Do movies teach stereotypes?

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.

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).

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