A thread for discussing representation and diversity in all kinds of media. This covers creators and casting decisions as well as characters and in-universe discussions.
Historical works and decisions are in-scope as well, not just recent news.
Please put any spoilers behind tags and clearly state which work(s) they apply to.
This week, producer Ross Putnam started a Twitter account called "femscriptintros
", where he puts up examples of how women are introduced in the screenplays he's read. And nearly all of sound like terrible porn or are too concerned with emphasizing said lady is beautiful despite whatever traits she may have. Here's a Take Two podcast made today where he talks about it.
(Edited April 19 2024 to add mod pinned post)
Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 19th 2024 at 11:45:51 AM
I'm not insane, I'm not… not insane!
After Matt McMuscles' "Wha Happun?" episode on Beyond Good & Evil, I checked out the trailers for the sequel that may or may not eventually come out, and goddammit I want this game to be a thing!
How many games are there with a black protagonist for one? That south-east Asian-ish setting looks pretty unique too. Though I'm not sure why the protags have a Cockney (?) accent. 
The problem with that game is that it's apparently a multiplayer game featuring Character Customization rather than a specific linear narrative and thus the trailer isn't representative of what kind of protagonist it will necessarily feature.
I'm not insane, I'm not… not insane!
I guess so… It's unlikely that there will be much left of the original concept when/if it comes out anyway. It's still cool to imagine.
Flippé de participer à ce grand souper, je veux juste m'occuper de taper mon propre tempo.
A review of “Promising Young Woman” criticizing it as misleading in calling itself a “cheeky #MeToo revenge thriller”.
And a review of Them, criticizing it as “drowning in terror and trauma, and little else.”
That's a take on Promising Young Woman that I can't agree with, especially the claim that it absolves men (of what? Virtually every guy in the movie is varying degress of scum).
Also this:
The point of contention is that the author wanted a movie in which a female vigilante goes around killing rapists. That isn't a problem in and of itself but that the movie didn't go that route doesn't undermine its commentary on rape culture nor does that make it a movie that punishes women and absolves men.
I won't comment on Them since I haven't watched the series. Though I will say I'm surprised given the subject matter and title that it has no connection to Jordan Peel's Us.
Edited by windleopard on Apr 12th 2021 at 7:08:04 AM
Doctor of Doctorates
It sounds more like someone had different expectations from PYT than it delivered and their judging it against what they expected/wanted rather than what it actually is/says.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."
Goku Black
Yikes this person sounds disturbed.....
Edited by miraculous on Apr 12th 2021 at 6:57:14 AM
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
The Unknown Unknown
... Yeah, that doesn't sound comforting.
A cruel, sick joke is still a joke, and sometimes all you can do is laugh.
While I enjoyed Promising Young Woman (well, "enjoyed" isn't really the right word), I can certainly see where Siddiqi is coming from in some of her criticisms. Molina's scene, for example, while powerful, loses a lot of its narrative impact when viewed through the narrow time-frame the movie gives us.
There is a sense of "wanting something different", which isn't super valid, but there was definitely a disconnect in the way PYW was marketed versus what it's also about. And a lot of the praise for it seems...well, not undeserved, but overly self-congratulatory, also.
Edited by ArthurEld on Apr 12th 2021 at 9:54:32 AM
Tangentially related (via Carey Mulligan): this SNL "Lesbian Period Drama" sketch (here for those not in the US) spoofs the lesbian period drama trend in film. The sketch itself spoofs Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Ammonite, but there's been a bunch morenote .
This video by Evelyn Dar (predates the sketch by a coupla months) analyzes this trend and how it arose and whether or not it's a good thing.
- Compared to contemporary lesbian films, these films tend to have bigger budget, more A-listers, and more marketing/release.
- But Not Too Gay and "but not too diverse", so "safe": because they tend to be set in Europe or the US, most have conventionally attractive white leads.
- Double Forbidden Love (WLW x period piece characters are more subdued/repressed)
- It also describes the Catch-22 of meh representation in general: you watch it, you let studios know you want more of the same; you don't, the studios think there is no market for representation at all.
Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 12th 2021 at 11:32:31 AM
Carrie-Anne Moss shares stories about the type of roles she was offered after she turned 40.
Edited by windleopard on Apr 12th 2021 at 11:13:56 AM
Oh, bother.
Ah, Hollywood. Promoting unrealistic beauty standards and ageism among women since its inception.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Warning for spoilers for the t.v. series "Them" and for discussion about rape and violence.
Discussions about Black pain and Black trauma in horror are conversations that require a lot of nuance. Horror is a genre built on unpacking trauma, of facing the darkest evil and defeating it—or at least halting it for some time. With Black horror, there has been a discussion about how much racial trauma really needs to be a part of any of these stories for it live in both places: Blackness and horror.
Them is a horror anthology series on Amazon Prime that was created by Little Marvin and executive produced by Lena Waithe. This first season, called Them: Covenant, follows a Black family who move from North Carolina to an all-white neighborhood in Los Angeles during the Second Great Migration during 1953.
‘The family’s idyllic home slowly transforms into an epicenter of evil forces, next-door and otherworldly, that threaten to haunt, ravage and destroy them,” says the description, and a racist haunted house, while not original, can be done well. After all, originality is not the only thing we look for in media. Horror is built upon a foundation, and the haunted house is a great place to start.
For me, Them seemed a bit uninspired, but something worth checking out—that was until I saw a piece by Greg Braxton on the L. A Times: “The racist violence in Amazon’s new series left execs ‘shaken.’ Does it go too far?”
- TW: Violence, Rape, and Spoilers for Them.**
Braxton described a scene that takes place in the fifth episode, and it made me feel sick.
What made me sick was not just the violence, but that I could think of actual Black folks who were victims of this kind of brutal violence—men, women, and children.
