Who Gets the Opportunity to Fail?

The other day, I saw this video by Jamaal Burkmar wherein he charts the career trajectories of Margot Robbie and Lupita N’yongo.

Both Robbie and N’yongo had their breakout movies in 2013: Robbie with The Wolf of Wall Street and N’yongo with 12 years a Slave for which she won an Oscar. Both actress are incredibly talented, beautiful, and powerful on the screen. 

In the video, Burkmar talks about the number of film each actress was offered after 2013. The most interesting thing he says is that Robbie had multiple unsuccessful and underperforming movies after 2013, yet she kept getting roles to the point that she has now built producing power. She has off-screen credits along with her on-screen ones. By contrast, N’yongo, immediately following her Oscar performance was offered mostly secondary or side roles and voice acting, or roles as enslaved people.

This brings me to a rather interesting point when talking about success and failure.

Often when we speak of systemic inequalities and discrimination we ask who gets to succeed. But an equally critical question is who gets to fail. Burkmar calls this failing upwards. “Why does she [Robbie] get to fail upwards while Lupita isn’t really getting a shot?” he asks in the video.

Who is allowed to fail and get a do-over? Who gets to fail and be given a second, third, fourth, or a seventh chance? In effect, who’s allowed to fail and not be considered a failure. As we see in the case of Robbie, the institution stood behind her even when she delivered lackluster movies. Chances were taken on her to the point that she eventually landed Barbie and created a credible producing power. 

N’yongo not only didn’t get a chance to succeed, she didn’t even get a chance to fail. The color of her skin, her non-Western heritage had already marked her asunlikely to succeed or a potential failure even before she was afforded a chance to fail. She was declared a failure preemptively, thus robbing her of any chance at failure, and more importantly at success. 

This seems to have a parallel in the publishing industry as well. Marginalized authors are often not given a first chance, and when they do get a chance, they are judged more harshly than their privileged counterparts. Furthermore, they are not allowed to fail. 

A popular author from a privileged community could have a series of low to mid performing books but the publishing industry AND the readers will stand by them. The industry will keep taking a chance on them, over and over again, because they know people will keep thronging behind them despite it.

Marginalized authors don’t get this privilege. They don’t get this benefit of the doubt, the chance to fail with grace and reemerge. 

As audiences, readers, consumers, we can make the shift. The next time you don’t like a book by a marginalized author, show us grace. Support us in our failures, despite our failures, because the alternative to letting us fail is creating a world that has no space for a variety of stories told differently. 

Allow us the opportunity to fail so we can create a world where both Robbie and N’yongo get an equal chance to succeed and an equal grace in failure.