Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

Hello everyone!

Before I jump into it, I would like to say a few words about myself. I live in Budapest, Hungary. In recent years the city has became quite popular with some directors, which really sparked my interest in filmmaking. I am especially interested in cinematography. I am a sociology student (like Bong Joon-ho once was) and I currently work on my thesis.

For this work I would like to ask for some help. I am conducting a research on how movies can teach a society stereotypes. The main focus of the research is Hungary (a really homogeneous society, in terms of race and ethnicity). However, I just focusing on Hungary would make little sense so I am also interested in the habits and knowledge of the US audiences.

For this reason I am asking members who are from the US (citizens and residents alike) to please help me by filling out my survey. It takes about 5 minutes to complete.

You can find it here:

https://forms.gle/mMwKxjy7KgbLp2wH8

Thank you so much for your help!

Re: Survey-do movies teach stereotypes?
 

Hey everyone, just a note that this person checked with us about this beforehand and was very considerate about the rules. :)

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

Just answering the question prompted, forms aside, I think the answer is obviously: yes. I think they also reflect stereotypes. They feed into each other, the way any generalized knowledge does.

I don't think they teach stereotypes to any greater degree than the audience.



Since we are getting a little political here, i think the root issue is the prejudices that people are trained to have implicitly. I'd rather blame the school system and "the citizens" than cinema for this kind of stuff...but there's an inherent issue with blaming in general.



But yes, film does have a way of perpetuating conventions. The one that I hate so much is this myth that there are really "heroes" and "villains". Get it together hollywood! Real life is so much more interesting and complicated in that regard.

Thank you for all the feedback! The whole point of study is to see if film as a form of media has an effect on peoples' knowledge of stereotypes. Also, this survey is really just for comparison, the main focus is on Hungary, where the population is about 98% White, and people see most African-Americans or African people throug movies and series.

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

This is tough, because films are both reflector and director, mirror and engine. A causes B and B causes A. It's hard to point to a film uniquely causing or substantially influencing "stereotype X." This is a knotty problem.

I don't think movies teach stereotypes. I think the current social trend is that people are tending to shift their responsibilities onto others (and other things). There was a time in the mid 20th century and earlier when taking personal responsibility was important...Today it seems skirting responsibility is a valued skill and placing the blame the norm.

If movies do teach stereotypes then video games teach violence. I don't see how one can be true, the other not. Either people can discern their own truths or they can't.


*I didn't complete your online survey, but if you want to use anything I said here, feel free to do so.

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

I don't think movies teach stereotypes as much as they use the ones that are already there. You can't do much teaching on anything in a 90 minute movie but, when you want to bring in a new plot element or character and you want it to be instantly recognizable, you use a common stereotype. The list of stereotypes in the movie catalog is very long, they have a lot of use in movies and anybody who's seen more than a dozen movies is subconsciously aware of them. TV does even more with it since their time frame is even shorter.

I filled one of these here months ago by a Hungarian guy who had a similar survey, but I won't stereotype all Magyar for being inquisitive :)


To answer your question, it's usually the bad stereotypes that are featured. It's unbelievable how .0001% can project the 99%. Movies (or video) are probably the most influential as opposed to the other arts, so I guess it's the most authoritarian.

One thing I learned from traveling was that people referenced movies as if it were fact, despite some of them prefacing with "I know it's just a movie, but...". I guess its easier than capturing the zeitgeist, which takes a lot of work.
Actually, I spent 2 weeks in Budapest and wouldn't attempt to define the people or culture, since I think the internet has made things more conformist since people are reading/watching/listening to the same things, but the internet also gives a place to hopefully find a community you might fit in with.. I loved the movie, "The Fifth Seal" but didn't see any stereotypes with that one.. If you know great movies like those, please let me/us know.


Hope you stick around..

Some films absolutely teach stereotypes, in the sense that some people rely on media/art (films/books/TV) as their way of encountering and learning about certain demographics.

For an example, if you looked at 20 films from the 80s/90s that featured gay male characters, you'd hit a LOT of effeminate mannerisms. Are there effeminate gay men? Absolutely. But are most or all gay men like that? Not in my experience. But a person who has not been around many out gay people is probably going to have this association in their head. One of my students recently confided to me that she had told a boy she liked him, but that he told her he liked another boy. She was confused by this because he doesn't "seem gay."

Stereotypes are often based in some kernel of truth, and the problem is that in film these tropes/stereotypes become a convenient shorthand. The use of stereotypes can orient you to a film's cast in mere moments (the uptight girl! The jock! The nerd! The gay guy! The angry feminist! The midwestern mom! The rigid ex-military teacher! etc), so it's not surprising that they are used so much.

Lindsay Ellis did an essay a short while ago about the history of transphobia in film. And she talks about how in Silence of the Lambs, the film actually takes time to clarify that most transgender people are not violent and that the killer himself may not actually be transgender, and yet the horror of a man torturing and murdering women in pursuit of a "female body" is the main thing people remember. (I myself totally did not remember the short disclaimer sequence). Transpeople are actually a pretty good example of a group where the portrayal in film is overwhelmingly negative and at best neutral in most films AND a demographic that, because of their statistical minority, many people do not have much personal experience with.

And I think that part of the problem is that the effect can be cumulative. So one film featuring member of XYZ demographic in a negative way can almost certainly be justified by its creators. But it becomes a problem when there are 100 movies featuring that demographic and 90% of them are negative. When most/all of the creators of that content do not belong to that group (ie straight people writing gay characters or write people writing non-white characters) it's even more important to take a critical eye.

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

I imagine they do "teach" certain stereotypes through exaggeration. There is a form of culture shock known as the Paris syndrome which travelers sometimes suffer from because the reality is different from their preconceptions. A good example of that is european vacation. The Griswalds all have these daydreams of what it's going to be like, and the juxtaposition is what drives the movie's humor.



The question is whether those preconceptions can come from movies, and I imagine that is the case in many instances.

I think that films feature and prolong existing stereotypes, oftentimes past the very time that those stereotypes have started to wane.


OTOH many folks are comfortable with stereotypes simply because they're so accustomed to them. In fact one could argue that movies would not be so popular if stereotypes weren't featured.

Overall, i feel this hits home in terms of being critical about the stereotypes that movies use. I don't really apply to any of the specific stereotypes you talk about here, but yeah sometimes i've been out talking to strangers, and they say "you are kinda like _______" where blank is that movie/tv reference, and of course i have done the same thing to other people.


In terms of gay people, i've found it extremely accurate, in terms of mental stereotyping (think along the lines "i bet that guy is gay" in your head) is when you hear a guy talk with a lisp. Where does that come from? Is that that just gay people conforming to the stereotype as style? Who knows...but it's definitely the case that a lot of guys who regularly like guys do not have lisps and are not "effeminate" at all. Part of my post is pointing out that all conventions are somewhat artificial anyways: what you expect is what you get.

While it isn't the best film (ie too focused on the filmmaker, when I wanted more from the experts!), you might enjoy the documentary Do I Sound Gay?. My favorite sequence is when he interviews his "gayest sounding straight friend" and his "straightest sounding gay friend".

I think that stereotypes in general can create a "filter" where we then develop a kind of confirmation bias. For example, you might feel like lisping helps with your "gaydar", but there are probably a lot of people you don't think of as being gay because they lack certain indicators.

I also think it's good to acknowledge that films can help to refute stereotypes. In the romantic comedy 4th Man Out, the male lead is athletic and kind of a bro. The film focuses on him coming out as gay, and specifically how it impacts his relationship with his close male friend group. (Though, interestingly, the film can't help but showcase some pretty garish stereotypes in a sequence where the main character goes on a series of dates).

I don't know where the lisp comes from, but I've got a 100% prediction rate whenever I hear some guy speaking and think "that guy is definitely gay!"



Just the other day, my daughter was watching a youtube video of some guy who talks about interior design. He just sounded fabulous! So I asked if he's gay, and sure enough. Gayer than a British cigarette.

I'm not going to submit a response, but I would like to discuss the survey.


Demographically, I am a white male living in a suburb in a mid-sized American state, in the age range of 30-65, a college dropout and of spontaneous pantheist convictions that require no public obligations.


I try to watch a film every day, but on average, I probably manage in the 5-6 a week range. My main motivation is pleasant stimulation. My resources for films of interest involve a mix of word-of-mouth, articles and books, and forums such as this one. My methods of viewing are also inclusive of cinema, physical library and streaming, although in the pandemic period, streaming definitely dominated. It might suffice to say that the genres I prefer outnumber those that I do not. It's easier to single out "Family Musicals" for the latter and leave it at that. For expediency, it's also easier to just say that my favorite film and director are 2001 and Stanley Kubrick. The last film I watched was A Page of Madness in order to compare the 59 minute version with the restored 70 minute version.


I do think there are issues with minority representation in films which have seen improvements and misunderstandings in recent years. Speaking specifically of African-Americans, the exclusion of Black voices behind the camera - writers, directors, producers, executives - has historically assured that the subject was easily dismissed. The recent story about Ray Fisher and DC/WB is a sad reminder of a long-standing trend of Black talent being told how to commodify their "blackness" into a form that white audiences (and more frequently international audiences) prefer to consume. The Black talent that has resisted this commodification have found themselves marginalized from the business, usually with having an "angry" reputation. There's what's "black" as a sociological culture, and there's what's "black" as a mainstream entertainment fetish. The latter tends to, by necessity, reflect certain stereotypes which will not challenge the presumptions of the intended patrons. If someone believes that Black men are more prone to violence and criminality, then they might be more likely to think that Training Day is a better film than Malcolm X.


The problem with the word-association portion of the survey is that, I imagine given your focus, the results will only be helpful for those who are only familiar with Black people from film and media. Similar to what Takoma already mentioned about LGBT people, the best remedy against stereotypes would be familiarity with the community. Personally, I've known at least one Black person for each of these descripters that would apply, as many as those who would not. People are people. Are Black people more superstituous than the largely White Ghost Hunting community? I doubt it. More materialistic than the Dougs and Kayleighs eagerly fisting over their dollars for the latest phone or truck? Not likely. So I can't quite answer such questions. One question I can answer is that, no, I do not believe in ethnically congenital virtues. I do not believe that behavior is dictated by melanin any more than, say, blood type or zodiac sign. Turns out, it's the racists who are truly superstitious regarding their desperately chosen magic of genetic moral essence. Let's call it a "fluid".


The next page is a bit simpler to provide precise answers, but there's a couple that I want to focus on. "Blacks have more influence upon school desegregation plans than they ought to have." First, the language of "ought to have" is distasteful, just as later language about what Black people "deserve". Who's arbitrating these standards of entitlement? Beyond that, school desegregation in America has evolved into more relevant issues today, mostly concerning issues like tying property taxes to school funding (making the separation of school quality into a class, rather than race, distinction) and using charter school's civil rights laxity (a loophole of their intended experimental natue) to discriminate specific students frrom attending. But long answer short: No, Black people do not have an undue influence on current education policy. And, no, Black people have not received more money and/or respect than "they deserve". The more relevant question is why someone would assume that they would be undeserving, and if this can be found to be rooted in specific depictions in films or other media, then that's certainly worth exploring/correcting.

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

Who here is willing to say that they have personally been taught stereo types by films? Seems to me a lot of the responses are saying movies teach other people stereo types...So who wants to step up and claim their own belief in stereo types via movies?

While it wasn't the beginning of my extremely regrettable sense of homophobia when I was a pre-teen, I imagine that the portrayal of the lisping, extremely effeminate male hairdresser from San Fransisco in The Rock didn't help me any on that front either.

I seen The Rock many years ago but don't remember it well and don't remember the hairdresser at all...but why would that character contribute to your pre-teen fear of homosexuals?

Because it reinforced that stereotype for me.

There was no shortage of comedies when I was growing up in the 80's, where the punch line seemed to be based upon how frightening young black men were to white people. The "roll 'em up" moment in Vacation. The intimidating appearance of the Bernie Casey led Tri Lams at the conclusion of Revenge of the Nerds (complete with slap funk bass). Anthony Michael Hall eventually ingratiating himself to all the patrons of a black bar, who they initially wants to run away from, by smoking weed with them.



Had I had any personal experiences where I should have been led to be frightened of them? Don't think so. Was I told to be wary of black men by my family. Not that I can recall. At least not the ones who raised me. But I understood through these films that in certain parts of town, these were the sorts of people I didn't want to run into. It was treated almost as being common sense. A universal fear I should be made aware of.



Are these movies solely responsible? It's impossible to say, but you could probably argue there are other factors at play. But when I try and trace where any of those childhood prejudices came from, its the moments from these movies that first come to mind. Which has to count for something.


That said, I've always firmly believed what has always been the greater issue at work here, is less that I came in contact with negative stereotypes, but that there was such a staggering lack of positive representations to counteract them. This isn't to defend the use of negative stereotypes, only that their effects become extra insidious when all I am ever seeing of black people in film, is them being shrouded in menace.

