Milk (2009)

As I type this, Chris Evans is being “cancelled” on Twitter. I did a little research on this since I always thought Chris Evans was well-received. It turns out the backlash is because of a white savior movie he made called Red Sea Diving Resort. According to Wikipedia, this film “is a 2019 spy thriller film written and directed by Gideon Raff. The film stars Chris Evans as an Israeli Mossad agent who runs a covert operation that helps Ethiopian-Jewish refugees escape to safe haven in Israel.” The description goes on to say the film is based on historical events, and politically divisive.

This is important, but not new. Because of the current state of the world, politics are unavoidable more than ever, and movies are no exception. Movies that are set in real historical or political scenes are scrutinized to be historically accurate, or at the very least, not rewritten to make sure the good guys are White and…guys. I became curious about what information is being presented to audiences about about politics and politicians. I am distinguishing between political movies and movies about politics. One might argue that all movies have some political agenda, but I wanted to research the movies about political figures. While, as of the latest elections, there were steps made toward a more diverse group of civic leaders, but that is not always represented on the big screen. It might be hard for voters to support any possible politician that is not White and/or male because of the representation of politicians in their media consumption.

While film and TV still have a long way to go when it comes to LGBT representation, there are so many more opportunities for LGBT people to see themselves onscreen than there were even a few years ago. Best of all, some of the best LGBT films and shows are available online for free or on popular streaming services that you might already be subscribed to. Here are some of my top picks for films and TV shows with positive LGBT representation, sorted by where you can find them. (Note: This list is accurate as of June 2021, but streaming libraries change frequently.)

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Must-Watch LGBT Movies Online Recommendations

This Pride month, I was thinking about what kinds of LGBTQIA+ characters films portray. I found a list on Wikipedia that identified LGBT characters in film, so I narrowed that list to only films in the United States, and limited the years to 1990 to 2020. After that, I was left with 331 characters (some within the same film). This list also identified characters as Black, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander or White — there were no other races/ethnicities acknowledged.

I never fully trust Wikipedia, so let’s consider the 331 a sample, as I am sure there are film characters missing. Of the 331 total characters in our sample, 85% are White, 8% are Black, 5% are Latinx, and a whopping 2% are Asian/Pacific Islander. See the chart above for a visual representation of this information, with the glaring majority of White characters.

Not dissimilar to the rest of Hollywood films, White people dominate the market. For a breakdown of this disparity, see my previous article on the overall representation of race and gender in film. LGBT characters are not spared from underrepresentation in film. Actually, it’s even worse.

Let me put these 331 characters into context. Again, since there are probably many which were overlooked on the list, so let’s round it up to 400. According to Box Office Mojo, 17,892 films were made from 1990 to 2020. For the sake of argument (statisticians, please look away), let’s pretend it is 400 individual films and not characters. Our 400 films out of the 17,892 total mean only 2% of films made over 30 years have LGBT characters. One more time — two percent of films had characters who identified as LGBT. And, as we just learned, most of those characters were White.

So of these characters, I wanted to see what kind of characters made up the 15% BIPOC. I narrowed my analysis to the last 10 years (2010–2020) and marked each as a leading or supporting character. The chart below shows the results for the Black, Latinx and Asian/Pacific Islander LGBT characters.

It’s almost the end of the first month of 2021, and just over a week since the U.S. saw a new president take office. In light of the occasion, some of us highlighted our favorite political films below!

Bombshell (2019)