GLAAD's CEO and President, Sarah Kate Ellis, has shown the power films hold to educate and enlighten people all over the world. This is exactly why filmmakers must use this platform to tell the stories of marginalized communities despite the backdrop of today’s political and cultural divide.
When Commander D’Acy kissed another woman in the final moments of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' or trans actor Trace Lysette had a main role in the ensemble feature film 'Hustlers', Hollywood considered it a huge win for queer representation. But the LGBTQ community saw this as a tactic to avoid the larger conversation about significant and accurate representation of an ignored section of society.
Due to centuries of indoctrinated heteronormativity and internalized transphobia, the film industry has not yet entirely normalized queer representation. While it has made some strides in that direction, it is not yet any closer to the goal.
Only a small section of the large studio films every year depict LGBTQ leads and an even fewer number of films do this job accurately without making a caricature of the characters. The most recent example of this was James Corden’s stereotypical portrayal of a homosexual man as Barry Glickman in The Prom.
GLAAD’s 2020 study found that out of 118 films by the eight major studios, only 22 included characters from the community. With the help of their Studio Responsibility Index conducted via the Vito Russo test, GLAAD revealed that only 16 of those films did more than slip in queer characters for tokenism.
Whether it is for the purpose of tokenism or not, Hollywood has still managed to include homosexual characters in studio films, even though very few of them are actually in service to the plot.
However, no attempt has been made for trans inclusivity.
In 2020, no major films with trans characters were released.
In a remarkable effort, Hollywood has cast a few trans and non-binary actors in films. This does not make up for the gap in the representation of transgender or non-binary people.
There is a glaring issue present in Hollywood when it comes to LGBTQ representation. More often than not, cis-gendered straight white men or women play queer characters. This enables a stereotypical portrayal of the community to perpetuate and keeps members of the LGBTQ community out of jobs in paramount films.
The film and television sector has, for a long time, reduced homosexual or transgender characters as cheap tactics for slapstick comedy, and this has largely been possible because LGBTQ+ actors have not been given a chance to represent themselves in these shows and films. Not only did 'Friends' never disclose Chandler’s dad’s identity, but the show also kept her role solely for comic relief.
While the last five years of Hollywood have seen meaningful LGBTQ representation, it is not enough. The community has been silenced for far too long, and the current landscape of Hollywood requires far more inclusivity to reflect and inspire the real world.
Edited by Jemma Snowdon