The OP is quite broad, but the start of the survey is much more focused. People should be aware of this before they plunge into the survey. “The topic of my thesis is how movies might inform the audience about racial stereotypes and shapes their attitudes towards African-Americans.” emphasis added

I grew up in a very diverse community. My experiences with Black people were almost uniformly positive--they were my teachers, my neighbors, family friends, our school's police officer, and classmates. I have a Black uncle and several biracial cousins.

And yet, until I was lie 12-13, I had this idea (which totally came from TV/movies) that there were these OTHER Black people (and like, really specifically, men between the ages of like 18 and 40) who would do drive-by shootings and try to sell me drugs and would try to mug me or my family. When I would be walking down the street or walking home from the subway and a strange car would suddenly roll up on me or I would hear footsteps quickly approaching behind me, the fear I had was definitely the vision of the non-white gangster that I'd seen so many times in TV/movies. It was a phobia that had zero root in personal experiences, in fact that existed despite my own personal experiences. I tended to regard art (books/movies/TV) as a window into situations I just didn't know about. So if a school in a film/show wasn't like my school, my reaction was "Oh, their school must be like that" and not "Wait! That's not what school is like!".

So if these things happened that frightened you, you wouldn’t be frightened if it were a white person? I don’t see this as a “phobia”; rather a basic instinct to survive.

What most women are frightened of IMO is predatory men of all colors, including white.

I'm saying that the mental image I would have of the person before I saw who was driving the car or walking up behind me was always a typical "street thug" character from TV/movies. For lack of a better word, TV/movies provided me with a "face" to put on my fear response before I knew the nature of the threat (or if it even was a threat).

Once I hit about the age of 12-13, I discovered that actually men of all ages and races had no hesitations about cat-calling or propositioning me from their cars. But the anxiety I developed around that came from actual experiences, and not what I was seeing on film/TV.

The thing is that the hairdresser's sexual preference isn't mentioned in the movie. In fact, most "gay" characters in movies never mention their sexual preference. Beverly hills cop has Serge, and the guy working the fruit section of the restaurant, but never once is their sexuality mentioned, even though they're "obvious".


I think the secret can be found in Some like it hot. Two heterosexual guys have to dress up as women and act like women. It's not that movies teach that stereotype, but rather women do. Effeminate gay men act like over-the-top women, and that can be hysterical. How funny would the birdcage have been if it had been played straight? Would Mrs. Doubtfire have been funny if the roles had been reversed and Sally Fields had to pretend to be a man?



So why aren't there movies of women acting like men? Yentl is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, but it's far from a comedy.

To be honest with you, I kind of just automatically envisioned you as being Black because of your avatar...



:o

Thanks for the reply Takoma. I always appreciate responses that come from someone's personal take.

For me, I never related to movies like other people here at MoFo seem to do. I don't have any movies than I love. I don't rewatch movies over and over. I don't escape into movies or take them too seriously. From my time here at MoFo I get feeling a lot of MoFos do escape into movies and so literally view them very deeply. But I don't and that's why the idea that a movie would teach me a stereo type doesn't resonate (for me). I've tried to think of a stereotype I learned from a movie and I can't. That's not to say that movies haven't colored my viewpoint as all external input can color our own psyche.

If you want to think of me as the Sorceress, please carry on.

I like that image because it's how I imagine my students see me sometimes (I am very tall, they are . . . not).

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

It's an old, castigated term that used to refer to suspected communists, but in regard to stereotypes, movies seem to be the "Fellow Travelers". They didn't invent the stereotypes, nor do they teach anything, but in their short run-time, they use stereotypes all the time, for better OR worse, to identify a character without creating a time consuming plot line for the character. Having a viewing history of movies going all the way back to the beginning, I'd estimate that the stereotyping is less awful than it once was and somewhat more diverse, if that makes any sense. There are all sorts of stereotypes now, not just the racial ones of the past that the word generally suggests.

This would be a very long article, probably book length if I listed out all of the stereotypes I can think of, but we can take some comfort in the idea that there are not just a few stereotypes as there were 75 years ago. Having some for every race, ethnicity and gender means that none of them work as well as they did when we had just a few of them targeted on one group of people. It also suggests that movie makers realize that we all can become stereotypes when viewed from "the other side". None of that makes us a perfect species quite yet, but there is reason for optimism in the fact that we are here having this discussion.

Anybody who wants to dig back into the Bad Ole Days for 90 minutes doesn't need to go much further than to stream the 1930's movie Judge Priest, which is in PD and available on Youtube. It stars Will Rogers and Lincoln Perry, AKA Stepinfetchit. You can probably imagine, but most people are still surprised to see what was considered to be benign humor at that time. I can't imagine seeing anything like that in a theater today unless it was intended to be a lesson in the past. The thing about this one that amazes me is that Rogers was a "saint" at that time, Perry was a very well paid actor, but that both of them managed to make something like this and that it showed in theaters and later in TV presentations. They were actually personal friends off the set.

At least we've progressed a little bit since 1934.

Yeah that "street thug" stereotype is a pretty big one in the minds of americans, and there are a lot of people (some of them young black men) who like to talk tough and play into that stereotype as a defense mechanism. I don't really blame them considering that people can be very judgemental...also, if you do grow up in a rough neighborhood, there is this pressure not to show too much weakness.



i guess if we are blaming movies for these stereotypes, we should also blame the music industry, we should blame all media for crafting the fantasy worlds we live in. This is part of the reason why books are so interesting to me, at least when someone is reading they are creating the fantasy world as they go.

Same here. Mine started when I got my first job delivering newspapers. We delivered them on foot. I could not believe how many men in cars were blowing their horns & wolf whistling at me. They were going mental & this was every day. FGS, I was a child!

Gosh, I do. I need to escape into a movie, lose myself in it, take me someplace else. Whatever you want to call it. A respite from the stresses of life especially in the past 12 months or so.

I think that movies do teach things, especially to kids. Lots of teaching is indirect. Learning is the process of taking in information/stimulus and creating an internal logic or pattern based on that information. Movies teach us things like what romance looks like, or how "cool" kids act, etc. I constantly see my students mimicking behaviors from movies/TV, and I'm blanking, but the other day we were talking about something and one child literally said, "When you see it in movies it's always . . . "

I agree that most stereotypes don't originate with films. But if you parrot an idea enough, I do think that it can have the effect of teaching about a group of people, especially if the viewers have no "counter-programming" giving them different examples/representations.

It’s an odd topic. I think there’s a tendency in the post-modern world to ridicule films and to mock people who derive their sense of reality from them. As in, oh, you watched too much Miami Vice, he-he. But in my experience, a great many ‘conventions’ in popular culture are often reflected in reality; in fact, I often marvel at how true to life this or that ‘cliche’ is. I don’t think the particular trope being discussed has any reflection in reality, but I don’t see why learning from films needs to be seen as inherently bad.

We then get into which films, which is trickier, but I would honestly rather my children learnt about the world through films instead of, I don’t know, social media.

What concerns me is this new proselytising idea that everything in art needs to be educational to an extent and needs to bear in mind that ‘attitudes are shaped by it’, and all that palaver. I mean, if I want to make a film that shows people being not the way they necessarily should be, whatever that means, can I not do that without worrying about someone’s children getting the wrong idea? I feel like it’s a slippery slope of sorts to say that only the kind of attitudes we want to see people exhibit going forward should gain representation in film. That would take away so much from cinema to my mind.

Ha. I watched way too much of The Sopranos & now curse like a Jersey longshore man. :rolleyes:

Is anyone actually saying that art needs to be educational?

And in terms of bearing in mind that attitudes can be shaped by art, that doesn't become an issue if you have a wide diversity of representation. The problem is when someone wants to put a stereotype in their film (even if it is a stereotype that is true of some actual people) and doesn't reflect on whether that same stereotype has already appeared in a ton of other films.

Consider a subgroup to which I belong: teachers. Teachers in film range from self-sacrificing saints to evil power-hungry abusers. But what if 95% of teachers in films were portrayed as abusive or child molesters? I would argue that if a writer/director was writing a film with yet another teacher character like that, it might be good to reflect on why that character is being written that way. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum, and I think that it is a responsibility of a creator to consider context. Is the character you are creating true to your story, or is it just an easy crutch to get a predictable reaction out of an audience?

And this is especially the case if you are not a member of the demographic you are portraying and don't have any real understanding of the impact of the stereotypes you are perpetuating.

When I was younger I watched a lot of movies like Animal House and Stripes. I thought women were only good for sex. Then I got married and learned they can cook too.

Well, to my mind, these things are related. Reminds me of all the talk that Rockwell shouldn’t have got his Oscar because his Billboards... character is racist. It’s easy to blur the lines and begin to argue only ‘good’ or ‘positive’ portrayals of all sorts of things should be allowed, which then does make art educational, because we are implicitly telling the viewer, ‘See, everyone is represented equally, women are strong and independent, etc, etc, this is how we like the world to be.’

This is actually happening, the younger generation will listen to Eminem for the first time or watch Pretty Woman and ask in earnest (usually on Twitter), ‘Oh my gosh, how is this ALLOWED? It’s negative about women! Call the police!’

I’ve just had to remind myself you haven’t seen Breaking Bad. Talk about blowing up teacher stereotypes with a grenade. It’s a serious point, by the way: sometimes something so good comes out that it affects stereotypes about the said thing for a very long time.

This, of course, is mostly incontestable. But I still feel it places an unnecessary restriction on art. I think it’s come up already at some point but take Lionel Shriver. She has no kids. I was at a seminar a few years back where someone with two kids marvelled at how accurate Shriver’s take on the struggles of motherhood is. The same applies to the Ramsay film. But Shriver is technically perpetuating some very uncomfortable and tired stereotypes about having kids, especially the classic one: you have a child and your life is over. I think it can happen regardless of authorial intent. And people around me IRL, all of them with kids, have said, Oh, she’ll make people not want to have kids. I think it can, actually, for once, but is that Ramsay or Shriver’s fault? I do think if you think like that in advance, you won’t get anywhere.

Besides, it’s very hard to judge what causes which reaction. I watched Dante’s Peak when I was about 11 with my father and soon after we went to Germany. When he was driving around mountains, I remember thinking one of them would turn out to be a volcano and erupt. Not even necessarily being scared, just bringing the film into real life in a totally inappropriate way.

Anyway, there’s no denying that if a director can do away with stereotypes, the film will quite possibly be all the better for it.

Quite a few films that came out in the last few years feel like they were designed to shatter stereotypes, such as The Heat... we discussed this in the feminism thread. I think people should focus on making a good piece of art, full stop. Often the concern to not perpetuate the wrong stereotypes bleeds into the narrative, the characters, bleeds into everything, and you end up with a half-baked thing that doesn’t say anything except, Oh, we took all the possible repercussions into consideration before we even got started.

Heh, yeah; I never looked at Etch-A-Sketches the same way again after what Walter did with 'em on that show.



:D

In my scheme of cultural influences, I do think that movies have moved down the scale over the past 60 years or so, having previously taken some of the influence once had by radio, then themselves being eclipsed by broadcast TV and all of the subsequent media.

Prior to plague time, I went to a lot of movies in real theaters and, aside from occasional kid movies, most of the time people who actually went to movies were, suffice to say, not still in their formative years.

Additionally, there are so many people behind the scenes who want movies to make money, in part by not offending ticket buyers, and so much scrutiny, that stereotyping, in crude terms, just isn't profitable unless its done very carefully, so as to not hurt profitability. This is even more so in broadcast TV, which seems to have a diversity consultant in on every scene, but in the world of web-casting, it's still the wild west.

It would be an interesting thing to study, because I think that traditional media are far more careful than web based outsiders who can do whatever they want, have lower costs and attract an audience that's drawn to their stuff. The bile-filled content there is the drawing card to people who want that and who are put off by the comparatively tame stuff in movies, TV and even cable-only TV and see some sort of Jeffersonian liberty in being offensive. Stereotypes are fodder for uncritical brains, they are cheap and easy, but when they show up in a 40 million dollar movie, the investors get edgy.

I'm assuming that, when the script writers are in the room together, they have some sort of discussion that sounds like -

"We need a villain, we have to identify the villain by body language, clothing, behavior or whatever else, movie goers need to identify the villain in an instant and we have to steer clear of stereotypes unless it's really important to the plot line. It it's a stereotype, we can only have one in 90 minutes. We can't develop the character very much because the audience might humanize that character and we don't want them to feel bad when the cop shoots them, assuming that in this plot, the cop is the good guy."

It's a complicated minefield of a job writing scripts.

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

"But I still feel it places an unnecessary restriction on art."

It's worth noting that movies are partly art, but mostly investments, made by people who want a return on their investment and have their own idea about who they can and can not offend.

Response to skizzerflake: I think that script writing is way less complicated that the production itself...its a science of: "how do we create this crazy thing in reality?", then theres also post production...


One tv series I really love which I'm watching a third time is breaking bad: they were not getting rid of the hero/villain dynamic, they were transforming it. Two of the main characters (Jesse+walter) are both villains and heroes, the implication I guess is that heroism and villainy are one-in-the-same...

But art is "educational" in that meaning of the word no matter what. If you are only showing women are strong, that's what you are teaching. If you are only showing that women are hapless damsels in distress, that's what you are teaching.

