Taika Waititi: Notes

Tokenism: Tokenism is “the practice or policy of admitting an extremely small number of members of racial (e.g. African American), ethnic (e.g. Latino) or gender (i.e. women) groups… to give the impression of being inclusive, when in actuality these groups are not welcomed.”

Taika Waititi spoke at a Hollywood reporter event about his thoughts and input on how Hollywood has been addressing the issue around diversity. He was very open with his thoughts to the crowd, making sure they understood where he was coming from.

Taika mentioned tokenism and how Hollywood is representing that within their films and shows. He talks about how he asked Chat GPT (AI) to tell him why Hollywood seems to be failing to address the issue with diversity and inclusivity in films and television shows. From this, he says how Chat GPT responds back to him in 8 seconds a very long list of why Hollywood is seen to be failing. Taika talks about how "stupid" it is that Chat GPT can realise the issues and problems within 8 seconds, but Hollywood completely sees it and ignores it.

Hollywood seems to have a lack of representation for diversity, and is fixed on the stereotypical mindset on whitewashed views.

Taika mentions tokenism, where Hollywood shouldn't be adding and including token polynesians, etc, just for the sake of including other ethnicities into the film. Hollywood needs to be realistic with the sort of diversity they are choosing to include, because for example, as a kid growing you never really had more