from other people, but also disconnected from who we are.
Celeste Headlee:
You know, I really think people underestimate the importance of these weak-ties. I don't think people realize what an impact waving to a neighbor across the street, that doesn't seem like that would make a big deal. I think perhaps people underestimate the impact all of that has, those casual interactions, as well as the more in depth ones on their well-being.
Celeste Headlee:
And I say that in light of some of the recent research, especially that WHO study that was a massive study showing that loneliness and social isolation leads to premature death, not is correlated with, but is an actual cause of shortening your life. How is that possible?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah, this is a great question. You know, we see from the research meta analyses, that loneliness is more toxic for us than a poor diet and lack of exercise, but there's so much more attention that's focused on those things. And this is sort of why loneliness really is toxic for us because if we look historically at the function of loneliness, it meant that we were separated from our tribe and unsafe.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And so because of that, loneliness puts us in a state of vigilance for social threats. It's not just the feeling, but it's a way of perceiving the world. The research actually finds that lonely people are more likely to perceive rejection when it's not there, just to be safe if you're in a threatening environment. Lonely people are more likely to dislike other people, to want to withdraw from other people. And loneliness gets under our skin and that when we're lonely, we experience more inflammation. Our immune systems are more compromised because we're in this sort of heightened state of anxiety and vigilance for so long.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Our sleep is poor because we're falling asleep, but we're also vigilant that someone might come for us because we're alone and we're isolated. And so I think for all of those reasons, unfortunately, loneliness really, really harms us both mentally and physically. And it it no longer makes sense in the environment we're in now. Just because we're isolated doesn't mean we're necessarily unsafe and under threat, but our body is reacting that same way.
Celeste Headlee:
I mean, it is incredible the research in this area that active friendships are better protection against stroke than medication, that your tissue heals faster when you have active friendships. The thing that strikes me as really dangerous here, especially in light of our current state is that we have millions of people who at this point have been socially isolated and may be in a state of loneliness.
Celeste Headlee:
We already had the highest rates of loneliness in 2019 before the pandemic. Which means as you say, they may also be more likely to perceive rejection. They may be more likely to see people as threats, to be in fear. And that makes it at a time when they really need those friendships, it makes it harder for them to build new bonds and make new friendships. What's a person to do?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
If you're thinking things like, "Nobody really likes me. They're just hanging out with me to be nice. I didn't hear back from them so they're rejecting me. I won't actually enjoy hanging out with people. I just want to withdraw from people." We don't always recognize that as part of loneliness, but those are sort of quintessential thoughts that you might have when your lonely brain is activated. And research on loneliness has actually found that some of the best interventions for lonely people are actually about changing those maladaptive thoughts.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Those interventions have been even more effective than interventions that focus on getting people to interact with other people. And so I think when we're in a state of loneliness, we need to remember hope and optimism. One of the biggest tips that I share with people to make friends is to assume that other people like you. It's the opposite of what we assume when we're lonely that other people are going to reject us. And the reason that this works is because of something called the acceptance prophecy, which is researchers have sort of found that when you tell people that they'll be accepted, they become open, engaged, friendlier, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
When we think we'll be rejected, we become closed off, we become withdrawn, we reject other people and don't even realize it and then they reject us in turn. And so I think it's about maintaining that sense that, "Oh, there are people that want to connect with me. There are people that like me." A friend whose mom helped her make friends said something like, "She always told me that everybody wants to talk to you, they're just waiting for you to initiate." And I think that's a sort of mindset that can really help us initiate new connections and make friends.
Celeste Headlee:
Be even more specific here because there's been some interesting research showing that is our own self-consciousness that prevents us from noticing that other people are enjoying our company. People like us more than we think they do and that they enjoy our conversation, but we're so caught up in going, "Oh my God, what was that face they just made? Oh my God, was what I just said funny? Did I say something racist?"
