Overall I agree with this article’s premise, but there are a few lines at the end that I have to push back on.
“Progressives are an important part of our society; they keep the center left, among others, in check.”
I’d argue it’s the opposite; progressives are pretty much just far leftists who tend to support extremist far left causes and be intolerant to every and all other viewpoints. They are no different than far right confederates, so I see them as radicalising the center left.
“Educated, film-snobby type people will always tend to the left, and that’s fine.”
That’s a pretty reductive and untrue fact. In the past, artists (not just filmmakers) tended to be politically disparate; there were left-leaning artists and right-leaning artists. The idea that artists are inherently left-leaning is a rather recent idea shaped by the sort of institutions that you called out.
I’m open to being proven wrong, but based on my observations I believe it’s more complicated than how you’re framing them. Anyway, congrats on your growing success.
Fair points, I have to think about them. I think the extremes on both sides operate, in functioning societies, as canaries in the coal mines for serious issues, but are generally very bad at ruling or solving those issues.
They function mostly as opposition parties, and fall apart when they have to rule.
There is a correlation between education levels and left leaning sensibilities, although that could be because our universities are so progressive these days. Thanks for reading, I’ll give it some more thought!
I find it mildly surprising to learn that educated people on the right don’t readily self-fellate, given that being a conservative is effectively a form of institutionally legitimized selfishness.
Well, at least this impulse to pre‑assign who can be good, who can be evil, and who must always stand in for a whole group isn’t bleeding into how we argue about actual real‑life tragedies or anything…
My son shared a Hollywood apartment with a former fraternity brother who was a handsome blond kid trying to break into acting. He got cast in two roles:
The burglar in a burglar alarm commercial
“The Southside Rapist” in a popular television show set in Chicago.
When I saw Sinners for the first time, I liked it well enough until the absurd “Michael B Jordan goes Rambo on the KKK” coda, which seemed so cartoonish (not to mention disconnected from the movie’s plot) that I just wrote it off as a stupid flourish. But when I watched the movie for a second time, I realized it was much worse than that: the entire sequence is the summation of the movie’s one and only thought on race, which is that whites are morally, spiritually and physically inferior to blacks. If we ever get back to a place in which racial chauvinism is seen as bad no matter which group it flatters, that movie’s racial politics will be seen as extremely problematic.
This essay lead me to realize that Sinners would have been much more interesting if the KKK had wound up fighting the vampires. (To the death if need be.) The vampires represent the multicultural melting pot, appropriating African-American culture by seeking invitation into a necessarily segregated private party. The KKK are against that too!
Interesting article. I must be one of the only people in the world who didn’t like Sinners. The lead playing both brothers was distracting and not well done. I wish it had just stuck with the first half - the music and dance numbers in the pub were amazing. Alternately it could have cut the first half and been about vampires I guess…
The same is true in books these days sadly. I read a lot of space opera and post apocalyptia. The minute a religious person or group shows up you know they are evil UNLESS they are Islamists in which case they will be good guys. If an American war veteran pops up he will have PTSD, be a substance abuser, probably be evil, and certainly will be haunted by his “war crimes” which are just assumed. It’s very tedious.
I feel sorry for black male comic actors who have a hard time getting cast in all the Dumb Dad commercials these days.
The typical TV commercial is aimed at the wife/mother since she spends more money than her husband (who on average earns more). So, the usual commercial consists of a comic Dumb Dad who would buy the wrong product if not for the wise intervention of his smart wife or daughter.
As Joe Biden liked to point out, TV commercials these days love to depict racially mixed marriages. But because the husband has to be the funny dumb one, that means we have a plethora of commercials with white husbands and black wives, since everybody is uncomfortable depicting blacks as lower in IQ.
But that means that a whole lot of black actors who are hilarious at acting dumb are out of the running for most TV commercials.
I’d like to see an SNL sketch in which Tracy Morgan and Benedict Cumberbatch are auditioning for the role of the Dumb Dad in a lucrative TV commercial. But Cumberbatch gets hired due to this logic, so poor Tracy goes off on a perfectly reasonable rant about how he ought to play the Dumb Dad with the smart black wife and smart black daughter, instead of computer genius Alan Turing here.