I am often appalled by the portrayal of many demographics in older films. And frankly, racism or sexism or homophobia do devalue movies for me in terms of my enjoyment. I recently watched Soapdish and was pretty irritated by its blatantly homophobic and transphobic content.

Each generation thinks of itself as being more progressive and liberal than the last, and when the next generation calls us out, we're like "GASP! No! I'm the NOT RACIST ONE! I don't watch films with blackface!!". It's just a matter of standards changing. My reaction as a child/teen when first encountering things like blackface was being appalled and asking in earnest "How did people think this was okay?!".

Which, again, is why this is a question that exists in a weird intersection between the individual artist and the context in which they are working.

I'm not in favor of dictating what people do or don't put in their art. But I am in favor of having a critical eye toward why they made the choices they did.

I agree that reactionary writing--writing whose main goal is to work in opposition to tropes--can end up being as shallow as what it is countering. But I would also argue that many people who are using those tired stereotypes are not, themselves, actually trying to make a good piece of art. "Muscled white man in his 40s fighting foreigners who have kidnapped his love one" is a formula that puts butts in seats, and I doubt that the person who sat down to write the fifth Taken film had art on their minds.

Yeah, for sure, script writing is the easy part compared to the production details, but it's the thing that drives the production. Writers have to be cognizant of whether their scripts are filmable (if that's a word), probably have some cast members in mind and certainly have their financial backers in mind.

Nothing about making a movie is a pure effort in aesthetics, it's also a product that generates revenue for investors, influenced by marketing people who think they know what will sell and what might alienate movie goers. They also think about product tie-ins and sweat about which streaming service will pick it up after it leaves the theaters (assuming that we do get back in theaters someday).

I'd also bet that there's a lot of sweat hitting the floor in meeting rooms right now about what the new paradigm is "after". I, for one, am waiting to get back in the theater, but how that actually plays out, given Americans' increasing tendency toward isolation that seems to lurch between paranoia and denial, who knows. I'm thinking that the movie world will get some sort of re-boot comparable to before WW II and then after Pearl Harbor and then after the end of the war.

The beauty of film editing is that anything can be filmable or computer generated! With production i guess the challenge is the smoothness, "reliablility of actors" (kind of the same issue as "consent"), the money, etc.



But ya know, there's a reason that actual "snuff films" aren't much of a thing, they're out there, but that **** will probably never make it to theatres or a commercial streaming service...that one guy who made the video where he suffocated cats with a packing device and put in you tube got VERY famous though...

I don’t know. If I’m showing kids a video on how addicts shoot heroin, I’m not teaching them to use heroin. I’m likely trying to show them, in as objective a manner as possible, what that does to people. Requiem for a Dream is the obvious reference. But if I’m suddenly saying, oh, we have to show everyone in every video now, like everyone is holding hands and there are no gangs in this school, I am being aspirational. I’m kind of acting as if me saying that will bring that state of affairs into existence.

Again, I don’t know. I don’t know if every generation does and I’d be careful about assuming that. I don’t consider myself progressive and I’d be very careful to speak for a generation.

So am I! But choices are informed by so many things. One of my favourite films is American History X, and I am as fascinated as the director by how people, especially young men, end up in white supremacy movements. He is not promoting their actions but he is exploring how these people think.

I can’t really explain what I mean.

And yes, I completely agree. But my issue is with the kinds of people and films who ARE and probably dedicated their life to making a good piece of art being forced to have at least two main characters from underrepresented groups, or whatever the new standard is. I studied that sort of thing for years, yes, quite a few postmodern writers found it liberating to write a novel without using the letter ‘o’ or whatever it was, because that supposedly unlocks creativity, but that at least is a conscious experiment. I see no benefit in restricting the criteria to make a piece of art even further, that serves no one.

You said yourself that a director might not know how to represent different groups, they may have zero experience of Black people or gay people in their life, what are they supposed to do? Give up and not make the piece of art? Well, that’s discrimination, too. This is what’s scaring me about this and no one seems to acknowledge that: you can’t win either way.

Directors who, for whatever personal reasons, want to stay in their comfort zone are vilified and blocked from receiving awards and due recognition. I feel that Tenet is the weakest Nolan film not because of the concept, which I really liked, but because he felt pressured to use the kind of protagonist he didn’t feel comfortable with. Therefore, the thing lacked character.

Just out of curiosity, what would you describe yourself as?

Oh, God, do we want to get into that... I am socially conservative and politically libertarian.

Your intent in showing kids how to shoot heroin might be "I'm showing you what it does." But also . . . you just showed kids how to shoot heroin.

No one is arguing that representation of marginalized or historically oppressed groups needs to be uniformly positive. The argument is that film should to some degree reflect the range of any group. Moonlight is a great example. The film contains Black characters that align with some really common stereotypes: the mom who is a drug addict and doesn't take care of her child; a boy growing up without his father; gang-type activity; and so on. But the film also contains a complex Black protagonist. It has a complex supporting character in the form of Juan. This is not a uniformly positive portrayal of Black characters--far from it--but it is a complex and respectful one.

The problem is one of proportion. I think that there are a lot of aspirational films about straight, white people, frankly. About them being brave and manly and rescuing people in need. About them being a mess and then realizing they are beautiful and taking off their glasses and finding true love. Now, I don't think that aspirational films are a problem. But I do think it's a problem when you have a skewed representation where one demographic gets more aspirational representation and the other gets more stereotypical representation.

I don't want to get personally political, so I'll just say that these days most of the younger generation are okay with gay marriage, mixed-race marriage, legalizing marijuana. This marks them as more progressive than previous generations. I had a student recently who was questioning some gender identity stuff and was able to speak openly about it with their classmates. As a whole, generations become more progressive through almost the whole course of our country's history. Also see: women can vote! You can't be fired for being the wrong race/religion! People with disabilities are not just locked up in "homes"! It's not illegal to dress in "wrong gendered" clothing! Women serve on juries!

Can you imagine seeing a white actor in blackface performing a dialect-heavy stupid Black character (not in any meta way, just straight forward as a joke) and thinking it was okay? Not thinking "people will be offended I'm surprised they did this!". Can you imagine seeing that happen in a movie and you personally thinking it was appropriate?

But showing an antagonist or a character with negative attributes and digging into what makes them tick is vastly different from using a throw-away stereotype. Most "street thug" type characters don't even get names, much less a backstory.

The new standards are incredibly generous. They don't kick in until 2024. There are four standards, and you need to meet two of them. You can do this with on-screen representation (main character or supporting character); having diversity among your crew; have diversity in the studio; or generally provide opportunities for career experience in other aspects of the film's production.

If someone has zero experience writing a gay character, then why are they writing a gay character?

Also: they can still make the art! Not meeting the categories just means that you aren't eligible for Best Picture. You could still win in other categories, and frankly a lot of films that use these stereotypes aren't aiming for Best Picture Oscar wins anyway.

And if you don't know a lot about a group but for some reason feel the need to include a character from that group you could just, you know, do some research? Collaborate with someone from that group? There's a great book called Writing the Other that's all about this. Joe Lansdale is a straight white author who does a great job of writing non-white, non-straight characters with depth. He does his research and he writes them like people. Khadija Mbowe has some good videos around topics like this, and I really enjoy her conversational approach. You might like her video about "Color-blind vs Identity-Conscious Casting."

Acting like these very lenient standards are discrimination that is going to disenfranchise poor filmmakers seems like hyperbole and also is kind of a slap in the face of people in the film industry who have faced actual discrimination. 3/4 of the standards don't even involve the characters/actors in the film--they are about adding representation and diversity to the industry as a whole and the activity around the making of the film.

Except that they aren't. Unless their "comfort zone" means exclusively working with straight white people in front of and behind the camera.

He has said this? Where?

And what do you mean by "the kind of protagonist"? (I haven't seen Tenet and haven't read much about it).

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

Takoma can I ask you a question? If you could ban all movies from the past that had blackface from being shown to the public would you do it?

No, I would never want to ban any art, even that which is entirely antithetical to my ideas or morality/ethics.

But I think that there's a place that exists between banning and showing something uncritically. For example, I don't think it would be appropriate to show a film, especially to children, that featured a character in blackface without addressing that.

I can also acknowledge that there's a wide range of intentions and impacts between something like the propaganda-like blackface of Birth of a Nation and the seemingly well intentioned (but still kind of cringe) blackface of Swing Time.

For me there is definitely one film, and I’m sure there are others, but one film that stands out as so stereotypical of its depictions of gays and other ethnicities, that I truly found it insulting.

That movie was Baseketball. I get it was meant as a comedy but man, did that ever not sit right with me.

Other then that, if a character is portrayed as homophobic/sexist/transphobic, I take it as an indictment of that character, rather then the movie itself being that way. This isn’t necessarily a hard and true fact, but rather a case by case basis.
So stereotypes exist in films? Yes. Can we learn from them, while simultaneously holding them and ourselves, responsible? Absolutely.

That’s an unnatural but interesting take for me, and I’m not just saying that. I think I had this conversation in the context of Cabaret with @Iroquois in the Shoutbox.

I have always argued that art should be viewed aesthetically and that intent is separate from the end product, but I feel there is a limit to that. All the fanfiction obscenity and reading things into films where they weren’t intended (Death of the Author) has to stop somewhere. It is not the author’s responsibility, ultimately, what you feel when you’re exposed to art.

One of the points I was trying to make when I came into this thread originally was that if you think like that, i.e., Oh, God, I’m showing kids how to do heroin, you will never disengage enough to produce anything of abstract value. I feel like I have to qualify this statement but I don’t know how. It’s like directing a steamy sex scene and thinking, Oh, let’s not forget my grandma will watch that, I should bear that in mind and not have anyone say ‘****’. I am convinced that thinking in this way will have a detrimental impact on the product. You are throwing yourself out of the thing as a creator, breaking the spell, ruining your own immersion by doing that. And no one’s immersion matters more than the author’s.

I agree! But the answer is to make more complex films representing this demographic in the most nuanced ways possible, not infringing on anything any other demographic might want to great about itself, or flying bobcats on Mars, for that matter.

Just to say, firstly, that I appreciate that, as in, value it, and it’s one of the reasons I enjoy talking to you. I hope nothing I said felt personal to you, either.

No, I would not think that. I would think it was pathetic and disgraceful. But I think this is a far cry from what we are discussing and, frankly, a bit of a hyperbole.

See, this comes down to the whole idea of ‘Don’t do it if you can’t do it well.’ One I mostly agree with, at that. But the problem here is that if I’m an Asian woman wanting to write a novel where a white man falls in love with his white male best friend, that’s my business, why the hell wouldn’t I do that and, more importantly, who on Earth is to decide whether I’m qualified enough to try? I know a true story when someone lied to a publisher that a subplot in a novel was based on their relative’s lived experience to gain ‘legitimacy’ in the publisher’s eyes. I find that tragic.

You are, of course, totally right, but I feel it goes without saying we are discussing the bigger issue here, the Oscars are just an example. This issue spills out into everything in film and beyond. I would agree that Oscars are themselves not representative of most film consumers’ tastes, so who cares, right? But such representation standards are being implemented or demanded by activists across all mediums, including TV series, live TV and whatnot. People are forced to forego their preferences in content, recruitment, who they feel comfortable collaborating with (with TV presenters working together, chemistry is crucial) — where do we draw the line?

Sure, great book, know it well. And I would say rigorous research is what filmmakers and all creators should aim for at any rate. I will be sure to watch the video, thanks for flagging. Likely tomorrow, though, or, rather, after I wake up, as it’s 3.22 am chez moi.

Yes, it is, as I feel they are quite helpful in paring discussions down to their core. I’m sorry if you find that simplistic.

I would rather not get political, either. But I believe that, whatever we may think of these people’s choices, that is ultimately up to them.

Certain types of observant Muslims feel women are prohibited by their religion to mix with men and vice versa (yes, I am and they are interpreting the Shari'ah loosely, and I have a theology degree, so for the purposes of this discussion, let’s just call it ‘gender segregation’). Hence, such ‘standards’ do indeed put Muslim men at a disadvantage and make it harder for a Muslim man to make a film in peace, as the standards would require him to have females in the crew.

There is probably some kind of provision for that, but isn’t it all tiring, a bit like a never-ending admin-driven court case against someone who didn’t pay their parking ticket? I am not trying to dismantle your points but only emphasising that with all these standards, someone will end up at a disadvantage because this is inherently artificial.

It is just not natural to my mind to consider external stakes like this before you’ve even made the film.

Nolan hasn’t said this, no, but it had been a common criticism of his films pre-Tenet that his characters were usually straight white men with dead wives, and many interpreted Tenet as an attempt to rectify that. I believe someone here discussed this in the thread on feminism where you and I have spent many an evening. :)

P.S. Found one example among a few. Here:https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottme...h=3e6054d4287d Scott Mendelson is saying Tenet is Nolan’s version of a ‘comparatively diverse cast.’

No, but creators don't live in a bubble.

I agree that fixating on creating art that won't ruffle any feathers is not conducive to creativity. But I think there is a huge difference between thinking "A grandma might watch this, better not have any naked people in my story!" and taking a second to think critically about why you are throwing a stereotypical Black thug character into your movie.