Celeste Headlee:
We're so caught up in our own thoughts. These must be the maladaptive thoughts you're talking about, but they occur not even before the conversation to prevent us from reaching out, but while we're talking to other people, how do we stop that freight train?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah, that's a great question. And Celeste, I'm very impressed by your knowledge of the research. I think you're referencing a study on the liking gap where researchers have found that we tend to underestimate how much people like us and the more self-critical we are, the more we underestimate how much people like us. So you may think your self-critical thoughts are telling you the truth when they're actually distorting the truth even more deeply.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
I have two suggestions for people that really struggle with this self-consciousness. The first thing is you don't have to suppress that self-consciousness. You can acknowledge the part of you that's self-conscious and just build like another self that is open and optimistic and hopeful. Because I think when we try to suppress our emotions and our anxiety, they tend to bubble up even more. And so saying, "There's a part of me that's really afraid people don't like me and there's a part of me that's really afraid that I said something really awkward and people are judging me, but there's another part of me that believes that maybe they're not. And then there's another part of me that can have hope in this situation. So I'm just going to lean into that part, even when that heckler part is still there."
Dr. Marisa Franco:
The other thing that I would say is that when we get self-conscious, we are focusing on ourselves. When we connect well with people, we are focusing on them. And so that's why self-consciousness can really get in the way of connection and something that I tell people is the best way to belong is to make other people belong. So initiate with someone. Say welcome, I'm so glad you're here to someone else. Ask them questions about themself because inevitably not only will that make you less self-conscious, but when you focus on connecting with them, they are going to want to connect with you.
Celeste Headlee:
That's psychologist Dr. Marisa Franco on how we can better navigate our friendships during the pandemic she's author of the forthcoming book, Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make–and Keep–Friends as an Adult.
Celeste Headlee:
Coming up next, more with Dr. Marisa Franco on the crucial work of nurturing our adult friendships during times of isolation. And also how we think about ourselves affects our ability to show up as friends. Plus a conversation on how mega sci-fi fandoms like Star Wars has fans leaning into racial hate and racism online as explained by a journalist and NPR TV critic Eric Deggans. That's on Our Body Politic.
Celeste Headlee:
This is Our Body Politic. I'm Celeste Headlee sitting in for Farai Chideya. If you're just tuning in, we've been talking about maintaining and even reassessing our friendships over the course of the pandemic. And with us is Dr. Marisa Franco psychologist, friendship expert, and a professor at the University of Maryland. Let's hear more of that conversation.
Celeste Headlee:
So let me bring up another thing that might make it more difficult for people to make friends right now and that is our political situation. We are at record levels of people saying that they don't want to interact with others who are members of another political party.
Celeste Headlee:
I mean, partisanship is so high that I read one report that said that in some cases we're more likely to make assumptions about other people based on their politics than their race, which to me is incredible. A, have you seen this getting in the way of people's relationships, making new friends and then how do you get over this fear that because somebody voted for another candidate it means you have nothing in common?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. Whoo. When people ask me this question, I'm like, "Oh man, this is maybe the hardest question that I get." I know from the research on unsuccessful intergroup relationships that we tend to do. One thing that really helps us connect across differences and it's something called habitual open-mindedness, which basically means that you allow people to be a blank slate. You don't let their identities or their affiliations give you preconceptions about who they are as a person. So just reminding yourself, let me try to go into this interaction with habitual open-mindedness I think can be really, really important.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And then the other thing is that we know that commonality leads to connection. I think sometimes we might extrapolate someone's political affiliation to assume that there's no commonality at all when that's not necessarily the case. And so I think engaging with people and figuring out what you do have in common and the research that actually finds that if you engage with someone just human to human first and have a conversation and then find out their identity later, you're a lot more likely to connect with them than if the identity is the first thing that you know about them, and then you're closed often withdrawing.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
So I think just connecting first, building that rapport first before you even start talking about anything political is really important to connect across differences.
Celeste Headlee:
And what advice would you give to someone who told you, "I've cut off ties with my family, the politics they support is racist or it's sexist or whatever, I'm estranged"?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
I would, oh gosh, this is such a hard question because I don't feel like there's a one size fits all answer. And I feel like it's about you developing self-awareness for yourself. Because you know, for me, I was a professor at an institution and I was experiencing a lot of racism and I had a friend who was going through the same thing and I grew up in New York City, but he grew up in Germany as being Black and German.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And so I wasn't used to people giving me blatant remarks that were racist and he was. And so he could stay in his environment and be okay, but I knew for myself that wasn't okay for me. And that's I think what I concluded from that experience, that there's some of us who have the capacity based on our personalities, who we are, where we're at in a current time who really have the capacity to be on the front lines engaging with people that might have prejudices that might stereotype them, and have that patience and that tolerance to be able to work with you.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
But you may not be in a place where you have that capacity for yourself, and then you can contribute to this because in other ways that are more behind the scenes in a place that feels safe for you. And so, fundamentally, I think it's just about discerning who you are. What are your strengths here? What can you tolerate? What ways do you want to contribute to flattening some of the inequities and the prejudices that you want to exist? Do you want to be at the front lines or do you want to approach this in some other way? And that's okay. And it's just about understanding who you are so you know how you could best approach the situation.
