In his wonderful book “Blink,” writer Malcolm Gladwell provides an anecdote about the field of classical music. In brief, before the 1980s, orchestras were dominated by men (largely due to the assumption that women have weaker lungs and/or are too timid and delicate to perform boisterous pieces at an elite level). However, when an audition system was put in place to prevent selection committees from knowing the gender of the auditioning musician, suddenly women began to win the majority of auditions for top orchestras. In the US, for example, the number of women playing in the top orchestras increased fivefold after a screen system became common. What happened? Social prejudices about women, as a group, had been interfering with the auditioners’ ability to objectively evaluate women. Put another way, a system to prohibit conscious and unconscious bias from interfering in the selection process allowed for a truly objective selection process. And in the process, it highlighted the pervasive and toxic effect of sexism in the field of classical music.
What does this story have to do with minority representation on TV and movies in America? Well, a lot actually, because this article is about bias, homophobia, and its pernicious effects in Hollywood.
Consider the following: According to Autostraddle’s internal accounting, in 2018 there were 128 scripted American shows with regular and/or recurring queer female characters. That was up 12% from the 116 shows in 2017, which was up 36% from 80 shows in 2016. There were 230 characters in 2018, compared to just 85 in 2017. If that’s not astounding enough, just eight years ago, in 2010, there were only 18 regular or recurring queer female characters on TV. In 2007, GLAAD counted a mere three. Now in 2019, both “Batwoman” and “Abby’s” feature a queer titular character played by an openly queer actress, and queer characters are 8.8% of regular characters on primetime scripted broadcasting (a demographic roughly proportional to the percentage of the general American population that is queer). By every conceivable measure, TV representation is progressing. More than progressing. It has exploded in a rainbow of support from networks and showrunners.
Now consider this: According to the University of California Annenberg’s annual assessment of the top 100 grossing US films, in the last five years, lesbian characters have represented only 0.09-0.38% of speaking characters. In 2018, only 11 of the top 100 films had a lesbian character, for a total of 17 lesbians out of over 4,000 speaking characters. Including males, only 1.3% of all speaking/named characters were LGBT (this is roughly consistent with GLAAD’s findings for the year as well). The Annenberg study poignantly notes that since the start of the study over a decade ago, “the number of LGB characters on screen has changed but not the percentage.” Thus while in 2018 the number of LGBT characters in movies were more than double the number in 2014, the overall numbers remain so tiny that this change is much less than a percentage point, which is statistically insignificant. Representation in movies, in short, is not progressing an inch.
“Blink” is in part an exploration of how manipulating variables can lead us to identify bias, and the above data clearly shows the presence of conscious bias. While the television side of Hollywood has identified a need for greater diversity and has taken steps to rectify decades of exclusion, the film side of Hollywood has continued to cling to…homophobia. For the last two decades, when called out for their lack of inclusivity, movie studios have responded that they can’t have queer content because viewers will reject it. “We can’t afford to show queer content” has been an oft repeated mantra (director Paul Feig alluded to the lack of queer content as official Sony Pictures policy when explaining why out lesbian Kate McKinnon’s character in “Ghostbusters” couldn’t be openly queer in 2017). Studios stress that same-sex content will be particularly rejected in China, India, and Russia—the lionshare of overseas sales—where homosexuality is largely outlawed. The problem is, there’s no data to support the contention that queer content will lead to lowered ticket sales. In fact, there’s significant data to support the argument that queer content has no impact at all. Here are just a few examples:
“Deadpool 2” (2018) made $785 million (a sevenfold return on its $110 million budget) despite the fact that Teenage Negasonic Warhead is shown in a same-sex relationship with fellow student Yukio. According to the Times of India, seven scenes were cut for the Indian version. None of them involved references to their relationship. And when “Once Upon a Deadpool” was released as the China-safe PG-13 version, the relationship stayed. So much for the argument that foreign audiences will refuse to watch and foreign censors will refuse the content.
