When Does Hollywood’s Diversity Become Real Representation?

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With movies like Crazy Rich Asians, BlacKkKlansman, and Sorry To Bother You out in theaters, Hollywood is trying to mute the complaint that it lacks racial and ethnic diversity, to avoid another #OscarsSoWhite. But depicting people of color onscreen was always the easy part. Next comes a harder question: how authentically are minority experiences being represented? Matt sits down with senior editor Gillian White and culture writer Hannah Giorgis to discuss. Links - “What Does It Mean to ‘Sound’ Black?” (Hannah Giorgis, August 15, 2018) - “There’s Nothing Wrong With Black English” (John McWhorter, August 6, 2018) - “With BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee Sounds the Alarm About America’s Past and Present” (David Sims, August 8, 2018) - “Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal on Blindspotting and the Power of Poetry” (Hannah Giorgis, July 21, 2018) - “Blindspotting Is a Boldly Sincere Love Letter to Oakland” (David Sims, July 20, 2018) - “The Oscars’ Terrible Idea” (David Sims, August 9, 2018) - “Yet Another Reason the New ‘Popular Film’ Oscar Is a Terrible Idea” (Christopher Orr, August 11, 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Remember Oscarsers so white? With films like Crazy Rich Asians, Black Clansman, and sorry to bother you now in theaters,
0:06.6	Hollywood is ready to claim victory on its struggles with diversity.
0:10.1	Not so fast. Is more of America being represented on screen or just being depicted?
0:19.0	This is Radio Atlantic. Hi, I'm Matt Thompson, Executive Editor of The Atlantic. With me here in DC is
0:39.0	Jillian White, Atlantic Senior Editor. Hello Jillian.
0:42.4	Hello, so good to see you.
0:44.0	So good to see you too.
0:46.0	Over in New York, we are joined for the first time I believe on Radio
0:50.0	Atlantic by our colleague Hannah, Georgia, staff writer at the Atlantic.
0:55.0	Hana, welcome to the table.
0:57.0	Hi y'all, thanks for having me.
0:59.0	This is not your first time, this is incredible.
1:01.0	Do you feel historic?
1:03.0	Do you feel like you're a part of history?
1:04.0	I'm just honored to be here now.
1:06.0	I gotta write this down. Thank you.
1:08.0	Honey, you cover culture for the Atlantic and you have been thinking big thoughts about culture recently.
1:15.2	What you want to talk about today?
1:17.0	Well, Matt, I've been thinking a lot about what happens once we go beyond the sort of basic level one,
1:26.0	does diversity matter question and we get into the sort of nitty gritty and then, you know, the 102
1:32.1	if you will
1:32.8	uh... so that kind of stuff what has brought this up for you why are you
	...

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