Not excusing it, but you can understand how we got here. Back in the 80s and 90s, were you a male actor of South Asian or Arab ethnicity? There were many roles available for you! Terrorist #1, Terrorist #2, Terrorist #3…. So yeah, there did need to be a correction. But things may be changing - I think Kumail Nanjani has recently talked about how he’s been frustrated because he WANTS to play an interesting villain and he’s had a tough time getting anyone to cast him for that.
Oh yeah everything used to be super racist, no question. But inverting it is also kind of boring. It’s an overcorrection, one I’m trying to push a bit back toward the middle so I can enjoy my stupid stories, haha.
Probably had some interesting things to say, but I zoned out at “centering of whiteness”. My bad, but any use of language like just makes my skin crawl.
love this spot on. i work in casting and yeah it’s just this trap people get into, overwhelmingly good intentions but becomes increasingly stupid. You end up limiting the amount of roles non white people are given a chance to play, creating worlds on screen that are clearly not like the world audiences live in, reducing everyone into simplistic stereotypes, and making shows and movies less interesting or good than they could be if we weren’t determined to be so frantically racially neurotic. i have some truly insane and bizarre stories.
Yeah it’s all good intentions until someone ultimately either gets the job or not. It reminds me a bit of how Peter Dinklage called the Seven Dwarves regressive and then the non famous dwarves were upset that they were out of a job.
If you ever want to share a crazy story I’m game! I felt like that casting episode of the studio could have been so much more interesting.
Tarantino left some controversial but interesting commentary in his *Cinema Speculations* on the casting of Harvey Keitel as the 'white pimp' in *Taxi Driver*. You've hit the nail on the head in identifying a long-running trend contributing to the generic commodification of most Hollywood productions. Encouragingly, it does feel like the tide is turning towards a film environment powered more so by less narrowly circumscribed independent cinema.
Yeah in the Paul Schrader screenplay. If you know Schrader, you know the original was likely more reminiscent of Scorsese's uncomfortable cameo as the taxi passenger spying on his adulterous wife. Certainly not a 'white pimp' proponent, we might say.
I wonder if these intersectional morality rules are also responsible for one of my big pet peeves -- how utterly unlikeable and dull protagonists seem to be now. Like we're supposed to automatically care about a character just because they're assumed to be oppressed. Such that writers need not lift a finger to dramatize the protagonist's struggle, nor show any enviable character traits. They've simply coded the characters in some way. Which leads me at some point to be yelling in my head "I couldn't care less what happens to you!!!" Click.
Yes I agree that some sort of oppression seems to be automatically assumed to generate sympathy with audiences. But in real life people of all identities earn our affection through their actual behavior and character.
There's an old joke that "the left can't meme" i.e. jokes made by woke people tend not to be very funny.
I think this is part of the same phenomenon. Surprise is the essence of humour, and a joke written by someone who's bending over backwards to ensure he doesn't offend anyone can never be surprising.
The Onion used to be quite funny and then got pretty bad there for a while. But it does seem to be getting better again. SNL is another obvious example.
Even during the height (nadir?) of Woke - 2021 covid shots, or ELSE, I'd suggest - it felt like stand-up comics were at the vanguard of the fight to restore normalcy. Their profession demands free speech maximalization, so they saw woke as a clear threat. "Bad Thoughts" seems to be pushing at boundaries again and, as a result, being funny.
Overall I agree with this article’s premise, but there are a few lines at the end that I have to push back on.
“Progressives are an important part of our society; they keep the center left, among others, in check.”
I’d argue it’s the opposite; progressives are pretty much just far leftists who tend to support extremist far left causes and be intolerant to every and all other viewpoints. They are no different than far right confederates, so I see them as radicalising the center left.
“Educated, film-snobby type people will always tend to the left, and that’s fine.”
That’s a pretty reductive and untrue fact. In the past, artists (not just filmmakers) tended to be politically disparate; there were left-leaning artists and right-leaning artists. The idea that artists are inherently left-leaning is a rather recent idea shaped by the sort of institutions that you called out.
I’m open to being proven wrong, but based on my observations I believe it’s more complicated than how you’re framing them. Anyway, congrats on your growing success.
Fair points, I have to think about them. I think the extremes on both sides operate, in functioning societies, as canaries in the coal mines for serious issues, but are generally very bad at ruling or solving those issues.
