Quality vs. Diversity?

False dichotomy, big time.

West Indies playwright and screenwriter Eulalie Spence

Stephen King’s recent twitstorm about writers opting for quality over diversity is an old argument. It’s time to stop thinking fallaciously about films not made by and not focusing on white American men. There is no quality problem, only a perceptual mistake — a very serious one.

What we call Hollywood (i.e. the American film industry) isn’t deliberately racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. It’s deliberately risk-aversive. It funds and promotes movies it thinks will yield a safe profit. The final results of this business model, however, are visibly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. and not just at Oscars time.

There’s a chicken-and-egg problem with Hollywood’s principle. Since previous successes are primarily by white men (from the production crew through the producers), then Hollywood thinks it’s safer to go with white men.

“Black Panther” did well at the box office, so there will be a Black Panther 2 by Ryan Coogler, but not a James Bond film with Idris Elba (and there’s not a chance that the next Bond movie will be written / directed by Ava Duvernay).

Notice how I said “Hollywood thinks….” Its business model is based on perception, not facts. Screenwriter and science-fiction novelist Leigh Brackett (“The Big Sleep,” “Rio Bravo,” “The Long Goodbye,” and some work on a draft of…