GLAAD has a new online campaign to battle what it says is Hollywood’s “lack of relevant representation of LGBT people in film.”
The organization criticized such films as Ted 2, Project X and Pain & Gain for their use of homophobic language and violence against LGBT characters, and pointed to a recent report that shows more than 80 percent of the major studio films released in 2014 had no LGBT characters whatsoever.
“We’re still the butt of the joke,” Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO and president of GLAAD, told Variety. “We’re still infrequently seen and when we are seen, it’s in a negative light.”
The new campaign, titled Hollywood Must Do Better, features a video of film clips showing the use of slurs and violence against LGBT characters.
“We want to show people and to build awareness of how bad mainstream films are,” Ellis said. “Our greatest outcome would be for studios to take notice and understand that we are watching, we are paying attention and we are putting a concerted effort into changing things.”
Movie studios lack of LGBT representation is in contrast to what is appearing on television right now with shows like Modern Family, Orange is the New Black and Transparent not only offering gay characters but positive role models.
“There’s a lot of the blame game,” Matt Kane, director of entertainment media for GLAAD, told Variety. “Producers and writers are quick to cite other parts of the production process as where the problem lies. They say the scripts aren’t being written or writers are being told they can’t sell scripts with gay characters. It illustrates that it’s an industry-wide problem and old habits are dying hard.”