That's just what I said. There should be a balance of aspirational and "realistic" films portraying people of all kinds. Who is being infringed upon?

It's not though! Something that was considered appropriate entertainment two generations ago (and borderline one generation ago and sort-of borderline . . . now) is something that you now say you'd find "pathetic and disgraceful". And you don't even consider yourself particularly progressive.

So it's not all that surprising that 18 year olds now look at entertainment that was created 40 years ago and find elements of it . . . pathetic and disgraceful. Frankly, those words sum up how I felt about the transphobic content of Soapdish.

You said that writers were being forced to write characters out of their comfort zone (ie people who know zero about gay people writing a gay character). And I was saying that if you know zero about a topic you should probably (1) not write about it or (2) change the part where you know zero about it.

Who are these poor creators being forced to work with *GASP* non-white people or *GASP* gay people or *GASP* women? Are there actual examples here, or just hypotheticals?

And these steps wouldn't be necessary if hiring practices were fair and unbiased, but they aren't. There was a study done a few years ago where people were given resumes and asked to rate them in terms of how fit for the job the person was, if they'd be willing to collaborate with them, and what they'd offer as an opening salary. The same resume, when paired with a female name and photo, was given a lower fitness rating, less willingness to collaborate, and a lower salary offer. So the person's qualifications miraculously changed based on what the viewer thought the applicant's gender was.

Hollywood is also notoriously full of nepotism, and people tend to hire friends and family. So it's not surprising that white people hire other white people and also their white children. And people often say "Well, people from those groups should just create their own narratives/shows/movies!". But it takes a foot in the door to do that.


Yikes! The most relevant part of the video starts around 8 minutes in. And one of the things I like about Khadija is that she admits that this is a complicated topic and there are not easy answers.

I just think that using the word "discrimination" to talk about people having to have a diverse crew on their movie is a questionable word to use when considering the relatively poor treatment of minority creators/actors/artists and characters historically in film.

Except that in a workplace, it's not appropriate. That cute little story about how during one of The Simpsons writers going through a divorce he didn't want women around isn't okay.

But that isn't true. There are many, MANY ways to meet those standards. They are written so (maybe too!) generously. Anyone falls under the "underrepresented" umbrella if they are female, POC, LGBTQ+, or a person with a disability. You could have an all-male crew and meet the diversity requirement. You could make an all-white movie with an all-white crew and still meet the requirement.

I would argue that there's also something inherently artificial about having only white writers, characters, and actors in films. We can pretend that the best people for the job get the job, but I would point to Sofia Coppola in The Godfather Part 3. It's already artificial.

The weight of the requirements doesn't fall on the creator alone. And, again, you don't have to think about any of this stuff when writing the film! Write a movie about 3 straight white best friends! But when you make the film, you make it at a studio that has ANY of those under-represented groups OR include those groups in your crew OR involve those groups in any other aspect of making/marketing the film.

So the main criticism in the review seems to be this: "Tenet is more concerned with staging comparatively generic action sequences than about making sure that those sequences matter in terms of story or character."

I'm not seeing the connection between the flaws of the film and the more diverse cast.

This seems reductive of the criticisms as I remember them. The fact that his character was a racist wasn't disqualifying, but rather that his character didn't have a convincing redemptive arc. Which is less Rockwell's fault than McDonagh's (he just wasn't very well written), but it definitely restricted the amount of depth he could provide to the character. And rather than Rockwell's win being embarassing for the fact that the character was a weakly redeemed racist, it was almost precisely the reason why he won in the first place, being the same kind of self-congratulatory sanctimony that led the Academy to applaud Green Book or Precious.

This is very relevant to the thread in that it represents a superficial stereotype of woke concern over race issues. In fact, that's the entire problem with the Three Billboards film. It has a condescending veneer towards small town white America with the standard (ie stereotypical) presumptions of their racial and sexual attitudes, and yet the film has, what?, three black faces in the whole film? Two of which have maybe 20 words between them? They're all cardboard representations, every character in the film. Even Pete Dinklage is just a prop. The entire film is as flat and phony as a billboard, a semaphore of social concern that doesn't really seem very concerned about its society outside of being a vehicle for asserting the filmmakers' alleged moral superiority. There is, at least, an equity to the distribution of stereotypes, but the film is one of the more cynically egregious exercises in manipulative stereotyping in recent memory. And the Oscars eat it up, because they like responding to virtue flash cards rather than humane substance. Although sometimes (Moonlight) their clock gets it right a couple of times.

Sorry for butting in!

I think the context is key. If you are showing something within the boundaries of fiction and, say, writing a female character, it is OK to make them strong or a damsel in distress. It's also OK to make a character of a disgusting, hateful woman who hurts everybody. It's not misogynist. Making a documentary or even fiction that says something like 'all women are whores' isn't good and might be counter-educational, though, but this has to be explicitly stated in a serious manner and made clear that the makers meant exactly that. I know this is slippery but I don't think we should get too far-fetched in vilifying art that contains elements we find discordant with our current beliefs. Especially in art made many years ago.
My reaction was "Okaaaay...?". Then again, I don't think I ever saw a blackface until I was like 16, and even then I couldn't really see anything wrong with that. You see, I was brought up in a homogeneous country where 99+% of people are white. I never met a dark-skinned person in real life until I was 22. I would have never guessed somebody might think a blackface is something wrong or should not be used. It's a cultural thing, too. I'm not dark-skinned and I don't live in a country with dark-skinned people. I do have a dark-skinned "neighbor" (few blocks away) right now but he's one of few dark-skinned people in my city. In other words, I can't react to blackface like Americans do, regardless of their skin color. It's just too distant an issue for me.

Plus as a non-native speaker of English, you gotta LEARN (yes, this is a separate thing to learn even if you speak the language at a very good level) how to talk so that you do not offend anybody. And I continuously meet Polish people who offend without meaning to simply because they don't know any better. You have to use "dark-skinned" instead of "black", "people with disabilities" instead of "disabled people" etc. The point is a non-native person who has not learned that yet might be offensive without meaning to be offensive, and recently everybody's got very touchy about that. It's OK to educate but don't be militant about it and give people the benefit of the doubt, especially when English is not their mother tongue. This is not a jab at you, just a general note. Also, ignorance does not have to be racism. The n-word in Poland is mostly associated with American rap music, so some uneducated people (especially children) might not know why it's wrong to say that. They would pretend to be American rappers and say that word without actually being racist. We gotta educate them, but nobody's doing that because, well, as I've said, dark-skinned people are too small a minority here to make a big issue out of it.

Maybe I'm at fault here because I'm skimming a considerable portion of this thread and perhaps took this out of context, but my general question would be:

Why can't people who know zero about gay people not write a gay character even if this gay character does not behave like most gay people you know?

After all, people are different and isn't assuming a gay person has to behave in a certain way, or a person like that cannot exist way worse? By the way, I'm not talking about factual errors, like writing a gay character who falls in love with a woman (then, they would be bi and not gay).

Maybe I'm apathetic and tuned out, but I don't really strongly react to any of the misrepresentation, or portrayal of wrong things in cinema. I'm not appalled. I do recognize some things are bad, but this is a 100% mental processing thing. I do not have any emotional reaction to it at all. And no physical reaction either. Maybe I'm just too asocial.

Uh, are you sure that's what the overall implication of Breaking Bad was?

Exactly! Thank you for butting in, that had always been my feeling. *shrug*

Apparently, the creator should feel guilty if the representation is not accurate. It’s an unbelievable mental load to place on people who due to their nature tend to be fragile in the first place. And I am aware it’s easy to say this is a huge generalisation, but all creators I’ve met (and I know many) are fragile people. If someone doesn’t like films with ‘poorly executed’ or insufficient representation, surely the reasonable thing is not to watch them?

@Takoma11, I am taking a leaf out of your book here as you told me in the feminism thread that this was one of the possible responses, and I do admit that’s what we end up doing when we don’t like the zeitgeist.

Don’t you find it sad that Viridiana, Last Tango in Paris, Basic Instinct, Antichrist, Salò..., A Clockwork Orange, heck, even Sophie’s Choice would never get made now? ‘‘‘‘Too controversial.’’’’

So am I, rewatching now for the umpteenth time and I agree with your sentiment. Wouldn’t call Jesse a ‘villain’, but totally see what you mean, they are both vindictive and flawed individuals in a more or less equal measure. Always thought the Jesse-Jesus reading was waaay too far-fetched.

I didn’t mean ‘disqualifying’ is such, but merely the sentiment that because the character is a racist, his portrayal cannot be commended. I also seem to have read the criticisms differently: whilst I agree with all your points above, I believe that the criticism stemmed from the very fact the racist character had a ‘positive’ arc and got ‘redeemed’, whereas many people felt he should have faced retribution. This is not about an abstract character arc but a view that no racist character can exist in a film or result in the actor getting an Oscar unless they ‘learn from their mistakes’. I find that more reductive.

Incidentally, I also believe that no portrayal of a racist or otherwise ‘non-pc’ character, no matter now nuanced, will get an Oscar nomination from now on. Just won’t happen, even if Phoenix does it (a few reviews of Joker noted how none of Arthur’s crimes are directed against minorities or women because the writers felt instinctively that this would already block them from getting an Oscar). But still, Refinery29 feels it’s totally okay to make little digs like, ‘Do we need a movie about a violent white man?’

https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/201...movie-reaction

What the hell is this, if not censorship and no-platforming, if someone doesn’t like ‘discrimination’ used in this context.

Again, I understand what you mean but I respectfully disagree. The same was being said about Joker, that it’s simplistic and that characters are under-written and yadda, yadda. I’ll set aside the question of who even gets to decide that, but it’s apparently fine to say Joker being mad at the world is ‘underwritten’ and that Rockwell’s character is ‘caricaturesque’ because he is not nuanced enough in his racist attitudes, yet when I see monstrosities like Jodie Whittaker as the female Doctor with her all-encompassing concern for the environment and all humanity, for no reason, with lectures about the evils of plastic thrown into a sci-fi show for good measure, no one finds this simplistic in the slightest (spoiler: I do). Honestly, it’s ridiculous.

Part of my point is that different standards are being applied to non-pc antagonists and ‘racists’ than are to ‘good’ guys who suddenly happen to exhibit fine-tuned progressive attitudes about anything and everything. There is nothing more nuanced about Bridgerton or the upcoming black Queen Charlotte biopic than about Rockwell’s racist cop, especially as many reputable historians spend their valuable time dismantling these theories and explaining how Queen Charlotte was in no shape or form anything but white German European. Yet, no, that’s not simplistic and underdeveloped, that’s evidently ‘nuanced and progressive’, and reputable historians’ opinions don’t matter. Honestly, I give up.

https://www.vox.com/22215076/bridger...ernate-history

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/febru...mulatto-queen/ - this offers a detailed breakdown of why the theory is ridiculous. Yes no one tries to annihilate Bridgerton, no, that’s totally great and ‘nuanced’. Give me a break.

I mean, yes, it would probably be more refreshing and rewarding to make it a Russian thug for a change. But I don’t know, by now I don’t know how else to articulate this point, if you want to create a black thug character because you live in Brixton, London, an area known in the last few decades for violence perpetuated primarily by ethnic minorities, you’d be creating a totally unrealistic scene by having a Russian thug there, and hence ruin any suspension of disbelief you might have hoped to provoke.

Yes, but I find it to be a very disconcerting and, frankly, unpleasant idea that things should progress all the time, i.e. that I as a creator should aim to advance social change and make entertainment more inclusive. I just don’t see, as @Mr Minio kind of suggested, why I’m being tasked with this and why I should be concerned with it in the first place. I am not forging a political career, I’m making art, why should I even consider these things? Not to mention that change that is forced or shoved down people’s throats often provokes instinctive resentment, i.e., even if they agree with the idea (such as diversity being a good thing), they might take issue with having to accept it unconditionally.

Fine, I can take that on board and avoid it in future, no problem. Appreciate your rationale.

It is not flawed because of the cast. But people should stick to what they do well. I’m pretty sure @Yoda made this exact point in the feminism thread in relation to none other than Nolan and I emphatically agree. If Nolan had stuck to his straight white male protagonist type he’s so used to churning out, Tenet would have been a better film, yes, that’s what I genuinely think. The protagonist would have had more of a personality because Nolan would have been able to feel and understand him better and wouldn’t have felt that he had to ‘tread carefully’. Disclaimer: sure, I don’t know that he actually felt that.

Oh, absolutely, but it is my conviction that caring about offending people will not yield any return on investment at all. All these newfangled Charlie’s Angels, Terminator: Dark Fate, Booksmart and other ‘woke’ films bombed (not literally, but they barely covered the costs). If anything, Joker cleaning up at the box office and pocketing an Oscar on top of that shows that having a vision and being indifferent to (or dismissive of) political correctness SELLS big time.

I'm not sure I see the issue. Nothing prevented Oscar wins for Ralph Fiennes or Christoph Waltz for playing unrepentant Nazis, for example, or more recently, DiCaprio and Fassbender being nominated for playing literal slave owners. Again, I have to suspect that you may be misreading the criticism that people had towards Rockwell's win that year. It wasn't just the de facto fact that he was a racist, redemption or not, but that the intended redemptive arc happened to be facile and unconvincing, like a Ku Ex Machina flip of a switch. It seemed cheap. But that's more the fault of McDonagh's pathetic script than anything else.


