This weekend GLAAD honors entertainment and media that best represent LGBT characters. But handing out awards isn’t the group's only job in Hollywood; Why the Iranian band Kiosk had to flee their country to fully realize their art; Suge Knight's bail is set to $25 million, and his lawyers accuse the prosecution of equating Knight with "Empire."
GLAAD sees gains in depictions throughout media — except film
This weekend, GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation)) will honor media at the 26th Annual GLAAD Media Awards. Hosted by comedian Tig Notaro, the Media Awards will recognize not only TV and movies, but also music, journalism, video games and comic books.
On the eve of the ceremony, Matt Kane, the programs director of entertainment media at GLAAD, who serves as a liaison to Hollywood, came by the Frame. He spoke with John Horn about the increasingly inclusive environment in television, the troubling state of movies and the ways in which GLAAD helps studios and writers create more human characters.
Interview Highlights:
What are the factors that you consider when you're selecting the winners of these awards?
We want to see characters that are diverse and distinct from each other, that are defined by more than their sexual orientation or gender identity and that really represent the full diversity of our community.
I suspect that in past years it's been hard to come up with five nominees in some of the categories, but this year in your comedy and drama series categories, you've actually expanded the potential maximum from five to 10 nominees.
We have, and this is a big result of television itself becoming such a more inclusive medium in recent years. There were times when we'd struggle to even find five nominees in those categories, but now all of a sudden we have this huge glut of over 80 shows to choose from for these two categories. We thought that because we really want to send the message that there's so much good material out there, one of the best ways to do that was to actually highlight more programs.
You're talking about media, which this year includes video games and comic books.
Yes it does. Comics have been a long-standing category at the GLAAD Media Awards, but with video games there's really been a distinct lack of LGBT characters inside the medium until pretty recently.
This new game, "Dragon Age: Inquisition," has gone above and beyond what we've seen before. It not only has a gay, lesbian and bisexual character in the game, but it has a trans man as well. That's not something that we thought we would see any time soon, and all of a sudden we have this really rich, interesting video game with these very distinctly drawn characters that players are interacting with, loving and spending hours getting to know through their play.
What about the film world? Are there things that you're optimistic or excited about?
[laughs] As far as optimism goes, it's pretty hard to say. We're actually gearing up to release our newest edition of the GLAAD Film Report in about a week or so, and unfortunately we've seen little to no growth in the number of LGBT characters showing up on big screens. In fact, we may have even seen more characters that you would consider minor or marginal at best that are showing up, which suggests that television has really outpaced the film industry in terms of depicting the LGBT community.
We're talking a lot about examining finished products, but what does GLAAD do at the inception of a script, working with writers, producers, showrunners to make sure that they don't fall into the traps of depictions you're most concerned about?
First we have to open up lines of dialogue with studios and networks in the first place — they have to know that we're available as a resource they can use to help tell the story in the best way possible, and that's usually to make sure that these characters read as humans rather than assemblages of cliches or stereotypes, or ignorance on the part of the creator.
When we have a relationship with a studio or network like that, sometimes we're brought in to look at a story treatment that we can give feedback on. Sometimes it's really in the scripting stage where we can offer notes, but unfortunately there are many projects that get out there that we haven't had a look at, and the person writing them didn't even do much research on their own.
Iranian rockers Kiosk celebrate Nowruz with free show at LACMA on Sunday
Nowruz Peruz! Or "Happy New Year," as Iranians around the world will be saying this weekend. The annual holiday celebrates the beginning of the Spring Equinox and the first day of the Persian calendar.
The L.A. County Museum Of Contemporary Art has partnered with the Farhang Foundation — a nonprofit that promotes Iranian art and culture in Southern California — for a whole day of Nowruz-related events on Sunday, March 22. Among the events taking place is free concert by the Iranian rock band Kiosk.
Musicians here in America take their freedom to perform, record and distribute their music for granted. But Arash Sobhani, founder of Kiosk, hasn't known the same freedoms in his hometown of Tehran. Sobhani formed Kiosk back in 2003, but he and his bandmates had to flee Iran to continue to pursue their art.
Sobhani stopped by the studio recently to talk about what access Iranians back home have to popular music, why he decided to leave Tehran and how he got his hands on rock music at a young age.
Interview Highlights:
What access do your friends/family back in Iran have to popular culture, and specifically music?
Iranian musicians cannot perform or publish their recordings like others do in other countries, and that creates a lot of problems if you can't perform; if you can't sell your records then there's no way to generate money from your art, and then there's no way to keep going. That's very sad, because you see musicians who are very talented, they come to the scene, they start recording one or two albums out of their own pocket, and then they vanish because they can't keep up. That has been the trend in the last 30 years or so. We consider ourselves very lucky to be able to perform and record — and now through the Internet be in contact with our listeners. It's very difficult, but it's better than nothing.
What lead to your leaving Tehran?
It was a mixture of different conditions, it wasn't just for the music, but music played a big role in it. It was personal, it had to do with the political situation. I left when Mr. Ahmadinejad was elected as the president. We were hoping that this regime would find a way to hear the new generation's voice and let people decide about their future, but that all came to an end with the election of Ahmadinejad, and you know the rest of the story.
Can you talk about this song "All Asleep" from your latest album, "Call A Cab"?
This album has a theme in it; it kind of talks about the situation after 2009 in Iran. As an Iranian, I haven't been back since 2005, I can't go back. The general mood is a disappointment — it's been lost in suspension, not having a direction to move towards, and hopelessness. So this song talks about a society that's asleep. Everybody knows everybody's faking it; everybody's eyes are open, but I think their brains are shut down. It's a convenience for everyone just to ignore the problems.
Why can't you go back? Does that mean never?
I hope not, I hope that we'll see a change come about so that we can go back, but I'm concerned if I go back with the music that I've been doing and the other stuff, they won't welcome me.
What role do you think your music, and more broadly, artists can play in the conversation about that nation and what has to happen within its borders?
I think I'm singing mostly to myself; this is a way for me to vent out the anger and the frustration that I have because of the situation that my people are in. I don't see any solutions, I don't advise on any solutions or anything like that. But, at the same time, I think the role that art has played in similar situations throughout history is first of all to document what these people are going through. And to create a dialogue with people who are not living there, that there's something wrong going on in that region of the world, and to try to think how we can address that. I'm focused on the human rights aspects of it at the moment.
Can you talk a bit about your influences and what you listened to growing up?
We grew up listening to cassettes that were left from our friends, family members who left Iran after the revolution. There were all these old cassettes of Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, old-school rock bands. We were stuck in time for 10 or 15 years. Any Iranian my age probably knows all Pink Floyd's songs by heart. Our band in particular is really influenced by Dire Straits, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Eventually as we evolved, Europe gypsy musicians, and we added violin to our sound.