Should You Add A New Layer Of Shingles? Or Re-Shingle Entirely?

This relentless drive to celebrate diversity compels people to say things that just aren’t true. When Black Panther came out, people said it was the first Black superhero movie (nope) or the first Black Marvel movie (wrong again), in an effort to give it laurels it never needed, given that it’s just a really good movie. (Imagine that, a movie getting praised for being good!) Wonder Woman (2017) and Captain Marvel (2019) both, somehow, got tons of press as pioneering movies for women superheroes, despite the fact that Supergirl came out in 1984. A part of me feels that we have to be running out of “First X to Y!” More and more of these boxes are getting checked, and so you’d think the number of “First This Type of Person to Star in an Overlong Shitty CGI Spectacle with a Dissatisfying Ending!” headlines would have a shelf life. But the takes industry finds a way. How many more “First South Asian Polyamorous Rural Taoist Family in a Hulu Series!” headlines are we going to get? Apparently many many more!

None of this means that diverse casting and stories about different kinds of people are bad; they’re good. They’re cool. I’m in favor. But these choices in casting and storytelling are not racial justice. Closing the Black-white wealth gap is racial justice. Ending mass incarceration is racial justice. Cleaning communities of color of lead and other contaminants is racial justice. Ending discriminatory hiring and housing practices is racial justice. Making Calvin a pansexual Filipino in a Calvin & Hobbes movie isn’t justice. And for the record, industry awards shows are where diversity is least useful: what matters most is diversity at the beginning of creative careers, not at the end. We need to ensure that the pipelines which push out young talent are open and nurture many different kinds of creators. Sadly, to do that we’d have to confront the absolutely absurd level of nepotism in Hollywood, and people really don’t want to do that.