Box-Checking Films

The pandering that sucked the air out of the room

Much of film production over the past 10-15 years has gone the way of "checking boxes" in plot and casting. There has never been anything wrong with characters and/or plots that check these boxes. However, much of the box-checking of the past decade has been done at the expense of actual good filmmaking. And that is unacceptable.

Here are some of the various boxes:

Gay

Black (Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, etc)

Trans

Gay relationship

Trans relationship

Interracial relationship

Invisible disabilities that no one will try to fix

Visible disabilities that they are upset about

Again, these are fine characteristics and/or themes, but these films/series make three mistakes with them.

1. They focus on the obstacles instead of the drive-to-triumph. Audiences don't care to watch people wallow in what the character believes is their obstacle. But viewers CAN relate to the universal theme of triumphing in spite of the odds against oneself. No audience wants to watch pity parties.

2. Many of these "box-checking" films are simply not well-done films. Any characters or themes are fine if the filmmaking is outstanding. This is not a mutually-exclusive situation, and yet many feel that the box-checking is sufficient enough. It's not. You must also make a great film.

3. Another mistake that has been made is championing inadequate films/series because the filmmaker themself checks boxes. This does the filmmaker a disservice, cheats the audience of good films, and betrays the art of filmmaking.

The focus should be on the art itself. The commitment to inclusion is implicit: If your film is outstanding, no one cares what kind of "human container" it came out of. A one-legged, albino Eskimo with two gay mommies, or a 67-year old white male. It just doesn't matter. The audience doesn't care and the resulting film doesn't care.

Studios, streamers, awards shows, and film festivals have all been guilty over the past decade of forcing a false “inclusion.” In an effort to insist that these institutions embrace all types of filmmakers and film themes/plots, they have fallen into a DEI trap of almost dismissing the quality of the film itself in favor of the quantity of boxes the film and/or filmmakers check.

An example is the current application for Oscar submission. It now incorporates a multi-page inquiry into the race, background, and sexual preference of the cast, crew, and production staff. As a writer, director, and producer of my films, I find this disrespectful of not only the filmmaker who chose these hard-working people, but of those people themselves. It reduces everyone involved to the sum of parts that were not necessarily in their control: their skin color, their gender, their sexual orientation. The inquiry does not ask about the sacrifices these people made over their lives to hone their skills, or the effort these people put into the submitted film, or the ways they went above and beyond to make that film better then it had to be. It’s insulting and dismissive.

It's the art that matters. It can come through anyone. One’s talent was indiscriminate when it was assigned. It didn't care what the human container looked like; it just was planted and lives there. You’re off-base if you’re just looking at the container.