“XXX: The Return of Xander Cage” (2017) brought in more than half of its $346.1 million revenue from China alone even though out queer actress Ruby Rose’s character Adele Wolff was openly lesbian (her character doesn’t appear to have been censored in any international version). In total, 87% of the movie’s revenue came from overseas.
“Atomic Blonde” (2017), featuring a bisexual protagonist and a female love interest, tripled its $30 million budget for a global box office of $95.7 million. 46% of its revenue came from foreign sales, including almost $3.5 million from Russia and Central Asia, $1.8 million from Brazil, and more than half a million dollars each from Ukraine, Romania, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. Although India and the Arab countries censored out the movie’s sex scene, it clearly didn’t hurt the overall marketability of the film, suggesting that censorship doesn’t have to be a disqualifier for LGBT content.
At the same time that studios claim a sort of feigned helplessness to show queer content in their major releases, they display a painfully cynical hypocrisy when it comes to queer female content in their art house releases. Although it’s considered too “financially risky” to put LGBT content in mainstream movies, queer material has simultaneously become a shoe-in for Oscar nominations. Since 2002, 12 of the characters that spawned Best Actress nominations were queer (four wins), and five of the characters that led to Best Supporting Actress nominations were queer (one win). This means that 17 out of 170 (10%) Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress nominations were for playing a queer character. Given that queer female characters are only around 0.25% of the characters in the top 100 grossing films each year as noted above, this isn’t just statistically anomalous, it’s intentional.
Studios are specifically using queer stories as Oscar bait. But in fact, the numbers are even more significant: in the last 17 years, 23.5% of Best Actress winners played a queer character, and approximately 30% of actresses who were Oscar nominated for playing a queer character won. Overall, since 2002, A List actresses in a queer role have approximately a 50-50 chance or better at an Oscar nomination. What does this all tell us? In Gladwell’s example, orchestral auditioners couldn’t “hear” the quality of women musicians because societal norms told them that women weren’t as good musicians as men. When they made a conscious effort to curb their bias, they found that women were just as good or better than their male peers.
In Hollywood, producers hear just fine the quality of queer stories when it comes to Oscar bait. Almost every year, it’s LGBT stories that are nominated for (and win) Oscars:
2002: “The Hours” and “Frida”
2004: “Monster”
2005: “Transamerica”
2006: “Notes on a Scandal,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Capote”
2008: “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
2009: “Milk”
2010: “The Kids are All Right” and “A Single Man” (“Black Swan” also had a lesbian sex scene)
2011: “Albert Nobbs” (and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”)
2014: “Dallas Buyers Club”
2015: “Carol” and “The Imitation Game”
2016: “The Danish Girl”
2017: “Moonlight” and “Disobedience”
2018: “Call Me by Your Name”
2019: “The Favourite,” “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”
The argument that diversity doesn’t sell is a lie. Given there has now been almost a decade of data indicating that the argument against diversity isn’t rooted in financial returns, social norms, or any other indicators of success or failure, the continued claim that diversity will hurt the bottom lie is a fig leaf for bigotry and homophobia. When we look at why TV is succeeding at becoming more diverse, it’s because TV studios are bringing on more diversity everywhere. More diverse writers, more diverse showrunners, more diverse casts. Diversity breeds more diversity. Hollywood’s movie sector, however, remains perpetually stagnant. In ten years, the percentage of women on screen hasn’t increased above 33%, the presence of women behind the screen has remained static, and huge populations of minority women remain invisible.
Every year, the Annenberg study authors recommend that gender parity could be achieved by adding just five more female speaking characters per film. Every year, this suggestion is ignored. There is so much Hollywood could do to combat bias in movies, if it chose to. Scripts could be submitted namelessly. Character genders in scripts could be masked until casting time. Scripts would be chosen based on quality, not gender and race of characters. But so long as the film industry actively chooses to be homophobic, none of these measures will matter, and the queer community will have to continue to create its own independent content as a way of supplementing the few crumbs Hollywood produces each year. Sadly, this is what has happened to the African American community for decades, resulting in a largely separate and unequal second film industry. Rather than integrating all our diversity, we’re creating sub-industries. How do we solve this problem? By following TV’s example. And hiring diversity.