Another stupid Annenberg representation study is looking to emotionally blackmail the movies into a diversity-driven suicide pact.
What could be more anti-art than race, sex, and sexual orientation quotas in movies? If I were king and someone suggested I institute a quota to increase the number of sympathetic conservatives and Christians from where it is now (zero percent) to be more in line with the population (50 percent), I’d refuse.
Why?
Because the whole idea of “representation” is stupid.
Growing up in the eighties, almost all of pop culture was black, and we didn’t even notice. Bill Cosby was the biggest primetime TV star. Oprah Winfrey was daytime television’s biggest star. Eddie Murphy was the biggest name in movies. Prince, Lionel Richie, Tina Turner, and Michael Jackson ruled music. Richard Pryor towered over stand up comedy. Don’t get me started on sports…
No one cared. No one blinked an eye. They were all appealing and relatable. Their art spoke to us, made us laugh, made us think, and spoke to our shared humanity. They were never black artists. They were American artists.
Then there was Boy George, Freddie Mercury, Elton John… No one cared that they were gay. Their sexual life was never who they were. We knew they were gay but still saw them as the thing Generation X respects most: individualists. They were never gay artists. They were British artists who had broad appeal in America and across the globe.
All the gender-bending in the eighties…? Annie Lennox, David Bowie, Mick Jagger…? Again, no one cared because the message was an American one: be who you want to be, as opposed to today’s oppressive propaganda to normalize what is not normal.
From the study:
The study’s full findings revealed little progress in overall speaking roles for female characters onscreen. Of the 4,401 speaking characters considered, only 33.6% of them were girls or women; compare that to 29.9% in 2007 and 31.7% as recently as 2023.
Who cares?
The study also examined female representation in roles behind the camera, which at 21.7% directors, 12.9% screenwriters, 27% producers and 8.4% composers saw large strides since 2007 (where composing, for instance, saw zero female composers in top 100 films), but plateaued between 2023 and 2024.
Who cares?
As far as where the study found regression in diversity gains seen in years past, Asian characters dropped from 18.4% of all speaking roles in 2023 to 13.5% in 2024, while the percentage of white characters increased in that same period. LGBTQ+ characters, meanwhile, reached just 39 speaking roles (less than 1% total, significantly below proportional representation with the U.S. population of 10%) in the top 100 films, compared to 60 in 2023 — which itself was a drop-off from 88 speaking roles in 2022. Eighty-two films in 2024 featured zero LGBTQ+ characters.
Who cares?
Look at what’s happened to Marvel and Star Wars now that casting and story decisions are made based on checking a box as opposed to who and what the audience finds appealing and can relate to.
If there’s no appeal or relatability in your characters and story, you got nothing. And Normal People cannot relate to a guy in a dress, homosexuality, someone obsessed with their identity, obnoxious girlbosses, or those who sanctimoniously strut around with a smug and arrogant chip on their shoulder eager to lecture the rest of us for the sin of not knowing the difference between a Korean and a Chinaman (like you know the difference between a Polish guy and an Irish guy).
Representation should embrace all that we share and not the nonsense that doesn’t matter that separates us.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
