The other day I was discussing a film, currently in the pipeline, with the head of a large movie production company. Without giving anything away, it’s the remarkable, true story of a young black woman in America, set during the time of slavery. I thought this particular story sounded unique. My production company boss contact thought differently. “You wouldn’t believe how many of these films there are around at the moment. We are literally being inundated with stories about the first black this or ‘the first black that. There are only so many of those you can make.”
It’s a problem I can scarcely imagine someone in his position having just a year or two ago. But, after years of scraping the barrel, it feels like Hollywood is finally giving in to the idea that not all hits come white, straight, and male-shaped. In 2016, #OscarsSoWhite gave way to #OscarsSoDiverse. Moonlight saw a hauntingly beautiful queer, black love story told to mass audiences for the first time. Hidden Figures revealed the role of black women in space exploration, and Loving narrated the true story of an inter-racial couple win their battle to become the first to live together freely in Virginia. It’s obvious that these films are winning awards, the three I’ve just mentioned are all excellent. But what we don’t see, if my production company contact’s experience is representative, is the impact on the writers and actors who have always been pushing these stories, but now have found the door open, at least a chink.
Now that the 2017 award season is upon us, this trend shows no signs of slowing. The Baftas – which last year announced that by 2019, film-makers would have to prove they attempted to increase representation – will be more diverse than ever. This year’s nominations reflect, rather than create, a changing world; Zadie Smith’s ongoing ascendance, as translated in the televised version of her novel NW, the harrowing story of Damilola Taylor, Damilola Our Loved Boy, nominated in several categories, a documentary following President Obama competing with the Black Lives Matter-themed Unarmed Black Male as subject matter in the current affairs category.
The key word here is trend. If my film production company boss source is to be believed, for the past few years – ironically a pipeline that was already under way when OscarsSoWhite first blew up in 2015 – studios have finally begun responding to decades of prejudice.
It’s not just Hollywood, either. This year’s RTS awards saw Sophie Okonedo win best actress, with comedian Richard Ayoade and Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain nominated. In literature and art, this month’s Pulitzers were an unprecedented nod to black talent Colson Whitehead for his extraordinary, and at times difficult to read, novel Underground Railroad winning best fiction; Lynn Nottage for her play Sweat; Tyehimba Jess for his book of poetry Olio. The Hate U Give, a powerful young adult book about racial injustice, whose author I had the pleasure of interviewing in Dallas recently, continues to top bestseller lists, and even fashion has woken up to black power. A fellow Ghanaian, Edward Enninful, has become both the first man and first black person to edit British Vogue, surprising, one fashion insider put it, the “Tatler” crew who were sure Sam Cam’s sister and Vogue deputy, Emily Sheffield, would get the job.
A senior female journalist I know was asked by a male colleague, after Enninful’s appointment was announced, how she feels about “a man being given a top job, and at a women’s magazine no less”. He’s a black man, she responded. Not only an outsider because of his race in an industry that is still overwhelmingly white, but because he is also the child of immigrants, having made the unlikely journey of one of five children of a Ghanaian seamstress, to model, to editor, and now using his platform to call for wider change.
Diversity is good because it is honest. In the sense that if you have a genuinely free marketplace – a prerequisite for the kind of meritocracy we like to think we have going on here – and it’s working normally, then you expect it to reflect a plurality of people and ideas. But diversity is also good because it breeds more of that natural, honest, diversity.
As Michaela Coel, the brilliantly talented young comedian, writer and actor said when she won a Bafta for her series Chewing Gum last year, drama school felt to her – having grown up on a council estate – “a bit like the school for Downton Abbey’s next stars”. “If there’s anyone out there who looks like me and just feels a little bit out of place trying to get into performing, and all this kind of stuff, I just say ‘you are beautiful!” she said, in a moving acceptance speech. The more examples of people like Coel there are on our screens, in control of their art and their message, whether winning awards or not, the easier that will be for a future generation to believe.
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The stark realisation that there are talented people who are not white or posh and that they might be winning awards on merit, is always too much to bear for some people, who find “political correctness”, a better explanation. This week I would point all those who claim PC-ness and censorship have gripped society, to my former Sky News colleague Sam Kiley’s latest blog, titled “Thin-skinned Millennials need a spanking”.
Kiley took it upon himself to colourfully rebrand the familiar argument that “the British are now too wet to work in agriculture” – their only use is to donate their bodies as pothole-filler, and that it’s all gone downhill since the days when battles were won on the playing fields of Eton. “These days, the public schools can no more produce the sort of chap capable of running a large chunk of Africa at 21 … than they can turn out a youngster capable of putting a kettle on without the supervision of a Filipina,” Kiley complained. The best thing about his absurd column was the response by millennials – who we are always told take everything too seriously. Like Felicity Morse in the i, who “took a long, hard look at my un-spanked bottom” and Neha Shah in the New Statesman, who admirably trawled through the piece’s “13 most WTF moments.” Next time someone tries to tell you political correctness has triumphed over everything from satire to nonsense, I recommend this as an example to the contrary.
*****
The plight of Yazidi women, abducted, abused and tortured by Isis, is much neglected by the media. This week Amal Clooney tried to get the issue back on the agenda, appearing at the United Nations, glossy-haired and designer-clad as ever, alongside Nadia Murad, a Yazidi who has experienced unspeakable atrocities firsthand. Few would criticise Clooney’s devotion to this cause, but her speech did renew a heated debate about the role of celebrities in drawing attention to humanitarian crises.
In December, the UN unceremoniously dismissed Wonder Woman from her role as an ambassador for gender equality, presumably when someone noticed that Wonder Woman doesn’t actually exist. Whatever you think of Clooney – and I have a great deal of respect for her; she was a serious lawyer long before she became a celeb – at least she is real.