Celeste Headlee:
So this leads me to this idea of when you know that a friend is a net negative in your life. We've seen data that shows that about 30 years ago, a third of adults reported that they had 10 or more close friends. Now only 13% say that. And over the course of the pandemic, if there seems to have been a rise in the culling of friends.
Celeste Headlee:
In other words, people intentionally allowing friendships to die or stepping away from a friend. What do you make of this data? Is this an indicator that people are being more thoughtful about the people in their lives or is this kind of a warning sign?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
I think it's a warning sign. The reason being that the most common reason that we lose friends isn't because it was active and intentional, it's just because we've lost touch. And so that leads me to interpret our decrease in friendship is not about us being more discerning, but us just becoming more lonely and losing friends, even though we may not want to lose friends.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And we've seen this being a trend for the past few decades. Our friendship networks have been shrinking more and more. We've become lonelier and lonelier. I think there's different societal reasons for why this is going on, but I think people are feeling lonelier now than they ever have. And in fact, I think it's harder to make friends now than it has been in human history.
Celeste Headlee:
Which means don't let go of those friendships once you have them kind of, unless there's a really good reason.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
I think so. Yeah. I mean, I'm of two minds. In some ways it's normal to shed friendships. Every seven years, we shed half of our friends. But in other ways I wish that we could just see and understand just how important our friendships are to us. Because I think when we're busy and we have so many things going on, it tends to be the first thing that goes to the bottom of our list.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
It tends to be the first thing that we deprioritize for work and for our family lives, because we've been fed this cultural message that friends are trivial and friends are extra and they're not something that we need. When as human beings throughout the entire history of our species, we've needed an entire community to feel whole and that's no different now.
Celeste Headlee:
One of the big questions I think is why we don't have more social interactions. I mean, if you look at the research and how beneficial just a conversation about a game or the weather. Just even a 10-minute conversation has such a positive impact on our physiology and our emotional health and our mental health.
Celeste Headlee:
You know, there's one study that shows having a 10-minute conversation actually improves your performance on a whole bunch of cognitive tests. Like it even makes our brains work better. So if there's all these positive rewards to it, why do we keep rejecting phone calls and sending back a text that says what's up?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah, this is a great question. And the truth is that when it comes to predicting how we'll benefit from social interaction, we tend to be really poor in our predictions. Research by Nicholas Epley finds that people tend to assume that conversation will be less beneficial, that they won't enjoy it as much as they actually do. That people will be more likely to reject them than they actually will. This is what we see across the board.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Research on vulnerability. We tend to assume people will judge us more than they actually will. Research on sharing affection with people, we tend to assume people will think it's awkward when they actually really, really like it. And so we have this negativity bias where we're attuned to the negative, and it happens in our social connections where we will sort of assume that, "That won't be fun, I won't enjoy it." But then after we do, it's always better than we think it is. And so I guess we have this sort of glitch in our system where our predictive process isn't actually attuned to the reality, which is that we thrive when feeling socially connected.
Celeste Headlee:
That seems to be a glitch in the system. It's a blip in our evolution like that's not helpful.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. I feel like our evolution's like, "I'm going to keep you alive in this moment, but I'm not really talking about your long-term longevity." Like you just need to reproduce so I'm going to get you to survive till then.
Celeste Headlee:
You're listening to Our Body Politic. I'm Celeste Headlee. I'm sitting in for Farai Chideya. And we're talking with Dr. Marisa Franco, a psychologist and an expert in friendship. She's the author of the forthcoming book Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make–and Keep–Friends as an Adult. I remember my grandmother used to say, "Celeste, if you want good friends, then be a good friend first." Is there truth to that sort of age-old wisdom?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Absolutely, and I'm going to tell you why, Celeste. Your grandma didn't know the psychology research, maybe she did. I don't know your grandma.
