The Black Lives Matter movement is leading to changes in the entertainment industry, and has already impacted multiple movies and TV shows. As protests continue over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the many other Black individuals who've suffered or been killed as the result of police brutality and systemic racism, it's led a growing number of people in positions of power (white people in particular) to acknowledge both the privilege they enjoy because of their race and their roles in sustaining white supremacy, be it through their hiring practices and/or the content they produce.
While some of those same individuals and the studios they represent have been criticized for doing little more than releasing vague statements expressing their support for Black Lives Matter, others have been more active in their response. The cast and creators of Brooklyn Nine-Nine (a comedy series about the detectives of the NYPD's 99th Precinct) have donated $100K to the National Bail Fund Network to assist those who've been arrested during the ongoing protests, even as the likes of J.J. Abrams and LEGO have donated millions to the organizations leading the Black Lives Matter movement and supporting Black children. Even the Pokémon Company and K-Pop band BTS have given money to the NAACP and similar groups in support of the social revolution.
The movie and television industry still has a very long way to go to truly reckoning with its marginalization of BIPOC creatives and actors, as well as the ways it's traditionally glamorized the police, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and current protests. However, there've already been a few noteworthy changes made either as a direct reaction to Black Lives Matter or because there was simply no way to justify them not happening in the context of the ongoing movement.
HBO Max Removed (& Will Add A Warning To) Gone With The Wind
Gone with the Wind (both the Oscar-winning 1939 historical epic and the 1936 novel it's based on) has always been a problematic and controversial work of art because of its propaganda-like portrayal of the U.S. civil war and slavery, including its heavy usage of Black stereotypes and romanticization of life in the Antebellum South. Having only launched in the U.S. at the end of May, the WarnerMedia steaming service HBO Max has since pulled the movie off the service. The move was made shortly after John Ridley, the Oscar-winning writer of 12 Years a Slave, took the film to task for its infamous racism and promotion of white supremacy in an L.A. Times editorial.
HBO Max has since issued a statement confirming the movie will return to the platform in the future, but will include "a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions" while still being presented in its original form "because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed." This is virtually identical to what Warner Bros. did a few years back when it re-released its classic Looney Tunes shorts with a disclaimer saying the cartoons "may depict some of the racial and ethnic prejudices that were commonplace in American society" at the time, with the addendum that "these depictions were wrong then and are wrong today," but to ignore their existence by removing them would be irresponsible.
Cops & Live PD Have Been Cancelled
Notorious for being one of the more blatant examples of film and television glorifying the police, the docuseries Cops follows regular city police officers (and, occasionally, federal agents) as they carry out their day to day tasks. Many people were unaware the show was even still on the air until recently, seeing as it originated on FOX in 1989 and was the network's longest-running series at the time that it was cancelled in 2013, before it moved to Paramount Network. A Paramount spokesperson has confirmed the show's latest cancellation following the current Black Lives Matter protests, saying Cops is "not on the Paramount Network and we don't have any current or future plans for it to return."
The announcement was made about a week after Paramount delayed the launch of what would've been Cops season 33, even as A&E revealed it would be postponing the airing of new episodes of its own police reality series, Live PD. The latter has also been cancelled, with A&E confirming the news in an official statement, saying "Going forward, we will determine if there is a clear pathway to tell the stories of both the community and the police officers whose role it is to serve them. And with that, we will be meeting with community and civil rights leaders as well as police departments.” Meanwhile, ongoing scripted police shows like Law & Order: SVU and Brooklyn Nine-Nine have confirmed plans to address the Black Lives Matter movement during their upcoming seasons, even as viewers question whether these series ought to continue at all (or, failing that, if they should undergo a major change in their current formats).
Little Britain Has Been Removed From Streaming
Years before the term "Black Lives Matter" was coined in 2013, the UK sitcom Little Britain was already infamous for its use of racist stereotypes, like the character Desiree DeVere, a black woman played by the show's co-creator David Walliams in blackface. Originating as a radio series before it premiered in 2003, the show has also been criticized for relying on other forms of crude, offensive humor (with transphobic and fat-phobic overtones), and co-creator Matt Lucas expressed his regret about the series in an interview in 2017, saying "Basically, I wouldn’t make that show now. It would upset people. We made a more cruel kind of comedy than I’d do now." Williams has echoed that sentiment in his own recent statements on the topic.
In the wake of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, Little Britain has been removed from streaming services like the BBC and Netflix, with the BBC issuing a statement saying "Times have changed since Little Britain first aired so it is not currently available on BBC iPlayer." However, unlike the disclaimers WarnerMedia is now attaching to its older content, the move doesn't acknowledge the show's racial and ethnic stereotyping was always wrong, even back when it aired. Nevertheless, it's the latest example of artists having to reckon with their use of blackface as recently as the 2000s, much like Jimmy Fallon was criticized in May for his use of blackface to impersonate Chris Rock in an SNL skit from the decade.
Hartley Sawyer Was Fired From The Flash
After The Flash season 6 wrapped production early due to the coronavirus pandemic, The CW announced it has fired actor Hartley Sawyer (who plays Ralph Dibny aka. Elongated Man). The move was made after Sawyer's older racist and misogynistic tweets resurfaced online, and has since been supported by star Grant Gustin, along with current showrunner Eric Wallace. In his own statement about the decision, Wallace said Sawyer's tweets "broke my heart and made me mad as hell [and are] indicative of the lager problem in our country," before going on to reference the deaths of Floyd, Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery "and too many others" and express his support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
It's worth pointing out that Sawyer could've very easily been fired for his older tweets at any point in time, but there was clearly no reasonable way to justify keeping him in the immediate wake of the current protests. The situation has already been compared to James Gunn being fired from Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but there the filmmaker had already apologized for his offensive older tweets on multiple occasions, and it was recognized the outrage over his tweets were part of a bad faith attack that was really meant to harm him because of his outspoken liberal political views. Whereas Gunn has since been rehired by Disney, Sawyer is unlikely to follow suit and return to the Arrowverse.