Reel Talk: Responsible Diversity

While it always seems to be baby steps, Hollywood blockbusters seem to be making steps towards a more inclusive movie scene. Whether or not it was a hit, the fact that Get Out and it's focus on the experience of black people, in particular black men, around supposedly progressive white people, got made and a giant release is a big deal, as are the multi-cultural casts of the recent Star Wars films and the Best Picture win for Moonlight. Still since there is plenty of work to be done, and film and television have a ton of influence in shaping public opinion and ideas, here's some guidelines for diversifying responsibly.

Cross-Check Your Casting/Concepts

Some of the most detrimental racism comes from people that don't even realize they're doing it. Which is why emphasizing diversity in your casting and your screenplays is a great place to start. Include women, non-white and LGBTQ characters in your scripts. Cast colorblind even if the script doesn't say so. You don't need to have a quota per say, but simply picturing other races in roles that would traditionally be white men is a good place to start. The easiest script hack you have is to give your characters non-American nationalities. 

Good Examples: Rogue One and The Fast & The Furious series both have diverse casts and women in leading roles. For TV I'll also include the CW's Arrowverse for bringing in LGBTQ characters (still working on diversfying those lead roles though).

Avoid Stereotyping

This can be best summed up as, whatever you generally associate with a particular race, ethnicity, or sexual preference, avoid unless absolutely necessary and/or honest. I think this along with casting is how you end up with a lot of unintentional but very obvious racism like ok we're fighting terrorism, time for a casting call of Middle Eastern men or the gay best friend with an endless supply of one-liners. You can have stock characters, every movie has one or two, but when you can break out of those stereotypes and provide depth.

Good Examples: Scott Pilgrim's gay roommates Wallace may be a sarcastic quip machine but he's not played fay and Dope's drug-dealer gives an underling a grammar lesson before delivering a beating. Also Mahershala Ali as a drug-dealer/father-figure in Moonlight.

Give Women Agency

By now you've likely heard of the Bechdel test, which a movie passes or fails depending on whether or not two women converse about something besides men. Nowadays even more tests based on famous stereotype defying female characters exist including Aliens' Ripley, Mako Mori from Pacific Rim, and Furiosa from Mad Mad: Fury Road. The main attribute that joins them all together? Agency. Each of these characters has a distinctive goal and use their awesome attributes to accomplish it, without a man carrying the majority of the load, without romance being the payoff. Ripley wants to survive and save as many lives as possible. Mako wants revenge and Furiosa wants freedom, redemption, revenge, and complete destruction of the patriarchy. Give'em hell ladies.

Good Examples: The three above are great as are Rey from The Force Awakens and Sarah Connor from Terminator 2.

Cast LGBTQ Actors Whenever Possible (Especially in LGBTQ Roles)

Jefferey Tambour famously said in his Emmy acceptance speech that he would be perfectly comfortable being the last cis man to play a transgendered person on television. I think this is a wonderful sentiment. Not only because people within the LGBTQ community are incredibly talented, but they can personally connect to roles in a way few others can. I understand that most movies with gay or transgendered characters have very good intentions, but when you have nothing but straight cis voices around that will filter its way into the finished product. Give LGBTQ actors their shot, their due, and most importantly a voice.

Good Examples: Laverne Cox on Orange is the New Black.

The Payoff: More Money and More Markets

I seriously doubt anyone in America rushed to see the latest XXX movie The Return of Xander Cage. But as of this writing that movie is the biggest box office hit of the year intertionally. Why? Because pretty much every character is from a different nation including two martial arts stars (Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa) and even a cameo from a famous soccer player. Turns out people really like to see Hollywood movies with people from their country of origin...