Celeste Headlee:
She did not.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Okay. So there's this theory that I really like, it's called risk regulation theory and basically it argues that when determining how much to invest in people, we gauge our likelihood of being rejected. If it feels very likely that we'll be rejected if we don't invest in them. If it feels unlikely that we'll be rejected, we do invest in them. And so what does that mean? The people that are friendly, the people that are being the good friend, they're telling everyone around them, "I won't reject you if you try to invest in me because here I am trying to interact with you, trying to smile when I see you, trying to welcome you, try to engage you in conversation."
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And what I'm doing in doing that is regulating your risks of rejection. I'm telling you that you won't be rejected and that's what pulls other people to want to be friends with us. That's why I said earlier, if you want to belong, help other people belong. Because then what you do, you're regulating their risks of rejection in their eyes so that they can then invest more in a relationship with you.
Celeste Headlee:
That requires a switch of people's paradigms though. That requires us to go into these conversations worried less about what we're going to say and more about what we want to hear from the other person.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
It definitely does. It definitely does. And I think writing my book on how to make friends, it's just made me focus a lot less on myself and a lot more on other people. And in some ways a lot of the things that we do to connect with people, they benefit our mental health and well-being. We do have an internal system that's working for us to connect and that connection can feel really good. It can improve our mental health and well-being. Giving affection to other people improves our mental health and well-being.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
So I think once you focus more on showing love towards other people than just how much love are people showing to me, it's actually going to feel really good for you.
Celeste Headlee:
So since you brought up your book, let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you've discovered in here. And I was interested to see that you talked quite a bit about attachment theory. I mean, attachment theory is very broad, but a lot of people might know it because it's a lot of times how we view the relationship between a child and its caregiver. But how does attachment theory relate to the way that we make friends?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
So our attachment style is basically our template for our interactions. It's how we fill in the gaps in the ambiguities of our interactions. Our interactions, our friendships are all about ambiguity. Someone didn't answer your text, you don't know if it's because they hate you or because they're busy. Someone said something to you, you don't know how to interpret the tone. Did they mean to be mean or were they just sort of joking. Someone accidentally bumps into you, were they being violent or are they just clumsy?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And so if you have a secure attachment, you do things like giving people the benefit of the doubt. Assuming that they like, you're able to take in and receive other people's love and to give other people's love because your internal template is that, "Hey, people love me, people value me." And so all of those ambiguous cues that we receive in our friendships, you're able to be optimistic. And that like a lot of the things we've talked about today becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
When you assume you're going to be accepted, it makes you more pleasant and friendly, and then you are accepted. When you assume you're going to be rejected, it makes you more closed off and withdrawn, and then you are rejected. And so that's how our internal psychology, how we interpret these ambiguous events tends to have concrete effects on how we behave and how we actually connect.
Celeste Headlee:
I have to assume, Dr. Franco, that all of the advice you're giving about doing internal work and changing the way you approach others may not be welcome for some people. And I say this because research shows that more than four out of five people say a past relationship has been ruined because of poor communication, but fewer than one in five say it was their fault.
Celeste Headlee:
So I mean you do the math. People don't tend to think they were the ones that fell down on the job. And yet here you are saying the best way to make new friends and improve your relationships is to do this internal work. How does this message go over?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Well, I think it's very empowering actually, because here you are going into the world feeling like "Everybody's just rejecting me. I'm not in control of this. Everybody's just mean to me. And if I'm not involved, if I'm not a variable here, then there's nothing that I can do about it. The world is just going to continue to be cruel towards me." But when you understand yourself, which is I think what my book fundamentally pushes people to do to reconcile with who they are, then you realize, "Oh, I am not duped. Like there's ways that I can show up differently in the world that will actually lead to something different in my life, that will actually give me hope that will empower me to actually connect with people."
Dr. Marisa Franco:
So in that way even though it feels painful to be like, "Dang, I've been doing this thing wrong." Honestly, every single chapter, I talk about how I've been doing this thing wrong and the research has checked me so I'm right here with you. But now I know how to do things better and now I feel more connected to people than I ever have. Now I feel like there's more intimacy in my friendships than there's ever been. To be able to access that reward, to be able to have hope that things can get better, that requires you to acknowledge your own role in the issue. So just think about the rewards on the other side, not just the painful moment when you're like, "Oh crap, I've screwed up."