They function mostly as opposition parties, and fall apart when they have to rule.
There is a correlation between education levels and left leaning sensibilities, although that could be because our universities are so progressive these days. Thanks for reading, I’ll give it some more thought!
Many educated people are on the right, we just don’t fucking suck our own dicks about it in public.
If you’re so educated, try to think of a less vulgar metaphor.
I find it mildly surprising to learn that educated people on the right don’t readily self-fellate, given that being a conservative is effectively a form of institutionally legitimized selfishness.
Let me guess - you work at Starbucks?
Well, at least this impulse to pre‑assign who can be good, who can be evil, and who must always stand in for a whole group isn’t bleeding into how we argue about actual real‑life tragedies or anything…
That’s really interesting, I never thought about it that way.
I assume this reply is an example of ironic wit…
And by this, I was actually referring to HG’s reply to VB’s comment…but I suspect both of them are being ironic & witty with each other. :)
Same. At least I hope.
You are correct sir.
My son shared a Hollywood apartment with a former fraternity brother who was a handsome blond kid trying to break into acting. He got cast in two roles:
The burglar in a burglar alarm commercial
“The Southside Rapist” in a popular television show set in Chicago.
He then moved home to study coding.
This made me laugh out loud. That sounds like a very 2020s hollywood white boy kind of run.
When I saw Sinners for the first time, I liked it well enough until the absurd “Michael B Jordan goes Rambo on the KKK” coda, which seemed so cartoonish (not to mention disconnected from the movie’s plot) that I just wrote it off as a stupid flourish. But when I watched the movie for a second time, I realized it was much worse than that: the entire sequence is the summation of the movie’s one and only thought on race, which is that whites are morally, spiritually and physically inferior to blacks. If we ever get back to a place in which racial chauvinism is seen as bad no matter which group it flatters, that movie’s racial politics will be seen as extremely problematic.
This essay lead me to realize that Sinners would have been much more interesting if the KKK had wound up fighting the vampires. (To the death if need be.) The vampires represent the multicultural melting pot, appropriating African-American culture by seeking invitation into a necessarily segregated private party. The KKK are against that too!
Also; them joining forces would have been quite the twist.
Yeah the first half is much stronger than the second. The KKK scene was just a bit boring and gratuitous, almost like that move Death Wish.
Interesting article. I must be one of the only people in the world who didn’t like Sinners. The lead playing both brothers was distracting and not well done. I wish it had just stuck with the first half - the music and dance numbers in the pub were amazing. Alternately it could have cut the first half and been about vampires I guess…
The same is true in books these days sadly. I read a lot of space opera and post apocalyptia. The minute a religious person or group shows up you know they are evil UNLESS they are Islamists in which case they will be good guys. If an American war veteran pops up he will have PTSD, be a substance abuser, probably be evil, and certainly will be haunted by his “war crimes” which are just assumed. It’s very tedious.
I feel sorry for black male comic actors who have a hard time getting cast in all the Dumb Dad commercials these days.
The typical TV commercial is aimed at the wife/mother since she spends more money than her husband (who on average earns more). So, the usual commercial consists of a comic Dumb Dad who would buy the wrong product if not for the wise intervention of his smart wife or daughter.
As Joe Biden liked to point out, TV commercials these days love to depict racially mixed marriages. But because the husband has to be the funny dumb one, that means we have a plethora of commercials with white husbands and black wives, since everybody is uncomfortable depicting blacks as lower in IQ.
But that means that a whole lot of black actors who are hilarious at acting dumb are out of the running for most TV commercials.
I’d like to see an SNL sketch in which Tracy Morgan and Benedict Cumberbatch are auditioning for the role of the Dumb Dad in a lucrative TV commercial. But Cumberbatch gets hired due to this logic, so poor Tracy goes off on a perfectly reasonable rant about how he ought to play the Dumb Dad with the smart black wife and smart black daughter, instead of computer genius Alan Turing here.
There was a time when laundry commercials meant something in America.
This line was the laugh I needed today. Cheers.
Not excusing it, but you can understand how we got here. Back in the 80s and 90s, were you a male actor of South Asian or Arab ethnicity? There were many roles available for you! Terrorist #1, Terrorist #2, Terrorist #3…. So yeah, there did need to be a correction. But things may be changing - I think Kumail Nanjani has recently talked about how he’s been frustrated because he WANTS to play an interesting villain and he’s had a tough time getting anyone to cast him for that.
