Don't trust technology to measure diversity - Washington Examiner

If it takes a digital program to tell you that your script isn’t diverse enough, you’re doing something wrong.

But some movie buffs in Hollywood think otherwise, apparently. The next big thing appears to be the use of computerized tools to gauge the progressiveness of one's script.

Through an update announced last week, one of Tinseltown’s most popular screenplay programs can now offer an “Inclusivity Analysis.” Final Draft will no longer just format scripts; now it can allow filmmakers to “quickly assign and measure the ethnicity, gender, age, disability or any other definable trait of the characters,” such as race, according to a statement released by the company.

Concerned screenwriters can also determine if their scripts pass the Bechdel Test, a reductionistic standard that measures a film’s feminism by whether there is at least one conversation between two named females about a subject other than a male. Never mind that even popular films such as “La La Land” and “Avatar” don’t pass the test.

Poor Hollywood screenwriters have been plugging along for years writing scripts with only white dudes in them, just waiting for a digital tool to help them reevaluate their scripts at the last minute. Now, before sending their great ideas off, they can add names to the women, put one of the extras in a wheelchair, and cast a few of the leads as nonwhite.

There’s nothing wrong with doing any of those things. But Hollywood’s mad dash to diversify can miss the mark, encouraging filmmakers to add diversity for its own sake, rather than to integrate diverse characters into a story.

Promoting a tool to evaluate scripts for diversity, rather than encouraging writers to create diverse characters in the first place, will simply add to the problem. If Hollywood wants to see more unique storylines, it can’t wait till the last minute to have them included.

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