Celeste Headlee:
So tell me about an aha moment. In all the research that you did for this book, what was a tidbit that you dug up where you were like, "Oh, blow my mind"?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Celeste, this may not be an aha for everybody, but I was a quintessential conflict avoider in my friendships. I thought that people would abandon me if I brought up issues and problems. It's not normalized to talk through conflict and friends like it is with romantic partners, and so we don't often have this template for it. And then I read a study that found that open empathic conflict actually is related to deeper intimacy in all of our relationships than I realized.
Celeste Headlee:
All of them?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Really all different types of relationships. Yeah. And so what I realized in that moment was, "Oh, I'm actually harming my friendships by not bringing up conflict. This is actually me sabotaging my friendships because when I don't, I'll withdraw. When I don't, I'm not fully authentic with my friend." And so it limits our ability to truly and deeply connect with each other.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And so after reading that study I realized, "I actually have to start bringing up issues and trust that this is actually a way for us to become closer." And I think that has made my friendships feel so much better because we have these issues and we can just solve them. They don't have to be longstanding issues in our friendship that we just habituate to forever for the decades in which we know each other.
Celeste Headlee:
So you tried it out?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yes, I have tried it out and you know what, Celeste? It's hard and this is why I think I had this misconception. I was conflating bringing up conflict with attacking people. And those two things are not the same thing. If you learn anything about communication, it's not that you brought up problems that might have made people abandon you. It's typically how you bring them up. And so it wasn't just central for me to learn that I needed to bring them up, but also to understand how to bring them up and to say, "I'm bringing up this issue because I love you. And I want us to work this out and I don't want anything to get between us. And you know, I've feeling hurt, been feeling hurt because of this, but I also want to hear what's going on for you that might have contributed to this issue." What's a way for us to solve this so that we both feel okay about this problem?"
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Like using that sort of joining language and bringing up conflict in that empathic way has ended up bringing us a lot closer. And also another tip that I learned, I interviewed a guy named Jeff Simpson and he said that, "Good communicators when other people are escalating, they deescalate." I got into a conversation with my friend where she's like, "You're being kind of sensitive." And I was like, "You know what? This actually is a wound for me and I want to bring you into to why this is a wound for me." And so trying to deescalate, it's really hard. It's really hard.
Celeste Headlee:
And it's really hard for you and you're the expert. I mean, I know that you would not have written this book if you didn't have concerns about the state of relationships and friendships and communication, but is there anything that gives you hope?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
I feel like writing this book has given me a ton of hope because the world is actually a lot safer than we think. I will conclude that from reading all of the research. People are judging you less than you think. People appreciate your vulnerability more than you think. People receive your love more deeply than you think. And so there's all this ways that I think writing this book has made the world feel so much safer for me.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And I think if we don't remember that it's easy to take one negative experience that we've had and generalize it and say, Everybody's going to judge me." Because we tune into that one time when someone judged us and ignore all the times when people have accepted us, and people have loved us. And so now I'm a lot more intentional about savoring those positive moments that we often let just pass us by in favor of attending to the negative and to say, "Wow, like that was a moment where they showed appreciation. Let me stop and actually take that in. Let me let their love for me actually hit my sense of myself. Let me actually savor that and not let it pass me by."
Celeste Headlee:
That's Dr. Marisa Franco, psychologist and friendship expert. She teaches at the University of Maryland and she's also the author of the forthcoming book Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make–and Keep–Friends as an Adult. It comes out in September of 2022. You can pre-order the book now online and pre-orders are super important for authors. Dr. Marisa Franco, thank you so much.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Absolutely. It was my pleasure.
Celeste Headlee:
Coming up next award-winning journalist and TV critic Eric Deggans on group threat theory and why some Star Wars fans might turn to racism and bullying when actors of color join the cast. You're listening to Our Body Politic.
Celeste Headlee:
This is Our Body Politic I'm Celeste Headlee sitting in for Farai Chideya. Star Wars is a behemoth in the arena of American pop culture and science fiction. Lucas Films has built one of the strongest and most loyal fan bases in the world, but fandoms can offer both fear support and brutal criticism. And sometimes their feedback is fueled by hate. For decades, the humans in the Star Wars movies were almost entirely white, but in 2015, Lucas Films committed to casting women and people of color in lead roles. And almost immediately, those actors became the targets of virulent racism and online bullying.
Celeste Headlee:
We've heard complaints from John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, and most recently Moses Ingram who plays Reva Sevander in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi. I came across an article published by Eric Deggans, award-winning journalist and NPR's first full-time TV critic. He's also author of the book Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation. And in his article, Deggans suggests that the sociological concept group threat theory could explain these repeating patterns of hate.
