Straight Actors Playing Queer Characters: This is Exhausting
It’s 2021 and what few LGBTQ+ films that are produced by major film studios continue to star cisgender heterosexual actors, rather than actual LGBTQ+ people.

Lazarus is a Cuban appeal that makes a living in Madrid. When his girlfriend Dolores travels from Cuba to Spain to live with him, he is in prison for kidnapping and attempted rape. Dolores tries to survive with a broken heart, but his sympathy and sensuality will make adjusting to life in Madrid and try to exceed the Lazarus drug addiction.
It’s 2021 and what few LGBTQ+ films that are produced by major film studios continue to star cisgender heterosexual actors, rather than actual LGBTQ+ people.
Outer Banks (2020-) knows its audience: young adults in a country that can’t stop romanticizing good ole’ treasure hunts. Add a little of Riverdale’s (2017-) sex appeal, and no one can look away. Forty years after The Goonies (1985) America’s consciousness hasn’t strayed from the same tropes: treasure hunts, a vulnerable white male lead, and the whitewashing of a racially segregated setting.
Director Martin Scorsese broadens his boundaries from mafia-driven movies, to a Buddhist biopic of the 14th Dalai Lama. While Buddhism strives for peace, ‘Kundun’ reveals the violence inflicted on Tibetan Buddhists and Scorsese’s depiction of violence does not stray away.
Crossroads follows a young guitarist on a journey through the American South in search of blues history and his own voice.
What are we willing to walk through to see our dreams come to pass? Our minds might be so wholly alive with the passions we carry and the plans we make to see these things become all we wish them to be, yet life doesn’t always want to come alongside. Instead, obstacles arise, both physical and mental, which attempt to dissuade us or even prevent us from moving forward, stalling or stagnating the momentum to achieve what we desire. The age-old question remains….can we overcome? Or will we BE overcome?
Cinderella has been adapted many times over, with the latest adaptation from Amazon sparking controversy over its girlboss agenda. But what of diversity? We rank some of the most popular adaptations for diversity.