Hollywood casting has been much in the news, what with the revelation that Harvey Weinstein has for decades been making the most of the old casting couch—and the fact that Weinstein is hardly the only predator demanding sexual favors for the chance at movie roles. Which made it a good time for the Casting Society of America to change the subject.
A week after the Harvey hurricane hit Hollywood, the CSA announced an “open casting call” for transgender actors at dozens of locations around the world. Welcome, according to Deadline Hollywood, are “trans actors, including non-binary (gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine), gender non-conforming (a person whose gender behavior or appearance does not conform to social expectations), and genderqueer actors (a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions).” Got that? (There will be a test later.)
Efforts to make movies about the transgendered have run into troubles all too predictable: Cast in the lead role of the 2015 movie The Danish Girl was not an honest-to-goodness transgender person, but a “cisgender” actor. (“Cisgender” is the trendy term for people who “identify” with the gender on their birth certificate, thus making sure that everyone gets their own awkward gender description, even plain old men and women.) Activists have been complaining that it’s not enough to make movies with fawning portrayals of trans characters, those characters need to be played by trans actors.
Which is where the Casting Society comes in. “The reasoning a non-diverse ‘star’ gets to play a diverse role is because there weren’t enough talented, diverse options is an industry myth,” the Los Angeles Times reported CSA veep Russell Boast saying. “We’re going to do something about that.”
As welcome as the change of subject no doubt was, the CSA did find time to address that other scandal. A memo went out to members this month declaring, “Now, more than ever, we are here to maintain and ensure the highest ethical standards when casting.” Though the memo explicitly addressed the issue of sexual harassment, it was mum on just who’s been doing the harassing. As Deadline Hollywood noted, “the memo never mentions Weinstein by name.”