Celeste Headlee:
Eric Deggans joins us as a special guest to explain more about this theory and also how its toxicity is on full display in some of the Star Wars mega fandom. Good to have you, Eric.
Eric Deggans:
Hey, thanks for having me. Number one, thank you for such a great introduction. That is awesome. You make me sound so much cooler than I am.
Celeste Headlee:
Oh, you're super cool.
Eric Deggans:
And I love this idea of highfalutin, social science terms married with talking about Star Wars. That is my jam. That is my sweet spot.
Celeste Headlee:
Well, you know, look, if we're going to nerd out, we might as well nerd out all the way. On that note, let's start with group threat theory. It's an interesting paradigm in which to understand Star Wars fans. So let's talk about what group threat theory is.
Eric Deggans:
Yeah. You know, to sort of completely bastardize this and any social scientist will probably throw a book at my head for this simplified explanation, but basically group threat theory, one of the things that it says is that a group that is used to being the majority of a larger group when it sees a smaller group gain power within that structure, it feels threatened and sort of reacts negatively to that.
Eric Deggans:
One of the examples that caught my attention was I saw a survey indicating that a huge number of Republican voters in particular thought it was a negative consequence for America to reach a point where white people were not the majority in the American population. The date keeps moving closer and closer to us. Demographers think it might be as soon as 2044 where we reach a point where white people are not the dominant percentage of people in America.
Eric Deggans:
You know, group threat theory explains a lot of the hysteria about immigration, crime, danger in American cities. A lot of the hysteria about gay people frankly and transgender people. It's all about people who are used to dominating a group feeling alienated and threatened when distinct sectors of that group start to grow in power.
Celeste Headlee:
So I'm going to try and boil it down to a sentence, which is the larger the size of a minority group, the more threatened the majority feels by them. And this is a pretty old theory dating back decades to the 1950s at least. But it makes a lot of sense, especially as you've connected it to Star Wars. And I say that because it hasn't been that long since Star Wars stopped being an almost entirely white universe.
Eric Deggans:
Right. You had aliens and you had white people. It was like-
Celeste Headlee:
Lando Calrissian.
Eric Deggans:
Lando Calrissian, right. I got in this back and forth with somebody online and he was like, "Well, you know, there's Lando Calrissian and James Earl Jones." And I'm like, "You know, James Earl Jones was voicing a white character?"
Celeste Headlee:
Yeah. His face never appeared.
Eric Deggans:
Voicing a white character, which is sort of the ultimate embodiment of taking what you want from a person of color and yet not letting that character be a person of color. Pop culture is a proxy for all of these cultural struggles that we're going through. That's why I'm so compelled and I love being a pop culture critic, being a TV critic because you can look at how fandom reacts to the attempt to diversify a storied franchise like Star Wars.
Eric Deggans:
It's a proxy for how Disney has tried to position itself for a multicultural future and the way in which all the fans of its storied products, which were soft and rooted in white culture how they're reacting to that and rejecting that and feeling more alienated from the company because of that. So if you really want to know or understand why conservatives are demonizing Disney now, and the attempt of franchises like Star Wars to make characters of color, have more agency and more importance inside their narratives, the group threat theory explains a lot.
Celeste Headlee:
I want to ask you about Disney's response, Lucas Films' response. What did you make of that? Because as soon as Moses Ingram from the series Obi-Wan Kenobi, for example, revealed that she was the target of a lot of hatred and bullying. There was responses both from the stars of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the production companies. Was it enough?
Eric Deggans:
No, but what is interesting is that this is a long dynamic with a long tail. Not only have we had other non-white stars like John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran talk about the racism that they experienced from fans when their characters joined the Star Wars lexicon, but this reveals the dynamic of how Hollywood executives in big Hollywood institutions deal with the racism of fans. And if you reach all the way back to even before when John Boyega and Kelly joined, you can see first there's a denial that there's much of a problem with racism.
Eric Deggans:
Then you can see the onus shifts to the actors of color to bring forth these arguments because the white executives and performers that they're surrounded by don't see what's going on, they're oblivious to it and in some ways may not want to see it. So then they have to kind of reveal these very personal and demeaning and embarrassing interactions just to show that there's something going on.