That’s the thing about putting hyper-real racial violence in horror films. Haunted houses are not real. Freddy, Jason, etc. are not real. Violent lynch mobs that rape women and murder children then burn them all? Very, very real. In 1918, a woman named Mary Turner was lynched and murdered while eight months pregnant and there are truly horrific accounts of what happened to her unborn child during the process that I cannot even bring myself to recount here. You can decide for yourself to look into it.
Get Out had an original ending where the lead character, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), went to jail for murdering the body-snatching white people. It was changed because test audiences found it to be too dark, and we got the amazing, superior ending, with TSA bae saving the day. That is because if we are going to have these dark narratives about Black pain and Black horror, it needs to be matched with some joy, some love, some levity, because the reality is not far away—especially when we are going to invoke things that did happen.
The Stepford Wives has always worked so well for me as a horror text (especially the book) because it takes something so outlandish as a concept (men turning their wives into robots) and uses it to explore gaslighting, gender roles, and the lengths the patriarchy will go to in order to protect itself. There is no rape scene, or big “trauma” moment—just the horrific realization that your male partner could and would replace you, all while telling you nothing is wrong.
That is effective social commentary in horror. That is interesting.
We don’t need to see Black infants being murdered on a horror program about racism when Black children still get murdered by the state.
I personally have no interest in watching Them. Lovecraft Country was already too much for me in a lot of ways and that wasn't even really scary half the time. I do have a mixed feelings about the black horror train.
I think it is important for black folks to continue to explore that trauma through storytelling, as it is an opportunity that we've rarely been afforded in the past. Get Out is an exceptional and groundbreaking film that arguably started a renaissance and as a black person pursuing filmmaking, I can't help but be grateful for it.
At the same, I'm...so tired. Not only is the black horror subgenre exhausting to watch, but it continuously perpetuates the exploitation of black trauma. We live in a world where social media provides a front row seat to all of the real life horror that black people experience everyday. However, you want to know what black people also provide on social media? Comedy, laughter, talent, education, triumph, unity, joy. This is blackness and Jordan Peele understood this in both Get Out and Us. I want more of that kind of storytelling. I want more movies and shows that understand that in spite of all the trauma and fighting, black people still live. Some black people are *gasp* happy!
Lastly, can we just give someone else a chance? While I do NOT want this form of commodification of trauma to be exerted on other POC, there are a plethora of other disenfranchised groups that deserve the opportunity to explore their historic trauma in the same way. Like seriously can we get more native movies?
The Unknown Unknown
This exploitation of Black trauma in horror also feels kinda dogwhistle-y. Like “visit a bunch of atrocities on these black people under the guise of horror.”
A cruel, sick joke is still a joke, and sometimes all you can do is laugh.
The King Without a Kingdom
Get Out and Us had meaningful shit to say as well: the Positive Discrimination critique and the mind-bending elements respectively. The rest of these are just “Let’s watch these black people suffer for 2 hours while not being fun about it like the old slashers.”
It's been 3000 years…
I sense that Peele saw this exploitative trend coming (and also personally wanted to do different things) which is why Us doesn’t deal directly with racist horror the way Get Out does. And in his films’ grimmest periods there were still periods of levity like Rod’s Genre Savvy subplot and the Wilson kids arguing over who got more clone kills like a video game.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Apr 14th 2021 at 11:05:43 AM
Trends are cyclical. Exploitation Films were a thing decades ago (hence the trope), and now we're coming back around to another wave of it. Of course there have been a few here and there the entire time, but now we're back in the situation where it's basically a genre.
Black Panther seemed like it was going to lead the charge on black empowerment films instead of black exploitation, but that genre doesn't seem to have quite found its legs yet.
Edited by Discar on Apr 14th 2021 at 5:14:36 AM
"BTS Has Once Again Been the Subject of Racist 'Comedy' & It Needs to Stop".
The segment is just the latest in a steady stream of racist "jokes" directed at BTS. [article then goes on to describe various previous incidents: full list ]
Collectively, it seems to me that these incidents form a veritable bingo card of anti-Asian, and specifically anti-Korean, racism. Needless to say, these kinds of jokes are repulsive at any time, but in an era in which xenophobia and targeted violence against Asian people is more prevalent than ever, they're especially egregious. The frequent association with COVID-19 in particular normalises and fuels anti-Asian conspiracy theories and hatred, which in turn has very real and deadly consequences.
BTS themselves rarely speak out about the racism they've been subjected to, although leader RM said in an interview with Reuters in 2020 that they feel like "aliens" in the American music industry, adding "we don't know if there's a place for us or not". And in the wake of the Atlanta Spa Shootings, the band tweeted a more direct statement about their experiences, expressing their condolences to the victims of the attack and voicing their own "grief and anger". [...]
Surrounded by weirdoes
Good god, people! Have some class and morals, please.
Wake me up at your own risk.
Ok, what? This quote is bugging me.
Doesn't she realized she's stereotyping cause just because your Black-British doesn't mean your parents or grand-parents were from the Caribbean since they could have been from other Commonwealth countries like Ghana, South Africa or even the United States.
This is like saying a Malaysian girl is not Asian enough because she's doesn't have fellow Malays as friends and she's not eating Bbq Pork buns except the whole thing is wrong since the Malaysian girl is a student studying at a UK University and she doesn't eat pork cause she's a Muslim.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Idris Elba himself is of Sierra Leonean descent. It's super tone deaf and ignores that black people have more than one culture or background.
Edited by Zendervai on Apr 14th 2021 at 1:20:44 PM
Not Three Laws compliant.
Also, I thought the point of Luther was that he didn't have any friends period because he was antisocial.
Well that's pretty cool.
Sanity is the Lie, there is only Madness.