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Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Amazon Studios Rolling Out Diversity Playbook in Europe and Globally
Variety: The Amazon Studios Inclusion Policy and Playbook released last June in the U.S. is reverberating in the streaming giant’s productions around the world.
3 comments:
Jeremy Pitzer
said...
Obviously I try not to think about the fact that Jeff Bezos owns the streaming branch of amazon (as well as the rest of it), because the amazon prime streaming service is the up and coming giant in the fantasy adaptation realm, and I love fantasy adaptations. Thus I am subscribed and I watched the Wheel of Time and I look forward to watching The Lord of the Rings show. There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism anyways, right? THis diversity Playbook is very exciting, especially for the fantasy section of the service because the genre is historically so white dominated. Already, the Wheel of Time was much more diverse than previous fantasy epics and I’m excited about where this will take the platform. Outside of fantasy I'm sure there will also be very positive effects on the content produced by the streaming service and I will be there to watch and enjoy, and to not think about old Jeff.
The nuance of navigating diversity in media as a company famous for exploitation and worker abuse is very interesting. There are incredible pros of this playbook. For one, the guidance to have therapists on set in productions that deal with heavy and/or triggering subject matter is great guidance, and this playbook could serve to significantly increase this practice across the industry. Also, diversity quotas could increase underrepresented groups on behind the scenes levels of production. Working closely with organizations like GLAAD is also a practice that other studios could do well to follow. It’s an interesting conundrum of this point in time that Amazon Studios can make such strides in Diversity and Inclusion and release a playbook that provides valuable guidance to the international community and the film industry as a whole, while Amazon as a whole makes headlines daily for gross human rights violations. Regardless of the questions this discrepancy raises, hopefully this playbook catalyzes some level of change in the industry.
While I despise Jeff Bezos and Amazon as a whole, I will admit that implementing a diversity playbook within Amazon Studio film productions is an amazing step forward in the right direction. The film industry is still very white and euro centric and specifically in Europe there is a desperate need for film and TV that represents minority communities. I saw this specifically in places like Germany where there is very little film representation of the large Turkish and other Middle Eastern communities within the country. Often times this is because the film industry is full of and built on collaboration, and thereby a culture of simply hiring friends and former colleagues is created. While this is not inherently bad, it creates a very un-diverse culture. This can be awful for creating films especially as it is very important to portray an array of perspectives, and that is virtually impossible when a cast and crew are not from diverse backgrounds. I am glad Amazon made this step, but there most definitely needs to be more done and I hope other companies like Netflix and apple follow in implementing diversity playbooks as well.
3 comments:
Obviously I try not to think about the fact that Jeff Bezos owns the streaming branch of amazon (as well as the rest of it), because the amazon prime streaming service is the up and coming giant in the fantasy adaptation realm, and I love fantasy adaptations. Thus I am subscribed and I watched the Wheel of Time and I look forward to watching The Lord of the Rings show. There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism anyways, right? THis diversity Playbook is very exciting, especially for the fantasy section of the service because the genre is historically so white dominated. Already, the Wheel of Time was much more diverse than previous fantasy epics and I’m excited about where this will take the platform. Outside of fantasy I'm sure there will also be very positive effects on the content produced by the streaming service and I will be there to watch and enjoy, and to not think about old Jeff.
The nuance of navigating diversity in media as a company famous for exploitation and worker abuse is very interesting. There are incredible pros of this playbook. For one, the guidance to have therapists on set in productions that deal with heavy and/or triggering subject matter is great guidance, and this playbook could serve to significantly increase this practice across the industry. Also, diversity quotas could increase underrepresented groups on behind the scenes levels of production. Working closely with organizations like GLAAD is also a practice that other studios could do well to follow. It’s an interesting conundrum of this point in time that Amazon Studios can make such strides in Diversity and Inclusion and release a playbook that provides valuable guidance to the international community and the film industry as a whole, while Amazon as a whole makes headlines daily for gross human rights violations. Regardless of the questions this discrepancy raises, hopefully this playbook catalyzes some level of change in the industry.
While I despise Jeff Bezos and Amazon as a whole, I will admit that implementing a diversity playbook within Amazon Studio film productions is an amazing step forward in the right direction. The film industry is still very white and euro centric and specifically in Europe there is a desperate need for film and TV that represents minority communities. I saw this specifically in places like Germany where there is very little film representation of the large Turkish and other Middle Eastern communities within the country. Often times this is because the film industry is full of and built on collaboration, and thereby a culture of simply hiring friends and former colleagues is created. While this is not inherently bad, it creates a very un-diverse culture. This can be awful for creating films especially as it is very important to portray an array of perspectives, and that is virtually impossible when a cast and crew are not from diverse backgrounds. I am glad Amazon made this step, but there most definitely needs to be more done and I hope other companies like Netflix and apple follow in implementing diversity playbooks as well.
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