Eric Deggans:
Then the institutions try to deal with it behind the scenes without talking about it publicly because, frankly, they want to have their cake in eat too. They want to try and solve the problem, but they don't want to run the risk of alienating a bunch of fans who may sympathize with some of the ideas that are being expressed by these people. And then eventually it gets so bad that they just have to talk about it openly and deal with it. And as somebody who's covered television since 1997, this is just how it works.
Celeste Headlee:
Why are we still going through this? I mean, if you think about it, the first interracial kiss in the fantasy world or the science fiction world was 1968 before I was born on Star Trek. And Star Trek was they also had an Asian American actor in addition to a Black woman, and we have had other Star Trek series Discovery. You had a Black woman in the lead. Why are we still here?
Eric Deggans:
Yeah. But number one, Star Trek from its very inception was always about being cognizant about reflecting diversity issues in its casting and in the stories that it told.
Celeste Headlee:
So it's a different fandom?
Eric Deggans:
Well, different franchise. It's a franchise where talking about diversity and inclusion, even if they didn't use those words at the time was essential to its mission. You know, Gene Roddenberry envisioned a more perfect future where we had gotten over racism. So for him, it was important to have non-white people on the bridge. Its fans didn't have to get used to a new message, it was always that message. Star Trek had problems with sexism. Star Trek had problems with actually giving its characters of color agency. You know, I respect the actors and the characters who embodied Sulu and Uhura.
Eric Deggans:
But on one level, you had a woman who was a secretary and a switchboard operator and a guy who was driving the car. So can we get to the point where these characters of color have real agency? And by the time we get to Discovery, the lead character is a Black female. She eventually becomes captain of the main star ship. That's a very different station than being the person who hails the federation and sends messages to people. It's an evolution.
Eric Deggans:
One of the things that's always been tough for people of color who are fans of science fiction is that we have so often been asked to consume and support products that suggest a future where we don't exist. Star Wars takes place in a galaxy far, far away with all of this technology that's so far ahead of what we can do now. And there is one Black person in the first three films that even he is sort of a tertiary character, right?
Celeste Headlee:
Yep.
Eric Deggans:
So even way over there in a much more advanced society, Black people don't count for much.
Celeste Headlee:
And we're not in charge. So we see really similar stories coming out of lots of franchises. We see this, as you mentioned in Star Trek, but we saw the same thing with Hunger Games when they made one of the characters a Black girl, a lot of fans freaked out. We saw this with Harry Potter. We saw this with Ghostbusters when the actual people who created the original Ghostbusters decided to make a new movie with women and male fans freaked out.
Celeste Headlee:
Is there something specific about fantasy and science fiction that lends itself towards racist fan bases or would the same thing happen if they had suddenly introduced a Black character, a leading Black character to say Friends or Seinfeld?
Eric Deggans:
Well, I mean, I think the same thing would happen just because we live in a racist culture to start with, but I would also say-
Celeste Headlee:
What?
Eric Deggans:
Yeah, I know. Again, I'm telling you something that will not surprise you. But beyond that, we just have a long history in sci-fi and fantasy of having those worlds be very white-centered. I mean, again, why did Game of Thrones have so few characters of color in it? Again, it's a completely fantasy environment, yet-
Celeste Headlee:
I thought the same thing about Lord of the Rings.
Eric Deggans:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Celeste Headlee:
There's no Black hobbits? Really?
Eric Deggans:
But at least with Lord of the Rings and I'm not justifying it, but Lord of the Rings was based on a book that's really old. Okay, so maybe you might want to make the argument that when Tolkien wrote those books, he was envisioning white characters. Okay, maybe you can make that argument, but we're talking about Game of Thrones, which is a contemporary created show that set in a fantasy world.
Eric Deggans:
So there is no reason for why there are not significant Black characters in Game of Thrones other than the legacy of racism and exclusion in fantasy worlds that the shows' creators were following consciously or unconsciously a world that felt appropriate to the fans. And that's what we're talking about, shifting the perception of what fans think of as appropriate or comfortable.
Celeste Headlee:
In all the push to get better representation in media, which is great and healthy because representation matters. It might be actually triggering group theory. So what in your mind, could the industry be doing better to not just throw Black actors and Brown actors into these films and TV shows and say, "Good luck." How could they actually turn this representation into social change?
