Back in late July, author Bertrand Cooper published an article for Current Affairs about class disparity within Black culture. Entitled “Who Actually Gets to Create Black Pop Culture?”, it thoughtfully laid out how “most Black creators (outside music) come from middle-to-upper or middle class backgrounds, while the Black poor are written about, but rarely get the chance to speak for themselves.”
In his article, Cooper discusses the opportunities available for minorities in the entertainment industry, focusing on Black creators. However, what he wrote about higher education and its effect on the kinds of artists that it shapes, applies just as well to the Latin community, and I’d suspect across every single demographic.
In a country where William Singer could rake in over $20 million gaming the college admissions system for the Aunt Beckys of the world, there is an unspoken “tyranny of merit” that we all recognize and under which we all navigate our lives, whether we benefit from it or not—whether we admit it to ourselves or not.
When we are taught that class is a natural by-product of an egalitarian meritocracy in every facet of society, why should we think the film industry is any different? Labs, grants, festivals, programs, incubators, retreats, workshops—we’re talking about networks, subject to the same social dynamics as the rest of our lives. The next time Sundance, Disney, or any program announces their upcoming “fellows,” try to find a single filmmaker who doesn’t have at least a Bachelor’s degree.
As Cooper points out in his article, institutions of popular culture like HBO and BAFTA created in-house programs for creators of color in the wake of Michael Brown’s murder, but nowhere in their guidelines did they ever state that applicants should come from the same socio-economic background than someone like George Floyd.
In her criticism of “program fiction”, Sandra Kotta writes, “The practices of institutionalised Creative Writing workshops decisively influence the style, form, and format of literary works; intellectual trends in universities determine the worldviews of writers long after they have finished formal studies.” If modern American literature is open to the criticism of producing closed-off, elitist, out-of-touch writing, it makes me wonder whether or not the insular nature of the film industry, from the indie world to the major studios, isn’t in even worse shape.
In many ways, I think all of us as filmmakers have forgotten how to be populists. It’s not something that’s particular to us; America as a whole has forgotten the meaning of the word. Now, the word “populism” is used any time a rich politician wants to rag on the “elites” without seeming hypocritical.
But this model is why I think Marvel has proven to be so successful; why Disney is able to monopolize the industry like they do: because, as a mandate, they insist their movies be as relatable to as many people as possible. Market manipulation is the key. This is no longer something that comes naturally to a lot of developing filmmakers.
Just like when any politician who isn’t a Progressive pretends to be a Populist, Marvel movies open themselves up to ridiculous intellectual contradictions fairly regularly, but audiences still reward them with their attention because Marvel is the only game in town who will actually bother to write stories about working class folks in a way that doesn’t paint them out as perpetual victims of abuse, trauma, or systemic injustice.
As filmmakers, we should be able to recognize the kind of industry we are a part of, and that we are inadvertently creating. What’s true for America is true for the film industry, and if we don’t soon recognize the insular nature of our medium, we are going to isolate ourselves out of an audience.