Movie Reviews with a Diverse or Not Diverse Section
Just over a year ago I launched NOadsHERE.com a little free site for reviews and recipes — movie reviews, tv reviews and also recipes. Nothing remarkable there really — apart from the fact that there’s (as you may have guessed!) no ads! Or user tracking, or affiliate marketing, or clickbait headlines; basically none of the crap we see on sites where folks can make money by ads or views.
I also included for movie reviews a Diverse or Not Diverse section — mainly to highlight if the film was just your usual White Guy Saves Everyone movie or more interesting than that. So for our Dune review, we have:
and for our Dr. Strange & the Multiverse of Madness review we have:
Just fed up of the same heroes
The main reason I started this section was a major bug-bear I have with a lot of movies — the reliance on a male hero (usually white of course), which is especially annoying when I’m watching them with my daughters.
A common trope in kids movies is ‘misunderstood or shy young guy’ who ends up the hero, and I’m just fed up of it, maybe the folks making the movies can stop for a second and just wonder what it’d be like if they changed the gender of the main character.
Take Onward for example — Pixar’s great fantasy / coming of age movie which one of my kids in particular loves. It’s about … a shy boy who ends up being the hero! He’s actually a wizard! Watching it, I just thought, why not make him a her? Do we need another boy coming of age movie?
We loved Pixar’s Inside Out, where the hero was a girl, but it’s not the same type of movie — it’s about emotions and feelings, it’s not really an “action” movie, which is mainly reserved for boys. It was the same with the recent Strange World from Disney — a big animated adventure where the main character is a man with relationship issues with his Dad! Yes, the grandson in the movie is gay, which is fantastic to see in a big budget Disney movie, but maybe … make the main character a woman?
What about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? Great movie, really fun — with a misunderstood young guy … What new thought provoking lessons are the movie makers teaching us about boys and men becoming heroes that we haven’t see a hundred times over?
Calls to Action
So, what can you do? First — I struggled over what questions to ask in the Diverse or Not Diverse section, and my choices probably portray my own unconscious biases. If you have other/better questions, please get in touch and let me know!
My small range of movies also betrays my own likely lack of diversity — I’ve so little time to watch movies, I generally watch the sort of movies I’ve historically liked — action movies! I’m always looking for reviewers so if anyone would like to write for the site and help me have a much broader range, please also get in touch!