It sounds like freedom of speech to me. I don't see where John Wick fans are being deplatformed or silenced. I don't see Taxi Driver being taken off of shelves. There was also an SNL bit about "white male violence" concerning films like Once Upon a Time, Irishman and Joker, and that was little over a year ago, and it had zero impact on those films' award attention or availability to audiences or engagement in online discussion. "Censorship" already has a definition.


Well, I said a lot worse about that film, because I thought it was hot garbage. As a point of comparison, for me, it was similar to Three Billboards in that I think where it fails is in its execution than in its subject matter, per se. Both films clearly want to be about big significant ideas, but don't seem to have the ability to successfully say anything significant. I do find Joker to be underwritten and simplistic, compared to the films that it's obviously emulating, and only superficially provocative. I don't remember anything about race specifically in the film though.



I have no idea what you're talking about, so I'll assume this is a Dr. Who thing? This is what I meant by the parallel woke stereotype, where the inclusive inclination can turn into self-parody. Woke people can be superficial too.


Yeah, I remember some controversy over a similar film about Queen Mary as well. There's ways where such unorthodox casting can have significance, like Hamilton, where it becomes a subversive reminder of the paradox between the American founders' humanistic ideals and their colonial reality. Neither Mary nor Charlotte offer such metacommentary. If anything, they could be deeply counterproductive, as these artificially inclusive portrayals could teach a false history that these royal courts were more inclusive than they actually were, ignoring the inherently racist presumption behind the concept of "royal bloodline" itself, and whitewashing (*cough*) the then-current crimes against humanity that these houses were responsible for. I mean, they didn't even like Gaelic white people, much less more swarthy "savages". So in that light, what's the point of the stunt casting? More back-patting.



I wouldn't really know. I've neither seen Bridgerton nor intend to. That's just because I hate fopps, regardless of what color they are. 🙂

The pendulum swings both ways. Sometimes the next generation laughs at the prudishness of the previous generation (e.g., the joke about Victorians that they would cover piano legs so as to not to have people lust over bare wood). Sometimes the question is "How did they not think that was OK" (e.g., little anti-religious jokes).

Art that actually has something to say is going to offend someone, so the idea of making art inoffensive is to denigrate art as a category. The only questions are those like "Whom may we offend?" and "How much?" Every age has horrors, aspirations, and self-assessments of the "typical." Thus, the only question is what kind of prejudice inheres in this age and not "How do we avoid prejudices and stereotypes?" To be out of step with these prejudices is to be out of step with your own times.

I find this rather condescending, given that I never indicated which people I meant. My point was specifically about those who felt the character ‘gets away’ with his racism and that Rockwell gets an award ‘for playing a racist cop’.

This article:

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ree-billboards specifically mentions the issue being that his racism goes unpunished. There are quite a few critics like that, so perhaps you misunderstand. No matter.

Not to me, I was referring to a specific instance in this thread when it was suggested I should not use ‘discrimination’ to refer to male straight filmmakers having to adapt their practices to the new diversity standards. I acquiesced, but this is beginning to remind me of Laurence Fox and his unfortunate Question Time appearance. Anyway, I best leave it there.

It’s exactly the casual dismissiveness that I always see aimed at things like Joker and never at ‘progressive films’. I even feel this dismissiveness aimed at me. It’s very easy to call films like Fight Club, Joker etc ‘hot garbage’ (although we weren’t really discussing the film itself, but ah, well) but that doesn’t change the fact that they speak to an enormous demographic that no longer feels heard or reckoned with. I would love to see some evidence, with figures, that all this diversity porn speaks to a demographic that’s in any way statistically significant.

Neither have I, but I’m forced to read around it, mainly due to the social issues surrounding it, for my work.

I misunderstood that you were referring to twits on twitter, who I don't consider to be valid "critics". Aside from that, it's remarkable how much that Guardian writer agrees with my issues with Three Billboards, but for an example of what you described, he only mentions a single NYT article, which in turn only mentions a single critic, Wesley Morris, saying "I'm a Sam Rockwell fan who despises the moral and emotional and metaphorical confusion that is Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri". Which is, again, quite similar to what I said in that the problem is with the film overall rather than Rockwell's performance. But for anyone actually claiming that Rockwell shouldn't deserve an award for playing an awful person, the burden is on them to rectify why it wasn't an issue when Anthony Hopkins won for playing a predatory cannibal (who, let's face it, was probably pretty selective about the stock of people he'd eat).


Yes, I saw that, and it's already been shown to be a misreading of the diversity policy in question. There is no mandate that any writer or director has to change a single word or character on-screen to accomodate this policy, as long as the crew includes minority interns and hires. It's a production quota, not a content quota, and thus no one is being forced into any sort of creative compromise that could be considered either discriminatory or censorship to the artist.


I'm not really responsible for whichever thoughts of mine about whatever films that you choose to take personally, but for the record I mentioned a faily specific critique of Joker rather than "casual dismissiveness".



I wasn't aware that I mentioned Fight Club, or that I would call it "hot garbage" (it's not too bad, you know?), but I'm also not sure which demographic you're referring to. Just young angry men, or those who happen to have pathological delusions about their impotence?

That may be what the policy says. But in practice, films without diverse leads or elements are being routinely called out. On Twitter or wherever, that generates negative publicity, which takes away the funds and resources. #OscarsSoWhite etc, in practice, films and awards ceremonies are being criticised for not being inclusive enough all the time. This makes directors feel that ‘diverse’ screenplays and casts have a better chance of success, which in itself is a form of bullying, because directors are forced to hire the leads they don’t want to hire so as not to be no-platformed. This is not directly as a result of the policy but still a problem, you still haven’t indicated what I misunderstand.

https://deadline.com/2020/10/study-h...on-1234591521/

I don’t know about impotence, but angry young men are no less of a demographic to be reckoned with than perpetually offended snowflake young women.

And this is why I keep coming back to the fact that it is an issue that exists at the intersection between an individual film/creator and the broader social and artistic climate/context.

I think that when you have enough of a skewed representation, the combined message shifts from "This character is XYZ" to "This group is XYZ".

And maybe I should have specified that I was thinking of American society when I gave that example.

I generally give people a lot of benefit of the doubt, and a lot of that comes from the intent and context of what they are saying. I work with children now, and in grad school I did a lot of tutoring of international students.

There is a big difference between not knowing the preferred term of a certain demographic (and not all demographics even AGREE on their preferred terminology!) and trotting out tired stereotypes about a group of people.

Here's the context:

One poster asserted that creators were being forced to include demographics in their films which they were not familiar with. And that this would put creators in a spot of either (1) excluding that demographic or (2) writing characters about whom they have little understanding and thus it was a lose-lose proposition and was punishing creators.

My response was that (1) the diversity/inclusion standards work in front of or behind the camera, so you can accomplish it just by having a more diverse crew or marketing department and that (2) it's not that hard to research!

People can write whoever they want, obviously. But if you're writing about a group you don't know AND you don't take the time to learn anything about them AND your portrayal leans on negative, common stereotypes, then you can't turn around and whine when/if someone takes issue with your portrayal.

Creators need to be able to take responsibility for the characters they put on screen, and especially if they are using stereotypes about marginalized groups that are negative. Why should we be sensitive to the emotional fragility of the creator and not the emotional fragility of children who mainly see themselves represented as dangerous criminals?

I read the book upon which The Equalizer was based several years ago. I can't speak to the film, but the book takes place in New York. There are three characters in the whole book who are identified as Black: (1) A violent pimp who is beating up a beautiful white woman in an alley and the main character rescues her, (2) A "wacky" homeless man who lives under the subway, (3) A teenager playing basketball against the protagonist's son (don't worry--the white kid is described as being the much better basketball player). To me, this isn't a case of a fragile artist trying his best. This is laziness.

Censorship is preventing someone from saying something. Deplatforming is removing someone's ability to distribute/share their work. Criticism (even facile, superficial criticism) is not the same thing at all.

Bridgerton exists in a fictional, slightly alternate world where POC can be nobles and aristocracy. And that is made really, REALLY clear in like the second episode. The show exists in this weird place between color-blind casting and identity-conscious casting. The show has characters of all different races displaying a range of behaviors. Yes, it has Black leads, but also you could argue that a Black character (the main guy's awful dad) is the worst person in the series.

The show also has modern songs (such as "Girls Like You") at balls. It's not meant to be taken seriously as an historically accurate show--the setting is just a fun context for the story.

Again, boycotts are free speech, and you have every right to boycott more diverse films if you want. I don't have a lot of respect for what "a lot of people on Twitter" are doing on a given day. I think that some media companies are beginning to learn what a paper tiger Twitter actually is once the initial thrill of attention has worn off.


But the article you link has some additional points worth considering. First, the study is skewed in a number of ways. It's maybe a coincidence how the results of the "Hollywood Diversity Report" so closely align with the stated agenda of the group conducting it. This article is basically just a press release by this group. More perversely is how the study focuses on the non-creative aspects of a film's finances - budget and opening weekend box office - as its primary metrics. Since this is clearly a lobbying effort by a special interest group, it's likely that they felt this is the best way to communicate and persuade Hollywood executives who, largely as a group, are also non-creatives who unduly prioritize the numbers over the quality of content. It's even ironic, considering how arguably one of the main factors for the increasingly creatively sterile Hollywood blockbusters over the years is exactly these trends of unnecessarily ballooned budgets and sole focus on opening weekend box office returns (the "sucker numbers", as some insider analysists have called it). In other words, we're talking about films that I don't really care very much about.

Crazy Rich Asians is only equitable in terms of this kind of marketing mediocrity. It's telling that they didn't mention The Farewell instead, a more personal "authentic voice" film that despite having a tenth of the budget and doing a tenth of the business of Crazy Rich Asians still managed to make an 8-fold profit for itself and adorned with better reviews across the board. But The Farewell is not a Hollywood production, and therefore has less pressure to dilute its personal voice to ensure the widest possible audience. I mean, if we're seriously interested in making authentically personal films, that might be an important thing to consider. I have no doubt that Hollywood will find ways to awkwardly fumble these intentions, but my advice for anyone concerned with quality stories is to stick with the smaller independent films where diverse voices can tell personal stories free from the compulsion of studio marketing strategies.



Sexual frustration is explicitly a central facet of both Fight Club's and Joker's psychosocial dysfunction.


I'm eager to see a film that examines and skewers our age of social media's recreational outrage with the same ruthless precision that Fight Club skewered frustrated young men's recreational outrage. After all, Twitter seems to just be a larger support group, right? They're all just trying to get hugs with their eyes closed.

It's not about people twisting themselves into a pretzel to avoid a negative portrayal if that portrayal makes sense. It's about asking why, if you need some anonymous baddie for the good guy to beat up, you automatically reach for a certain demographic over and over.

Do you have links for your data about the crime statistics? I couldn't find any demographic breakdowns.

I think you're seeing a causal relationship that doesn't exist.

I'm not saying that creators have to advance or reflect social change. Social progress (non-landowners in government! abolition of slavery! voting rights!) has happened before the advent of films.

Trying to use a blackface character for comic relief would be at best distracting and at worst very offensive to a modern audience. As a creator you could do it, but you'd be shooting yourself in the foot. Society will never be static, and creators will always have to adapt to the culture in which they live.

Creators aren't being tasked with anything. And if you don't want to care about the social/financial/emotional/physical well-being of other people--and specifically people who have been historically marginalized and oppressed--then you don't have to.

But art will always have a relationship to the world in which it was created. It doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And to zoom out a bit, there is a point (especially when talking about the film industry) where art becomes commerce. Someone gets paid to cater the set, someone gets paid to set up the lights, someone gets paid to operate the camera, and so on. In the creation of art you are having an impact on the financial/economic lives of many people. And if you are systematically excluding certain demographics from that process, then you are contributing to their marginalization.

It is really common to approach questions from the point of view of the person being asked to change. But rarely is the other point of view aired out much.

Which is the greater evil: forcing someone to hire a more diverse crew OR telling minorities who want to work in show business that they just need to wait however many years/decades it takes for the industry to be more receptive to hiring them? Is it worse to force states to allow interracial marriage/relationships before most of the citizens are in favor, or to continue to fine/arrest the people in such relationships?

Saying that people just have to sit back and wait until the majority wants to treat them equally asserts that people who are already marginalized have to bear the weight of discomfort and inconvenience until those with power are comfortable with the idea of sharing it. And anyone who knows a lick about history knows that those in power are not exactly eager to share the wealth.

Was race a significant aspect of the character?

Also, this creates a sort of self-closing circle. You're saying white people are most comfortable writing white people (and I don't disagree with this point). But then you don't approve of policies intended to get more non-white people into the industry. So then we get a bunch of white-led films, written and directed by white creators, and non-white creators/professionals are left at the mercy of the powers that be giving them access to opportunities for collaboration.

It's not the fault of contemporary creators that they have inherited a lopsided workplace. But that doesn't excuse perpetuating it.