Oh yeah everything used to be super racist, no question. But inverting it is also kind of boring. It’s an overcorrection, one I’m trying to push a bit back toward the middle so I can enjoy my stupid stories, haha.
There was a funny short in the 2000s about an arab actor who had to keep auditioning for terrorist roles. I can’t remember what it was called.
Probably had some interesting things to say, but I zoned out at “centering of whiteness”. My bad, but any use of language like just makes my skin crawl.
It’s a hard balance on pieces like this how much to bring in a bit of activist language to soften the blow.
love this spot on. i work in casting and yeah it’s just this trap people get into, overwhelmingly good intentions but becomes increasingly stupid. You end up limiting the amount of roles non white people are given a chance to play, creating worlds on screen that are clearly not like the world audiences live in, reducing everyone into simplistic stereotypes, and making shows and movies less interesting or good than they could be if we weren’t determined to be so frantically racially neurotic. i have some truly insane and bizarre stories.
Yeah it’s all good intentions until someone ultimately either gets the job or not. It reminds me a bit of how Peter Dinklage called the Seven Dwarves regressive and then the non famous dwarves were upset that they were out of a job.
If you ever want to share a crazy story I’m game! I felt like that casting episode of the studio could have been so much more interesting.
yeah i’m down! what’s your email? love the substack btw it’s so refreshing and insightful
Thanks! Hollywoodgadfly@gmail.com
Tarantino left some controversial but interesting commentary in his *Cinema Speculations* on the casting of Harvey Keitel as the 'white pimp' in *Taxi Driver*. You've hit the nail on the head in identifying a long-running trend contributing to the generic commodification of most Hollywood productions. Encouragingly, it does feel like the tide is turning towards a film environment powered more so by less narrowly circumscribed independent cinema.
I remember seeing that section come up in the scorcese doc series. It was originally written as a black character, right?
Just like they had to make the rapists in Death Wish white. Even though everyone knew that the real life examples were black.
Yeah in the Paul Schrader screenplay. If you know Schrader, you know the original was likely more reminiscent of Scorsese's uncomfortable cameo as the taxi passenger spying on his adulterous wife. Certainly not a 'white pimp' proponent, we might say.
Haha I loved his recent AI girlfriend breakup revelation.
I wonder if these intersectional morality rules are also responsible for one of my big pet peeves -- how utterly unlikeable and dull protagonists seem to be now. Like we're supposed to automatically care about a character just because they're assumed to be oppressed. Such that writers need not lift a finger to dramatize the protagonist's struggle, nor show any enviable character traits. They've simply coded the characters in some way. Which leads me at some point to be yelling in my head "I couldn't care less what happens to you!!!" Click.
Yes I agree that some sort of oppression seems to be automatically assumed to generate sympathy with audiences. But in real life people of all identities earn our affection through their actual behavior and character.
Great article. Would also recommend “Training Day” as a movie that succeeds by subverting casting assumptions.
Yes I remember this movie got burned at the time for giving him an Oscar for playing a villain but now I realize how rare that really is.
There's an old joke that "the left can't meme" i.e. jokes made by woke people tend not to be very funny.
I think this is part of the same phenomenon. Surprise is the essence of humour, and a joke written by someone who's bending over backwards to ensure he doesn't offend anyone can never be surprising.
The Onion used to be quite funny and then got pretty bad there for a while. But it does seem to be getting better again. SNL is another obvious example.
Even during the height (nadir?) of Woke - 2021 covid shots, or ELSE, I'd suggest - it felt like stand-up comics were at the vanguard of the fight to restore normalcy. Their profession demands free speech maximalization, so they saw woke as a clear threat. "Bad Thoughts" seems to be pushing at boundaries again and, as a result, being funny.
When Rocky beat the Russian
And ended communism.
Real racism homogenises groups of people into moral or immoral. Robs them of nuance, of conflicted inner workings.
Make the minority person the potential killer.
Set them free of the angel stereotypes. Give them agency to be good or evil.
Create a spark and rekindle our investment in the narrative.
Otherwise, we really lose all interest. We cease to care.
The movie Backrooms has a diverse cast and all the characters are flawed
Excited to see it!