Big stars caught up in push for inclusion
Casting in recent films hurt LGBTQ community, people with disabilities
Katy Sullivan was excited by the news that Scarlett Johansson had stepped down from a role in Rub & Tug.
Only four years ago, the press stumbled over itself declaring Jeffrey Tambor brave and courageous for portraying a transgender woman in Jill Soloway’s
Transparent. Less than 1,500 days later, the internet erupted in such outrage when Johansson took on the role of Dante (Tex) Gill, a transgender man who ran a Pittsburgh massage parlour and prostitution business in the 1970s and ’80s, that she dropped the role.
It’s fairly remarkable that the public conversation transformed so quickly and deeply that many advocates in 2018 were appalled by what they praised in 2014. Many see this as tremendous progress, and for LGBTQ advocates who believe trans roles should be occupied by trans actors, it certainly is.
But Sullivan was also slightly dismayed. The actress, who has appeared on NCIS: New Orleans and My Name Is Earl,” is a double above-the-knee amputee from birth. While the Johansson story was ongoing, another was quietly unfolding.
Amovie opened on July13 featuring Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson — arguably the silver screen’s most able-bodied man — playing an amputee in the action film Skyscraper. So did the Oscar-bait film Don’t Wor
ry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, in which Joaquin Phoenix portrays the late, real-life comic writer John Callahan, who was paralyzed beneath the waist.
Both were met with crickets. Where was the outcry?
So, Sullivan wrote an open letter to Johnson asking him not to take such roles in the future. She wrote: “This very week, Scarlett Johansson has been getting a lot of heat from the LGBTQ community for portraying a transgender character in Rub and Tug. Rightfully so, as there are many talented trans actors out there who could be portraying that role instead of her. Actors that would bring beautiful and complicated authenticity to the project without having to reach outside themselves. The outcry is about inclusion. TRUE inclusion.”
The path toward to the Age of Representation has been anything but even. As Hollywood hurtles toward an all-encompassing future, some under-represented groups have secured a far louder voice than others. And that voice, as the Johansson situation proved, can have a direct impact on what film is eventually delivered to moviegoers.
To understand the disparity, it’s vital to first understand representation. Arguments about what ideal representation looks like vary but centre on the same question: Do the stories portrayed onscreen reflect the diversity of the real world? Are we enjoying stories of under-represented groups, including women, people of colour, the LGBTQ community and those living with disabilities?
There’s also a second, trickier layer. If Hollywood is indeed telling stories of underrepresented groups, who is portraying those characters, who should be and how do we drawn that line? For example, was it kosher for Eddie Redmayne to be nominated for a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of a transgender woman in 2015’s
The Danish Girl (a year after he won the award for playing Stephen Hawking, who had ALS)? Is it problematic that nearly half of the Academy Awards for best actor during the past two decades were won by men playing the sick or disabled, even though none of the actors were afflicted in real life?
The answers to these questions vary, but it’s irrefutable that certain groups are less represented on screen. The statistics are stark.
Women constitute more than half the U.S. population, but only 18 per cent of all the directors, writers, producers, editors and cinematographers who worked on last year’s top 250 U.S. films. And only 24 per cent of protagonists of the year’s top 100 grossing films were women. (Meanwhile, male film critics outnumber female reviewers two to one.)
Astudy from the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative combed through 900 popular movies from 2007 to 2016 and found that speaking roles for black, Latino and Asian characters tallied in at 13.6, 3.1 and 5.7 per cent, respectively. Only 1.1 per cent of speaking characters identified as LGBTQ.
And though nearly 20 per cent of Americans identified as disabled in the 2010 Census, a mere 2.7 per cent of characters with speaking roles were portrayed with a disability.
While the numbers are improving ever-so-slowly for all under-represented groups, some movements appear to have more social traction than others.
When Jared Leto was cast as a pre-op transgender woman in 2013’s Dallas Buyers Club, he was praised for the “challenging” role which earned him a best supporting actor Oscar. But even then, the seedling of change had already been planted. As Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote in the New York Times, his casting was “met with a sense of exhaustion by some parts of the trans community.”
A few years later, that exhaustion has become invigoration.
Actress Ivory Aquino, a transgender woman, applauds Johansson for stepping down, both because it was right and because “it definitely has reignited this conversation, and it was so inspiring to see so many people in the community band together.”
That has not been the case for representation in terms of people with disabilities.
Comparing different underrepresented groups is a quagmire probably best to avoid, but it’s an important one to explore in the Age of Representation. It is possible to both be excited by Johansson’s recusal and disappointed that there isn’t better representation for the disabled community, Sullivan said. For those who care about representation, it’s logical.
“True inclusion would be when a lawyer is written on a TV show that doesn’t have anything to do with being disabled, and (the studio says), ‘Why don’t we cast that guy in a wheelchair?’ ” Sullivan said — or sub “guy in a wheelchair” with “woman,” “queer person” or “person of colour.” R.J. Mitte, the actor who played Walt Jr. on Breaking Bad and lives with cerebral palsy, agreed.
“I personally don’t want more options to play a character with C.P. I shy away from those roles,” he said. Instead, he wants to portray characters primarily defined by different characteristics, but he described finding such roles as “reaching for the stars with anchors on our feet.”
That’s because, Sullivan said, “if we’re not even being allowed to play the roles that are specifically written (about) our community, then how will we ever get (other) roles?” It’s the same thing felt by many in the trans community, which is what makes the Johansson moment feel so victorious.
Social movements progress in fits and starts, said civil rights and employment lawyer Kalpana Kotagal.
Kotagal wrote the inclusion rider — a contract stipulation that a film’s cast and/or the crew reflect real demographics — that Frances McDormand touted at this year’s Oscars.
There is a need, Kotagal said, “to recognize that race may be in a different place in these issues than gender than disability than sexual identity” in the social conversation, because “the inclination is often to conflate all under-represented groups without a clear assessment or analysis with what are the particular problems different groups may face.”
Part of the difference hinges on how focused each community is.
“The transgender community is loud and strong and have learned to use social media to make their views well known; and the cisgender community is clearly listening and sensitive to casting and stories about the community that are not authentic,” Marlee Matlin, an Oscar-award winning actress who is also deaf, said via email.
The disability community, meanwhile, isn’t as focused. That’s partially because, Kotagal said, “the disability community is not monolithic.”
“We are fragmented as a community because there are all different kind of disabilities,” Christine Bruno, an actor and disability inclusion consultant who lives with cerebral palsy, said.
The other huge issue has to do with perception. “‘Disability’ suggests an inability,” Kotagal said. “Part of what needs to change for disabled actors to be able to play these roles is some really fundamental changes in how we think about ability.”
Because the idea is often that actors with disabilities can’t play roles, there’s a lack of guilt from studios for casting ablebodied actors in those parts.
“As far as characters with disabilities goes, Hollywood has a longer history of casting nondisabled actors in disabled roles and it’s almost a given that a lead actor who is not disabled is given a ‘pass’ under the category of ‘acting’ or ‘expressing one’s art,’ ” Matlin said. “I got that myself when I took home the Oscar and a well-known critic stated that I didn’t deserve the Oscar because as a deaf woman in a deaf role ( for Children of A Lesser God) I wasn’t ‘acting.’ ”
The barriers facing underrepresented groups are massive, myriad and institutional — but one key to bridging the gap is telling inclusive stories. Breaking Bad and Orange is the New Black are prime examples: The former featured a character with cerebral palsy and the latter featured several LGBTQ characters, without either being the sole focus of the story. They simply reflected the real world.