The Reason Roundtable

Is Hollywood Overthinking Representation?

02.25.2019 - By The Reason RoundtablePlay

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On last week's Editors' Roundtable episode of the Reason Podcast, guest star Stephanie Slade argued near the end that the racial-reconciliation movie Green Book feels a bit out of step with where America's cultural conversation has moved these past few years. Boy howdy, judging by the torrential response to the movie's Best Picture victory at last night's Academy Awards. So let's pick a fresh scab, courtesy of returning Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, who wrote a provocative piece in this weekend's New York Times under the headline, "Stop Counting Women: Quotas and tallies won't bring real progress on gender parity."

Mangu-Ward and the rest of the gang (Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, Matt Welch) have an extended conversation on representation, audience-growing, opinion journalism, the malleability of Spider-Man, and related controversies, including (natch) some of the greatest libertarian movies in history. Also coming under discussion are Venezuelan war-mongering, mixed metaphors, and the expansion of "Selective" Service registration to include lady-folk.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

'Songe D'Automne' by Latche Swing is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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