The weakness of his "redemption" in that film was the point, though.

We can parse any study like that, what does it give? Nothing is or ever will be 100 per cent objective and impartial. Again, I don’t really care very much about which films you care very much about (spoiler: at all), but with your tone and attitude you are suggesting these films are fine to be obliterated out of existence because you don’t like them, commercial crap, right? Let’s get all auteurial and ban big budgets.

Who is this ‘we’? Who are you representing or speaking for and what gives you the right to think that’s what making films is about?

I like The Farewell but don’t find it particularly relevant here. It is about an Asian family and a trip to Asia, where the film mostly takes place, of course it will have an all-Asian cast.

Oh, really? You’ve opened my eyes. Tell that to Caroline Flack who didn’t feel she had it in her to give out any hug freebies and who instead felt that the Twitter support group was out to get her. And let’s not go, Oh, these influencers are so touchy! This was a mature woman with a great TV career who just couldn’t handle the mob-like support group that sends you to conversion courses if you’re a conservative.

As for your first point, Black Mirror - Hated in the Nation, and more is forthcoming, I betcha.

I will send shortly.

You have a very fluid and attractive communication style; it is stimulating to talk to you and I have said that many times. Since this is the second time I’ve been told that I misunderstand something in this thread (thank you, @Jinnistan) or that I see a relationship that doesn’t exist, I am forced to make a personal comment as I rarely do.

The three of us disagreeing on the implications and likely outcomes of the diversity casting requirements and other nuances surrounding the topic does not constitute me misunderstanding anything. In fact, it illustrates quite well, to use an earlier example, why the said angry young white men are angry.

People who express a viewpoint like mine are responded to with an implication that there is something evidently wrong with us if we don’t ‘get with the program.’ That’s fine, it’s not about me taking it personally, @Jinnistan, it is about acknowledging that this is, indeed, the case.

I have left out your point about black face because I agree with it; it would not be appropriate or commercially viable to have a character in black face do anything in a contemporary film. But then again, black face is an extreme example which I, personally, never referenced in what I was trying to say.

Now, I will again go back to my original point. Saying the diversity standards are only about behind-the-lens choices is simplistic, untrue, and, frankly, facetious as it unnecessarily derails debate. We all know that, as per @Takoma11, we don’t live in a vacuum and that life doesn’t work out like that. I don’t see why when this debate inevitably ensures, so many people refuse to acknowledge reality, especially as it aligns with what they seem to want for the world.

Films do get bad publicity for having mostly white casts. No matter if it’s about two guys from the East Midlands working in a pub, it’ll get called our for not providing opportunities, with the suggestion that the director should have worked in a part for a West Indies immigrant. My point is that while productions that provide opportunities for minorities to be represented should rightly be funded and continue to exist, the focus on these things and the endless calls for diversity have a detrimental effect on people trying to get on with the job and make a film (especially if they happen to want to do things like the early Moorhead & Benson productions - two white guys, low key, not many characters except the two leads).

One of the articles which I linked above, which @Jinnistan didn’t consider relevant and which I won’t bother linking again, explicitly asked in relation to Joker: ‘Do we need another film about a violent white man?’ This is what I’m talking about.

The implication is that this subject matter and plot line don’t deserve funding and should ideally be prevented from making it onto the big screen in future. The implication is that really, there should have been another Moonlight instead of Joker. And let’s please not pretend that this was about anything other than that, especially as Joker gives Arthur Fleck a connection with Black women. See below:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.i...202182613/amp/

As I said above, the standards do affect the essence and soul of the film, not the set, so with all of the above being true, that doesn’t change anything about what I’m arguing.

Please kindly show me where I said that. I have reiterated again and again and again and again that I am not talking about the behind-the-scenes aspects of filmmaking. I am talking about making casting choices on the basis of ‘needing a diverse character to get green-lighted’.

What I do agree with you about entirely is that underrepresented demographics need access to more job opportunities in the industry. This is pretty obvious and it does and will happen, but it has no need to have an impact on plotting decisions.

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

The weakness of the film's point was my point though.

I don't see how you could have come to that conclusion. I've never advocated the obliteration or banning of any film. What I am saying, regarding your concern for the sanctity of the artist making the film, is that major Hollywood blockbusters have never really respected the auteur, and instead have always been compromised by popular marketing considerations. I personally don't care much for these kinds of products, actually for precisely that lack of personal perspective. What's amusing is how thin the line is between "stereotypes" and studio demographic marketing, which inevitably tends to reduce the audience into these easily consumable catagories. The extension of such "tagging" in social media is not an isolated phenomenon. I suspect that is a huge part of the problem that this thread's been discussing, where people become distillations of whatever interests or behavior matches the ticker-tape of the accountants. Maybe even that's what I've actually been suggesting all along.

Well, I disagree with that, I believe Nolan is absolutely an auteur in the realm where he wants to operate, and so are quite a few other commercially successful filmmakers. I would also call Fincher a commercially successful auteur, but Nolan is the best example. He does what he wants, as far as that’s feasible, and is doing very well indeed. Spielberg is also an auteur smashing the box office. I could go on.

Great! I admittedly only googled for a few minutes before giving up.

I'm not saying that you are misunderstanding, but I am saying that I think that you are incorrect in saying that creators are being forced to lead social change.

We have accepted for years in this country (USA) that discriminating against people in a workplace based on their gender, race, sexuality, whatever is not okay. Saying that people need to meet basic (and I do mean BASIC) diversity standards is not the same as saying that creators need to lead the charge. And, again, many of the standards apply to the larger industry (ie the studios) and not the individual creator. The creator can do whatever they want, and if the studio finds it compelling enough to make, it can automatically get a pass if the studio itself has a marketing internship program and a certain amount of diversity in the crew.

This is why I keep coming back to the idea that this is an issue that exists at the intersection of the individual artist and the larger system within which they operate.

I would hope that we could agree that systematically shutting certain demographics out of the creative process is not okay.

For a long time, black face was a culturally accepted for of entertainment that fed into the worst and most damaging stereotypes about Black people. I use it as an example of the way that you can see a cultural shift, because you and I would almost never find it appropriate.

Suppose you had a friend who was a writer/director, and they wanted to make a movie that used a white actor in black face as comic relief in their film. Again, not ironically, just "this white person is going to pretend to be Black and speak in a funny 'Black voice'". Now suppose this friend of yours was told by the studio that they would not make their film if it included that sequence. Your friend comes to you, angry, and complains that they are being forced to "get with the program". How would you respond to them?

You raised the question of eligibility standards and said they would force creators to include characters in their films that didn't fit or that they weren't comfortable writing. I pointed out that the standards include on-camera and "behind-camera" representation (and that 3 of the 4 standards in the case of the Oscars are "behind-camera"). The conversation about the court of public opinion is a related, but separate issue. Standards that an industry imposes on itself are connected to, but not quite the same, as how an industry reacts and responds to the loudest of their customers.

I mean, I would love a specific example of a writer or director talking about how the need for diversity derailed their creative process.

I watch a lot of low budget films on Amazon, and for the most part they are like 95% white. There's nothing wrong with the kind of film you are describing. But isn't it funny that of all the movies I could name (at least that I've seen) that are very small cast, they are almost all white people?

If you made one pile of movies that was about white men who "just can't take it" (whether "it" is their own exclusion or the punks making their street a dangerous place) and pick up a gun and start shooting people, and another pile of movies that were about the inner lives of someone in a marginalized group, which pile would be bigger?

While I don't entirely agree with many of the criticisms levied against Joker I do understand the frustration of people who look at the movie theater and (1) are not well-represented on screen and (2) instead see films about how, you know, sometimes a white man picking up a gun and shooting a lot of people just makes sense.

Because the on-camera and behind-camera aspects are the requirement! They are not separated. It might be true that there is pressure on studios to include more diverse casting in their films, but it's pretty obvious from a lot of films that come out that you can totally get a movie greenlit without diversity.

Like, I love John Wick, but take a scroll down that cast list.

What steps do you think should be taken to grant more access? Because I happen to think that telling people they need diversity somewhere in their creation process (behind or in front of the camera) is a fine way to go about that.

(Also, I've been a bit more sarcastic in my replies because you and I have talked to many times, but if it feels like anything is sounding mean, let me know. It's easy to forget that sarcasm can read wrong in print).

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

My two takes on this whole issue are


1) Generally, the suggested fixes for issues of lack of diversity in films (in front of and behind camera), as well as the need to eventually reduce the negative effects of stereotyping used in film, doesn't really stifle creativity. Maybe every suggestion won't work, maybe some over reach, but for the most part, they are pointing us fairly unobtrusively towards a more inclusive (and thus infinitely better) world of cinema.


2) Those most likely to go online and rage against every film that appears to betray this move towards inclusiveness, are much more often than not, terrible ambassadors for their cause. At least those who rage the loudest. They frequently disregard the context of what the film is trying to say or how it was made. They have a very wobbly understanding of their own arguments when pushed to explain themselves. Employ tactics that aim to discredit or shame anyone daring to disagree with their particular tantrum. And seem to think that acting on behalf of a just cause is enough not to be an *******, even as they behave like ******** on behalf of their just cause.



But as loud as this sort may be, the actual impact they have on stopping people from making whatever the hell they want to make is pretty negligible. If they've had any really serious impact at all, it is instead the death of honest discourse. But this does not just get placed at their particular feet. This is also a result of those who are equally bad faith arguers against them. But sadly, because of the way the internet is designed, these seem to be the only people we hear anymore, because social media has a particular love of anyone whose arguments are short, un-nuanced, declarative and easy to scream back at. I think this has ultimately led to a bit of a bi-polar cultural rot in regards to internet chat, and I don't think that is insignificant. But no one's paint brushes are being taken away.

Crumbsroom: my personal issue with diversity politics in films is not that it "stifles creativity", but the underlying assumption that movies should be entirely tokenised, and that not doing so is wrong, racist, sexist, bigoted, etc. I dont think including a higher demographic of a certain person makes people less prejudiced or more open minded.


However, I'm not upset about having a diverse set of actors in and of itself. I feel the things that encourage both creativity and diversity would threaten profit margins. For example: I mentioned in another thread that films assert a bogus standard of beauty and sexiness. Film f*cking is always so fake and contrived

I was mostly responding to some of the comments that had mentioned the threat of handcuffing creative people to any kind of agenda. I don't think its happening in any substantative way. I think there has definitely been lots of discussion why this would be good and why we should be made aware of the historic lack of diversity. But the only people I believe are really calling for any mandate, or sometimes brand those who don't live up to this mandate as racists (which I agree, is counter productive on all fronts), are the minority and easy to not take very seriously. Sure they are loud, and seem omni-present, and can be a bit of a nuisance, but their influence is pretty minor.



As a person who has worked peripherally in the arts, and also believes diversity is a legitmate concern worth addressing, I've personally never felt an ounce of pressure to live up to anyone else's standards. Maybe some do, but there have alllllwaaaays been different types of pressure placed on the arts to live up to some idealized way. What's happening now, really isn't that different, even if the dumbest voices are now finding ways to get heard in the mainstream. The response to this is to ignore the dumb ones, and take in what you can from the more reasonable ones. But, ultimatley, what you choose to do with what you are hearing is still entirely up to you. Like said, there is no mandate on how you create. You create, they criticize, listen to them or don't, and move on.


In regards to how representation affects how discriminatory a society we are, I absolutely think there is a correalation. Visibility in culture matters to those who maybe until now felt unseen. Also, introducing other cultures through a film to those who have no access to them in day to day life, generates empathy. Reduces otherness. Is it the be all end all fix to the problem. No. But it opens empathetic channels to understanding people we otherwise would not. It is, at the very least, a beginning to over coming stereotypes.



As for your comment about profit margins, creativity (at least of the unorthodox sort) has always been seen as a threat to profit margins. At least by the gate keepers at big studios who are pathetically risk adverse. This also may go for diversity, in some ways, being that studios may think this might smudge their supposedly concrete formulas for success. But I don't think either of these necessarily pan out in the real world. I've never crunched the numbers, but I don't see any reason why either creativity or diversity can't be just as successful. I refuse to assume the dimwits at studios are ever correct about anything. They are creative voids. They've never proven that they really know anything about anything beyond riding specific trends into the ground. To believe them, is to believe that all of civilization wants think dumbed down, and I don't think this is true. Necessarily.

but you are contradicting yourself here: so the vocal morality-police are not threatening, but they are creating issues for people anyways??


Saying that the anti-racist bullies are simply "not a threat and should be ignored" (i'm not talking about anyone in this thread, people here are overall very polite and aren't too dogmatic) is comparable to if I went on facebook and started saying: "No need to worry about Donald Trump! Sure the supporters form militias and buy guns, but the dangerous ones are just an insigficant minority!"


I'm personally not afraid of the trumpees for a lot of different reasons, but who am i to say that people shouldn't be afraid of them after they bomb a synagogue or stab counter-protesters?


In the end, the "idiots" you are referencing do exert an influence over how other people think, and are often responsible for making other people afraid, scared, and un-interested in having conversations about things that are important to them.



