It looks like Hollywood still has a major representation problem.
In recent years, LGBTQ+ films have gained mainstream popularity, finding their place among the biggest award-winning movies. But comedian and writer Dewayne Perkins (The Blackening, One of Them Days) pointed out a huge problem, which got me thinking.
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Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound stars Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor.
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Paul has previously starred as an LGBTQ+ character in All of Us Strangers (2023).
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Josh has previously starred as LGBTQ+ characters in Hide & Seek (2014), Peaky Blinders (2014), God’s Own Country (2017), The Colour of His Hair (2017), and Challengers (2024).
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In response to The History of Sound, a romance based on the short story by Ben Shattuck being acquired by Mubi, in a now-deleted tweet Dewayne wrote, “I’m so tired. Every queer Black writer I know since I started writing has been trying to get Black queer movies and tv shows off the ground and it just never happens. And yet, straight white men have been monopolizing the genre. It actually blows my fucking mind.”
@DewaynePerkins / x.com
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To Dewayne’s point, the genre has felt dominated in recent years by white men who don’t openly identify as LGBTQ+. Sure, plenty of indie films are created by and feature LGBTQ+ people, but they’re not receiving the same attention as particular mainstream films.
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Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name (2017), starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer, was nominated for four Oscars — including Best Picture — winning for its screenplay.
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Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl (2015), starring Eddie Redmayne, earned an Academy Award for Alicia Vikander for Best Supporting Actress.
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The Imitation Game (2014), starring Benedict Cumberbatch, won an award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
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Dallas Buyers Club (2013) won three Oscars, including acting awards for its stars Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto.
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And, of course, there was Moonlight (2016), which won Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali, and Best Picture.
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Aside from Moonlight and maybe Green Book, which also starred Mahershala, earning him his second Best Supporting Actor award — there realistically aren’t many mainstream LGBTQ+ films that include Black actors, let alone any actors of color.
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Dewayne’s been reasonably outspoken about this issue for some time. Last year, he sat down with BuzzFeed to explain how he was not here for the Black gay tropes in media and working toward changing the narrative.
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“I want to see more queer Black stuff,” he told BuzzFeed. “I felt like I wouldn’t truly be a star of a movie unless I wrote it myself,” and he did just that with The Blackening.
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He continued, “As a queer Black person who is an actor, there weren’t many parts that I felt were afforded to me. I felt like I would not be a star of a movie unless I wrote it. And so that was also why the character was named Dewayne. I wanted to make it very clear that I’m creating a [new] world because this is not a world that anyone else has allowed me to play in.”
Dewayne has a point.
I’m happy more queer films are gaining mainstream attention, like Queer (2024), Red, White & Royal Blue (2023), and Love, Simon (2018), but I can’t help but consider Dewayne’s tweet. Are these films genuinely representative of all the LGBTQ+ voices out there?
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Cheers to the brilliant work of actors and filmmakers like Colman Domingo, Niecy Nash, Keke Palmer, Lee Daniels, and Lena Waithe for their efforts, but I know many more voices haven’t been given a chance. Not even the few people I named have been given the best opportunities to represent LGBTQ+ stories.
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As the US government slowly chips away at the rights and visibility LGBTQ+ people were given in recent years, at least our art should depict the reality of all of us — not just people who look like the characters in a Luca Guadagnino movie.
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You better believe I’m going to take my ass to the movie theater to watch The History of Sound — but representation matters. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let up that we can do better by including more Black LGBTQ+ stories, whether coming of age, romance, horror, comedy, etc.
Here’s what the internet had to say about diversity in response to Dewayne’s tweet:
“Not just even queer black material, but queer material featuring men of color in general. It’s not for lack of available talent. And then to have these films feature str8 actors in the end?” one person wrote.
@deltamagnet / x.com
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“we got Moonlight and they just said that’s enough,” another person wrote.”
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This person said, “the fact we haven’t seen many black queer movies after the success of moonlight makes no sense..”
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“It seems like the only one who give anything black is Tubi and just hoping we can see people have their stories told without always having to wait years,” another person wrote.
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Another person wrote, “We need ALL genre with queer black characters. Especially romance and horror. I mean my fucking god. Queer horror alone was having a movement especially with diversity but then everything became Caucasianally Twink and Twunkified.”
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