Tool Detail
Representation & Power
Crenshaw's intersectional lens.
Map character identities, agency, stereotypes, and power dynamics.
Scene N/A|Full €12
What This Tool Measures
Maps how the script treats its characters’ intersecting identities: who gets agency and interiority, which stereotypes appear (and whether they are subverted), how power flows between characters, and what patterns hold across the whole cast.
Methodology
- Identify each major character’s intersecting identities, marking stated versus inferred.
- Score agency (drives plot, makes choices, has an arc) against service to another character’s story.
- Rate narrative treatment: screen time, interiority access, humanization.
- Name specific stereotypes and whether the script plays them straight or subverts them.
- Trace power dynamics between characters and Crenshaw-typed intersectional moments.
Key Terms
- Intersectionality
- Crenshaw’s insight that identities compound: a character’s situation as, say, an older working-class woman is not the sum of three separate categories but its own position.
- Agency
- Whether the story happens because of a character’s choices — as opposed to a character who exists mainly to enable someone else’s story.
- Interiority
- Access to a character’s inner life. A character can have many scenes and still be treated as a device rather than a person.
- Othering
- Framing a character primarily as different or alien, seen from outside rather than inhabited.
- Subverted stereotype
- A trope the script deliberately sets up and then undercuts — a strength, not a flaw.