If some cringey/generic/racist white dude wants to make another cowboy movie about a battle against "ind-guns", then i'm probably just going to fall asleep...the less i try to assert some false notion of "good and bad art", the happier and more carefree I will be. I would rather just be making my own art for my own reasons.

The online culture of looking for any kind of past or current indiscretion by an artist, however minor or completely out of context, can potentially have a bad influence on the overall culture. It can be bad for art, if artists care to worry about what the most reactionary people out there actually think (they shouldn't). And it can be bad for those whose causes they are supposedly supporting, by making that side seem unreasonable or militant (the vast majority of people calling for inclusiveness in film are neither).



So while they can definitely have some influence, their influence is limited by how seriously we take their points of view. Sometimes, they gain enough traction they can't be avoided. But mostly, these sort of complaints of theirs vanish with a whimper as they find some other faux outrage to froth over. Most people don't have time for this kind of hyperbole in their real lives. If you turn social media off, their worst impulses hardly even bubble to the surface because, at their root, they are deeply irrelevant outside of their desperate attempts to be heard.



Now, when they start arming themselves, that obviously becomes a different situation. But as far as I can tell, a bunch of anonymous people trying to cancel James Gunn for some decades old edgelord tweets, aren't actually the kinds of people into actual real life confrontations. In truth, when it comes to this very particular branch of of people I honestly don't think they even care about the things they claim to care about so much. It frequently feels much too much like vanity than activism, and you can get more than your fill of that by never leaving your home.

Second that.

And that.

Thank you for this comment. I wholeheartedly agree. It is the white dude’s right to do so.

See, you say that, and I don’t disagree. But James Gunn could well be cancelled. Alexi McCammond, the Teen Vogue editor until recently, resigned over her racist tweets. Was forced to, obviously. Her fashion career is over. Gunn may survive this and he may not. Others won’t survive the Twitter mob. There’s no need for an ‘actual life confrontation’ to ruin someone’s life.

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

Artists are always limited in what they can say. In a libertarian age, Victorian sentiments are unwelcome. In an age of heightened sensitivity, libertarian sentiments are unwelcome. A society that has pro "X" stereotypes, will not welcome anti "X" stereotypes (and vice versa). But there will always be stereotypes because there will always be a cultural narrative. And the stories of that age will reflect and shape these sensibilities. There is no escape from this.

We can merely ask what kind of stereotypes are at play. Are the stereotypes more true than false? Are the stereotypes more false than true? Are the stereotypes more useful than non-useful? Are the stereotypes more non-useful than useful?
It's not that this is a zero-sum game or that all ages are morally equivalent, but rather to ask whether our cultural organs are functioning in a healthy manner.

Artists are like miners working in a mineshaft. They excavate and show us what in the mine of culture, but they have to take care not to make the mineshaft collapse on top of them. Dig and reveal. Dig and move into a new direction. There might be treasure just off to the right. But disregard the environment in which your digging at your own risk.

in my opinion, we don't really have any rights, it's only a legal mechanism that a court may or may not use to protect you from harm. It could also, in the reverse situation, use somebody's rights to imprison you.


I think people complaining is alright but sometimes it's used in an abusive way, like for example, if i thought you were being a jerk or whatever, i would tell you to your face or over a phone call instead of making a tweet or a facebook comment to the world...UNLESS, you were being a jerk over facebook, twitter, a forum, etc.


Speaking of this: i never really understood what Louis CK did to get so much crap, it had something to with masturbating, i think somewhere i read that he backed against the door in the presence of fans so that some woman "had to watch him masturbate", and if that was the case i feel like he kinda deserved all the call-outs and MeToo# stuff...but i guess this is something that's not really even worth bringing up anymore...

Fine, I can accept that. The misunderstanding point was maintly aimed at @Jinnistan, but enough of that. I said so because I do feel creators are being unfairly burdened precisely for the reasons outlined in the OP and the title: that it is common to perceive art as the acceptable way to ‘combat’ stereotypes. I find that just as upsetting and emotionally damaging as the people stereotyped find the stereotypes themselves, and that is my right to feel that way. My feeling is no less valid. You quite reasonably said here, @Takoma11:In reality, I suspect, it is ultimately impossible to be sensitive to anyone here because no one is objective. I have reread your comment a few times thinking how I wanted to reply, but the best I can do is this: the fragility of minorities has been prioritised in recent years, that is no bad thing. Like someone said further up in the thread, the fragility of the creator has never been prioritised anyway: they are supposed to shut up and take it and do what the studios say.

I’m not trying to say you are wrong and I am right. I think we are all past objectivity in this thread. But I am reminded of Adam Kesher in Mulholland Drive, whose only bit of free will was he didn’t want to cast ****ing Camilla Rhodes, and guess what, sir, ‘It is no longer your film.’ Do you honestly think that’s okay?

And it does happen, it has happened in the past, due to nepotism in part but not just that, and now it is happening due to the diversity requirements. You can’t have your Natalie Portman, honey, gotta have Viola Davis. They’re both immensely talented, but I don’t want Viola, I want Natalie. ‘It is no longer your film.’

It’s even more insulting because it’s not due to Viola’s rich husband or daddy, which would be force majeure, but due to Viola’s generic and insulting to her more than anyone else attribute of being a ‘diverse’ hire.

I understand that, but I see in practice that if no one sees at least one non-white actor in a film, they have an issue. It has to be in your face. I don’t know, what I do admit is that this is all inevitable and won’t go anywhere, so it’s pointless to talk about it.

People will just do their casting through box ticking and the white characters will be the ones being schooled on their sins and made to see the error of their ways and then (Tenet)

Yes, we do. But I do genuinely feel the moves to artificially rectify that are detrimental to creativity. I can’t help feeling that way.

I quite like the example. I suppose I would tell them in a neutral way that the fact they wanted to include the sequence in the first place suggests they don’t understand what is sellable nowadays, whether that’s good or bad, and that they should think carefully about that. I have said pretty unpleasant things to friends when truth needed to be voiced so I don’t find the scenario that implausible.

But then again, blackface is extreme. I don’t see any connection between this example and blackface and the scenario where the said friend tells me, upset, that they were told the couple in her divorce drama needs to be mixed race, or it won’t get made. I would commiserate and say no more. This I find even more probable.

Take contemporary British ads - any Brits interested, feel free to jump in. Every couple in mortgage ads is mixed race or homosexual. Every. Couple. All while these demographics are in no way a majority of the population, not even close. This isn’t about providing opportunities (certainly doesn’t help said couples buy more houses), this is over-representation.

Now, you could say this is fair, as it rights a long-running historical wrong. I strongly disagree, but more importantly, on a marketing level, this provokes resentment. I will not go to that bank if I can help it. Neither will the white working class people from the West Midlands because they will feel no one is going out of their way to help them get on the housing ladder.

I agree that ads are not representative of anything and the mixed-race couple will likely still struggle to buy a house, but this young working class white man will feel that he is not valued or seen as a demographic. Why is this not relevant or significant to anyone? The answer is probably that every single type of person should be featured in every single ad, but yeah, good luck selling toilet roll that way, let alone loan schemes.

I will have a hunt, but I think it’s understandable that people won’t publicise that kind of experience because, again, it would end their career.

I don’t know. I understand the logic, but I don’t see why it doesn’t, in that man’s mind. A neighbour of mine stabbed another neighbour’s wife to death when she came over to borrow a cutting board. When asked why, he said she ‘pissed him off’. It happens. How is this different from a white man shooting up a mall from frustration? Joker or any other such films don’t make any suggestion that the shooting had anything to do with the progressive world annoying the protagonist, he just feels misunderstood. Surely a universal theme. He will be punished, so what’s the big deal?

I think it should be blind and fair, free market economy. A study was done recently by two young PR professional ladies in which they sent off the exact same marketing portfolio to ad agencies and asked for a critique. When they sent them off using a male alias, they got more replies and these replies were less formal and more encouraging. The implication is obvious: there is bias. Not arguing with that.

But the appropriate response, to my mind, is to provide internship opportunities (in any industry, incidentally) using blind screenings where CVs are marked ‘CV A’ and ‘CD B’. Once the decision has been made, you’ve hired the intern, you can’t go back, that’s it.

Then at the next stage, you stringently monitor the way all interns work and determine which ones you’ll keep and offer jobs to. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s fair. If they all perform equally well (which never happens), you take it from there.

Yeah, as I said in the PM, you don’t sound mean at all, you are always very civil in putting your points across.

My comment about "actual life confrontation" was specifically in relation to the idea of cultural critics arming themselves in the street. Not that Twitter can't have any negative impact on people.



And I wasn't saying no one has been affected badly by this supposed cancellation culture. I can drop names of people I feel were thrown under the bus by it, and I think how they were treated is disgraceful. My point was I think the amount of times people were completely unjustified in their dismissal from work, or having their character assassinated, is grossly over represented. and it's not that those individual examples don't matter. Of course they do. But it isn't enough to cause some kind of moral panic in artists that the mob is coming to get them. There is no end of artists who are still pushing buttons and have escaped any real retribution. And as I already said before, there has always been cultural elements that have 'cancelled' careers out there. And they have always been problematic, and it's good to address them when they overreach. But I don't feel there is any greater threat to free speech than any other time certain groups were having their careers threatened because of who they are, or who they know, or what they believe.



There is still much that can be complained about though. I really dislike the quick rush to judgement in internet culture. I hate how often redemption seems to be considered a dirty word. And I think there are a lot of bad takes on what is unacceptable behavior. But I also can't help but get tired of the opposite side, where there seems to be a belief there is some kind of creative Armageddon that can all be snugly rested at the feet of 'political correctness' or whatever we want to call it. It just seems like a way too easy scapegoat in an extraordinarily complicated conversation, that is nested with many other related but completely separate considerations. To address it all, it can't help but lead to people misreading eachothers intentions or feelings. But I think it is a bit of a waste of time to give this particular issue of pc culture run amok all of the oxygen in the room. Because it is far from the only or central problem.

Just a general question, not related to any one post here: Are negative stereo types really a thing in movies these days?

The only negative stereo types I can think of in recent movies is stuff like the greedy, middle class white male (think Alex Baldwin characters or greedy wall street types) or the dumb as a doorknob white guy (think Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell & Adam Sandler)...not that I'm complaining I like those actors and to me they're more character tropes than stereo types. But this thread and the OP's question seems to be stating there's active, negative minority stereo types in movies today. I don't think that's the case for the most part (sure with so many movies anything can be seen, but it don't seem like a trend).

Every time I read threads like this, I always see posters prop up nightmare scenarios that could POSSIBLY, EVENTUALLY happen as comparably troublesome and meritorious as dealing with actual, systemic problems that are currently happening and impacting lives in far greater, more serious, and most importantly ACTUAL ways.

I’ll believe in the Viola Davises of the world replacing Natalie Portmans when they have disproportionate roles offered and higher pay. I’ll believe in the director whose career was destroyed and they no longer get to make movies because they flagrantly included a racial stereotype in their films.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue living in the real world where I can go pop on the latest right-wing Cinestate produced Zahler flick, featuring a brutal cop protagonist played by Mel Gibson, where they spout pro-cop/police brutality rhetoric while the only black leads are criminals. Which currently has a... 76% on Rotten Tomatoes. Won’t somebody please think of these poor filmmakers who can’t say anything without an angry tweet?!?

Count the amount of Latino and Hispanic roles in Hollywood that don’t involve the cartel, gangs, being foreign, or being a low-wage worker.

Well, I think it is very possible to hold sensitivity toward two groups (even opposing groups) at the same time. I can both sympathize with someone who has been repeatedly denied access to an industry AND I can sympathize with someone who believes they have been passed over for a job in favor of a "diversity hire". In a fully racist society, people in minority groups know why they aren't getting the job. In a perfectly equal society, all people should feel confident that they are being hired because they are the best person for the job. Right now many industries are in a transitional state where the people being hired don't always know why they are or aren't getting a job, and that can be really frustrating.

I do think that there actually has been a lot of historical sympathy toward the creator. I think that a lot of bad, damaging, even criminal behavior from creators has been excused under the umbrella of the "temperamental artist." (I just happened to read this article this afternoon: https://news.avclub.com/rita-wilson-...ess-1846756743)

I think that there is an entire range of relationships that can exist between a writer/director and the studio that is financing their project. Some creators are lucky enough to have enough clout that they can retain "final word" on their projects. Others are really at the mercy of the studio. I don't think it is a matter of right or wrong (obviously unless a contract says one thing and then a party does something that violates that agreement). I do think that when you are dependent on someone else's money to create your art, you open yourself up to the person holding the purse having sway over your art. It's the double-edged sword of working with a studio instead of independently.

What film is this? Or is this a hypothetical example?

And I don't think it's common for a creator to write a part for a white person only to see it recast as a Black person. If there is a real example of this I'd be very open to reading about it.

It's a reaction that is a result of many, many years of under-representation and disproportionately negative representation. I will agree that some people only engage this question on a superficial level, and that can be really frustrating. I think that such knee-jerk hot takes ultimately do more harm than good. But that shouldn't be used to dismiss the very valid concerns that some people have about representation.