Eric Deggans:
Well, I think the first thing you have to do is you have to talk about it. One of the things that bummed me out about the Moses Ingram situation from Obi-Wan Kenobi, that's what my column was about. One of the most disheartening things about her story was that she had told I think a British newspaper that Lucas Films had come to her before the show debuted and said, "Look, this is going to happen so be ready for it." They didn't say that publicly.
Eric Deggans:
Making this public makes all the difference. For some reason, even people who are white supremacists do not want to be called racist. Like we have successfully demonized the term racism that even people who admit that they think white culture is better than other cultures don't want to be called this awful thing, that's a racist.
Celeste Headlee:
And don't believe they are.
Eric Deggans:
Well, yeah.
Celeste Headlee:
David Duke says he's not racist, right?
Eric Deggans:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because in their twisted mind, they're just recognizing reality. But so putting the conversation on the table publicly, I think can diffuse some of it because people don't want to be seen as racist. Once the institution is saying, "This kind of behavior is racist and reprehensible and we see it all the time, and it's just time to talk about why this is terrible." But rather than waiting for it to happen and then trying to soothe the target of the hate, let's have the Harrison Fords', let's have the George Lucas', let's have all the people who are respected by these fans step forward in advance and talk about this stuff and say, "Hey, this isn't cool. We've seen it happen. We have a feeling that's going to happen again."
Eric Deggans:
And let's talk about why the franchise is so much better because of what we're doing. And let's talk about our very deliberate efforts to diversify. You know, one of the things that entertainment platforms are skittish about is talking about intentionality and diversity. They want the audience to think that this is something that just happens naturally. So that, again, the people who are spook by group threat theory don't suddenly feel like this big corporation is eliminating them. The great replacement theory, that's just another way of stating group threat theory, but you can't constantly say it shouldn't matter because it does matter.
Eric Deggans:
It's mattered for 400 years. It's not going to suddenly stop mattering now. So let's talk about the intentionality of casting, featuring Diego Luna in Andor, of giving Moses Ingram this incredible part as the Third Sister. Disney is doing this because they know it's the key to the future of the company. And so let's make sure that fans know that they're getting something out of this. This is not a threat to them.
Celeste Headlee:
Before I let you go, I just want to get your blessing to remain a fan of Star Wars and Star Trek. I mean, I thought Nichelle Nichols was the greatest ever. I had the hugest crush on Billy D. Williams playing Lando Calrissian. I mean, that's okay, right?
Eric Deggans:
Yeah.
Celeste Headlee:
I don't have to feel guilty.
Eric Deggans:
Of course. I mean, it's hard for me to watch some of those old things because the cultural appropriation of Star Wars always slaps me in the face every time I watch it. That's something that I kind of have to get over every time somebody pulls out a lightsaber and strikes a stance that I know they copped from The Seventh Samurai or from another classic Asian martial arts film.
Celeste Headlee:
And yet, Moses Ingram is incredible in that role.
Eric Deggans:
Yeah. I mean, what's sad is a lot of people are trying to make the case that she's not a great actress. It's always a process of trying to strip away the justifications that people try to use for the reflexive attitudes that they have. The fact is like Star Wars has had a lot of clunky acting, but that hasn't stopped us from falling in love with everybody from Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford.
Eric Deggans:
But somehow it's beyond the pale to say that Moses Ingram has something special about her and that character's really interesting. It may not be everything you want right now, but give her some time. It's just constantly a process of reminding people that equity is complex. And we have to constantly think and rethink why we're reacting to things, what equity really looks like and how we can really make it a reality when it comes to these mega franchises.
Celeste Headlee:
That's journalists and TV critic Eric Deggans. You can find his work at NPR, of course, but he also makes regular appearances on MSNBC and NBC News. Eric, as always, I could probably talk to you for a lot longer. I really appreciate your time.
Eric Deggans:
I know. I just want to geek out on all the cool lightsaber battles in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Celeste Headlee:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm today’s host, Celeste Headlee, and Farai Chideya is the executive producer.Our Co-executive producer is Jonathan Blakely. Bianca Martin is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister and Traci Caldwell are our bookers and producers. Emily J. Daly, Teresa Carey, and Steve Lack are our producers. Natyna [NAH-tina] Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers.
Celeste Headlee:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced with the help of Lauren Schild and engineered by Mike Goehler [GAY-lur] and Archie Moore.
Celeste Headlee:
This program is produced with support from the Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.