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).

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.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

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.