There should be room for films with all-white or mostly-white casts, just like there should be room for films with all-Asian or mostly-Asian casts. But right now, the former is much, much more the norm and I understand why some people are tired of it.

Ironically, the cure is more films with more diverse representation. If more films were realistic on this front (especially films that take place in locations like modern New York), then it wouldn't stand out so much when there is a film without non-white characters.

SPOILERS!!

White characters still make up an easy majority of the heroes in films, self-sacrificing or not (and usually not). Rather than being schooled on their sins, it seems more common to me that white characters protect or defend minorities as part of validating their worth, and it's usually used to highlight the bravery or growth of the white character.

How do you non-artificially rectify that in a way that doesn't take decades?

But aren't we saying that dictating choices about their films to creators is censorship and inhibiting their creativity?

Again, I'd love a specific example here.

I just googled "Lloyd's Bank mortgage advert" and most of the faces I'm seeing are white. A white hand over another white hand. A white woman with a white child. One ad seems to feature a Black or mixed race man and woman.

You say it's over-representation, but is it possible they are trying to reach out to demographics that have been under-served by their companies in the past?

So just to be clear: you would boycott a company because you did not feel that you were being represented or reached out to by them?

How is this different than people speaking out against movie studios that do not represent them adequately?

I feel that if you're going to assert that careers are being derailed and creators are being horribly stifled, there has to be at least one solid example.

The big deal is that the film is sympathetic to his character overall and presents multiple sequences that seemingly justify his anger and eventual violence. You say it is a universal theme, but I don't see a lot of films where Black/Asian/Hispanic men are the ones pushed to the edge.

That would be nice. Unfortunately, bias almost always finds a way to sneak in. In my (very long!) discussion with my parents about this issue this afternoon, my dad told me about a guy who was on a hiring panel with two other men. One man was going through the resumes and sorting into "interested" and "uninterested" piles. He was only looking at the second page of each resume. The guy realized he was sorting based on which undergrad institution they'd attended, and would you be shocked to learn that he was "interested" in every applicant from his alma mater (and a smattering of other schools from the same geographic area)?

I think that having reasonable diversity standards is an acceptable practice. The categories are so broad! Racial minority, female, LGBTQ+, a person with a disability. If you have a crew of 10 people, having one woman, one gay man, and one Latino person meets the 30% standard.

(And internship opportunities is one of the ways you can meet the diversity standards for the Oscars, so there you go!)

Re: Do movies teach stereotypes?
 

It's troubling to me that some do-gooders sound off about throwing artworks of the past under the bus for being prejudicial. If this is the case, then we must close ourselves off to all art from the past, as it is all prejudicial. Indeed, people of the future will undoubtedly find our art prejudicial, so the only safe course of action would be to not partake at all. Nonsense.

What artists do is to work within the confines of their age. They have to. Many artists of generations past took significant risks to help shift the conversation towards today's moral sensibilities -- much moreso than today's moralizers who take no risks in descrying "sins of the past." We have the world we have today, in part, because they had the courage to work within a paradigm and to leverage small adjustments to the conversation.

And indeed, if we do not commit to the chronocentrism of our age (that tendency every generation has to think that they are the most progressive, sensitive, enlightened, and righteous), we might even learn a thing or two from past prejudices, as we ourselves be "off the mark."

well said: if people are going to criticize or moralize (morality..ew...), it should be about artwork that someone is currently making, and also, nobody should feel obliged to respect or like anybody's artwork either.


It's cowardly to talk about the dead at the expense of the living.



Burning or framing a painting are the same in the end!

*fixed*


lol, nepotism is just Gawd's Will!

True, good point.

Well, it’s referred to as ‘non-traditional casting’, but it’s all over the place. The Witcher is a very good example (below), but so is Red in Shawshank Redemption who is (the clue is in the name!) described as ‘white and Irish’. It would not in and of itself necessarily be a problem if society didn’t feel the need to sell this as a good, progressive development.

https://www.ranker.com/list/black-ac...ers/lisa-waugh

Yes, I suppose so. But if we want to talk quotas, we need quotas for all-white films too; and guarantees that they will be considered for all awards and not penalised, that Moorhead and Benson can get an Oscar or some kind of cash incentive (they could use a grant) with their two white guys story.

They may make up a majority, for sure, but for any quota to be fair it has to determine the needed share for every type of thing, not just the one deemed ‘underrepresented’. You didn’t comment about Alexi. She was a child when she wrote the tweets, yes, I would tell off the **** out of my child if they were stupid enough to do that, but did she deserve to see her professional life end when she was at such a high point?

Here:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.f...ars-later/amp/

Yes, but this is my supposed friend and an informal conversation. I would understand the frustration on some level is all. And the annoyance. I would commiserate and say I fully agree she should be able to make what she likes, but the world doesn’t work like that. See, if she wanted to make a film where the protagonist violently raped his girlfriend in the third act and then strangled her because, I don’t know, she shot his mother, and had been blocked from making that, I would commiserate equally and this time, I would say she should continue submitting and find another studio that’s more understanding of what she is trying to say in the story. She is trying to write this man’s POV and the violent rape and murder is his revenge, I’d say, try to ground it very well emotionally and go for it. The reason I would suggest she doesn’t do the blackface plot line, regardless of my personal feelings on the subject, is because as a PR professional whose job it is to sell ideas I would believe firmly she stands no chance of selling that, no matter what. Hence why waste her energy trying? Which is in itself, you are right, pathetic and sad, and shows I have become disillusioned about the power of the free market and free speech.

Having discussed this now, I wonder if I wouldn’t leave it and see what would happen with her unfortunate production without my intervention.

This article: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.t...servative/amp/ uses examples that are as specific as you can be without outing people who think differently.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.t...fall-woke/amp/ here we have a specific example of David Doucet who lost his job. For the people in the back, here is online bullying having a ‘real’ impact. Catherine Deneuve hasn’t worked since 2019 when she became a vocal champion of the ‘anti-woke’ way of life. The singer Mennel is ‘cancelled’ for good.

This article:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/ne...-cancel-happy/ details how Jordan Peterson’s career (see also ‘wealth protects you from discrimination’) has been affected by the ‘cancel mob’.

This article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/reaso...-groves/%3famp describes an actual vendetta bankrolled by the NYT to ruin the life of someone who said a horrible thing as a child once. She was kicked out of university. This is sick, vindictive behaviour.

I mean, if so, they are getting better, thank God for that. Naturally, when you Google things, you get all the versions of one ad. I meant the ones I see in the actual physical bank when I come in.

They sure are, and the same is true about revisionist history films and the Queen Mary and Queen Charlotte films which make the characters Black when they weren’t. I happen to find this immensely unhelpful, akin to encouraging imperial guilt which only makes the white population resentful and essentially guilt-tripping people into things. Making them feel bad about themselves for no reason. I don’t like that is all. Was reading The Atlantic recently, which I love, and there was an oldish article exploring why ‘Black’ should be capitalised and ‘white’ should not. Please note I always do the above without question.

The article rejected the view that this is exclusively because the Neo-Nazis on the internet have already claimed the term. Makes sense, but you are still capitalising one and not the other, prioritising one over the other, sending a message of showing preference. It’s the same rationale as you cite in relation to the overly diverse ads, i.e. that this rebalanced a previously unbalanced space. I understand the idea, but I think you cannot favour one group over another to right a historical wrong, especially in this symbolic way, which is in a sense more insulting to the others.

Equality is a lovely idea but this is nothing like it, this is bullying people into feeling bad. The last time Germany was forced to pay reparations for past sins... we know what happened. Honestly, @Yoda, if I got banned it would leave me very disappointed, but if I just broke a rule, so be it. I do think this is important to acknowledge.

A lot of right-wing extremist violence stems from being made to feel guilty. I know of a boy at school, aged just 6, who was kissed by another boy in the toilets on the lips, hard. He complained to his mum that he was made to feel uncomfortable and she complained to the school. The boy got kicked out because his reaction was ‘not tolerant of differences’ and so his family must be intolerant too. I work with his mother. You will say these are not ‘concrete’ examples and I understand why, but surely you see that anyone complaining about that would ruin their life, their name would get into the papers. It is obvious, I feel. The same way we don’t plaster gang rape victims’ names all over the media. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. People have to be unbelievably brave to stand up and say, ‘This happened to me’, and most people are not.

I understand this is as extreme as the blackface example, but I do think making people perpetually feel bad will never benefit anyone. I have seen evidence that white kids do feel that these ads are, if not excluding, but then guilt-tripping them. I was running a creative writing class for 10-year-olds and a kid asked whether he ‘had’ to have a Black character to pass. I was at a loss.

I understand that Black children are damaged by stereotypes, but so are white children who learn at school that they descend from the most bigoted, and if they’re lucky and sit tight and give way to the underrepresented, they can perhaps one day atone. I know real teenage boys who feel bullied every minute of the day by the girls at their school who feel they are untouchable.

Not because I wasn’t represented, because I didn’t approve of their virtue signalling. I am not the said white man from the West Midlands. I would ‘boycott them’, if you like, because my libertarian values don’t align with theirs and they annoy me by wearing their ‘woke’ values on their sleeve where they could have been more restrained. I would do the same if a company, I don’t know, was only hiring women or did anything else that I consider extreme.

I can’t find the article I want just now but I will, so far, I have found this: https://www.hattonjameslegal.co.uk/a...mployment-law/

As we see here, ‘egalitarian sexism’ is kind of-sort of legal, sadly, so yes, I would boycott that business due to their values not aligning with mine. I would actually tell them because I get carried away when this all comes up that I think it is disgraceful that they do that. Show me one company where you can say you don’t hire women and not be obliterated. These are double standards and I despise that. I know some of the things I say may feel like double standards to you, but I am doing my best to be objective and I don’t feel the female-only company owner is.

Also see a female-only plumbing company from Australia, I would boycott them for the same reason.https://www.femalechoiceplumbing.com.au/

By the way, people are welcome to boycott companies due to a perceived lack of diversity. The issue is whether the company should court these customers so desperately at the expense of others. I do think white young men are being made to feel they are in the back of the queue. And guess what, when you have a diverse ad with all types of people standing side by side, the white person will nearly always be a woman. Even that I find to be on the nose and sort of, you know, condescending. As in, Oh, we couldn’t possibly show a young white straight man for a change, that’s a big no-no.

As I said, I think the said people are likely to cut their losses and crawl away to lick their wounds.

One of the best examples of being pressured to diverse-cast is The Witcher writer Lauren Hissrich, who actually went as far as to promise fans she wouldn’t change a character’s gender or race if she found herself “feeling ‘liberal’ that day.” (Her words). This, I believe, shows her original intention as a creator was to keep everyone white. She won’t admit it now, but come on, she made a public statement promising not to do it at the time. The original is an all-white Polish series yet she ended up racebending. The Witcher has been on a hiatus for ages so I guess that didn’t go down well.

Samuel L. Jackson was cast as Fury in the Marvel stuff, the 1997 Cinderella was racebent and Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel, an apparently explicitly white mermaid, in 2019 (for some reason this makes me laugh, can’t explain).

Well, I may be a hardened cynic but that’s just life. I have experienced my fair share of Ivy League **** from all sides, from being forced to apply to being bullied for not wanting to go there. People want to preserve the status quo in all things, we can lament that but this is human nature.

But the same favouritism can be and is shown to someone’s literal neighbours (see Matt Hancock of the U.K. and his pub owner neighbour who got an eye-watering COVID contract). I mean, why is it any more fair if the diversity hire gets a free pass in the above CV situation and the white West Midlands guy (not that his CV would even make it onto the recruiter’s desk, but no matter) does not? It is just reverse favouritism, please note as we agreed I am steering clear of the term ‘discrimination’ in this context.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.t...rinkle-in-time

This is not directly relevant to your points above, but I’ve been trying to find it earlier and couldn’t. It explores the ways in which ‘progressive’ films are lauded just for being diverse and pushed to the forefront of marketing campaigns at the expense of other films, even if the diverse contender is ‘objectively awful’. You are probably right that this will eventually sort itself out and things will even out in 50+ years (hope I won’t be dead), but these years are going to be ****ing tough.

I should hope you could spell ‘burden’, but, alas... hope is a thing with feathers... if it was an attempt at humour, apologies...

Edit: oh, I’m so sorry, I guess you mean a mule born of a horse and a she-ass which belongs to a white man!

Nepotism is life. Removing life’s obstacles for some people but not others is reverse... see, @Takoma11, I’m trying! Reverse prejudice.

Would have never in a million years called Scott Rudin, whom you’ve used twice as an example, a ‘creator’ or ‘artist’ in any shape or form. He’s an admin guy. A random generic Hollywood exec, if you ask me. Would agree with your point with regards to, say, Hitchcock. But let’s not mix up bullying bosses (again, in any industry) who are so good at what they do that they are left alone and what we were originally discussing, which is creators having to adapt to generic ‘inclusivity’ standards. Not the same thing at all to me. The very idea of anyone saying that ‘another white face on the screen’ is not needed to the creator is absurd, regardless of context.

‘Force majeure’ is not a literal term, it is used to indicate circumstances out of someone’s control, which nepotism is.