I know, I know, the title makes it seem like I have a conspiracy theory to tell you. “Hollywood hating diversity” is more of a thought than a funny statement. I can’t quite wrap my head around everything that Hollywood is doing recently about diversity and gender-swapping. And it becomes more worrisome when you realize that the industry has been shaping and educating us since its conception.
I see two repeating themes: the black best friend and the race of the antagonist. Let’s talk about the first one. I may be talking as a foreigner outside of the U.S. right now, but I always found the idea of having a black best friend fascinating. And why wouldn’t I? Hollywood has educated me into thinking that having a black best friend is the best decision I can make!
Rush Hour, Lethal Weapon, heck, even Captain America! All these buddy movies show that a black best friend is the perfect sidekick for any adventure you want. He is reliable and always has your back, no matter what!
And it’s utterly amazing how someone’s mindset can change the way you see certain ideas. Honestly, it doesn’t help much. There is more representation, yes, but black characters should exist with their own storylines, not only following the white guy around. It’s a step forward but it could improve (like Sam Wilson recently in the Falcon and The Winter Soldier series. God, so good).
And the second point: the race of the antagonists. Check the years and relate them to the political landscape. You will find that current relations between the U.S. and other countries tend to define the race of movie bad guys. Germans are the most common one, Russians here and there but we could also add Chinese, North Koreans and Mexicans. Funnily enough, British is another common one, though likely for different reasons. Maybe because of their accents. Depending on the conflict, movies will educate you into knowing which one is the nation’s enemy.
And you may be thinking, “this guy probably lost his mind.” And you are probably right, but you also made it this far into the article, so why not descend into madness further with me?
This leaves me with a scary question. Why is Hollywood pushing so hard for gender-swapping, race-swapping, and more diversity, even when people are hating it? I honestly don’t get the anger of changing a character’s gender. It’s a fresh take, as long as it’s good. But these situations are happening more and more and oddly enough, are increasingly annoying every time.
If we consider that Hollywood educates us with its movies, could they be educating us into hating diversity? Think about it. If they wanted to educate us into “loving it”, they would do things right, wouldn’t they? But it’s getting more common to have this gender or race swap situation and people immediately hate it. Like they are doing it on purpose. Testing our patience and making us hate something that should be good, by making it look bad.
It would be interesting to see in a few years that they learned their lesson and stopped all these diversity attempts. Our new programming will make us feel relieved that we won, but what if they did instead? And hating diversity was their plan to make us falter and go a step back?
As I said, it’s an opinion, one that I haven’t seen anyone share anywhere else. I hope it’s not the case and this is just a silly article that gets lost in the archive. But it’s worth thinking about it. Best case scenario, this is silly and Hollywood is actually screwing this up. So forget about it and take a look at some more serious articles from FictionTalk here.
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Agreed