Thank you for writing this! More people need to understand how the entertainment industry works, and why these standards are so important. The people criticizing diversity are being disingenuously self serving, as they attempt to gatekeep the industry that bought them their bread and butter. (Also, James Woods is a sneering and awful human being, who is no better than any of the characters he’s portrayed onscreen!)

We can also talk about the revolving door of female actresses, who are simply never allowed to grow old enough to hone their craft, and being discarded after their youth has reached its peak, because Hollywood keeps chasing after each hot young thing, instead of working with the evolving talent they have. Women actors in Hollywood hit an age (and racial) ceiling, that few of them are allowed to get beyond, whereas mediocre, white male actors (and merely functional directors) are allowed to keep getting jobs, well beyond their expiration date. (Yeah, we’re looking at you GOT showrunners!)

I wrote a very long two part piece about how Hollywood’s pandering solely to the artistic tastes of straight white men, to the exclusion of all other groups, has helped to create a pop culture landscape full of stale tropes of white men, as the end all and be all of human activity, and multiple (often conflicting) stereotypes of marginalized people.

It’s so bad, we’re not even allowed to create, direct, or even star, in our own stories. This has gotten so bad (and so obvious) that even white people claim to get tired of looking at straight white people! This “old boy” tunnel vision even extends to the industries surrounding entertainment, like film reviews and criticism, and screenwriting.

And yet, there are still people out there fighting each new change as they clamor for the same ol’, same ‘ol. Hollywood needs to change, or it will become irrelevant. Telling stories outside of white male pandering, (and branching out onto new platforms), are two of the ways to do this.