From the New York Times movie section:

Stop Blaming History for Your All-White, All-Male Movie

Movies like “1917,” “The Irishman,” and “Ford v Ferrari” [sic] have all used their historical settings as a shield to deflect diversity critiques. But the past had people of color and women, too.

By Aisha Harris

Ms. Harris is an Op-Ed staff editor and writer.

Feb. 6, 2020

… When it comes to filmmakers guarding themselves against critiques for telling the same-old stories about white men, history is a powerful shield.

A quick glance at the best picture nominees reveals just how impenetrable that armor is: Of the nine films in this category, all but two spend the majority of their running times at least 39 years in the past. Each of these period pieces is overwhelmingly homogeneous when it comes to race, gender or both; the fact that they are set firmly in the past seemingly allows them to exist without much pushback.

“Ford v Ferarri,” for instance, is based on the true story of the rivalry between the rugged American car manufacturing behemoth and the Italian luxury carmaker during the 1960s. It’s the quintessential white “dad movie” — guys racing cars, guys talking about cars, guys arguing over cars. …

And in the comments section for a Newsweek article critical of Ms. Elliott’s “Ford v Ferrari” review, a reader snarkily wondered what she makes of NASA during the John F. Kennedy era. “Our walking on the moon, the space race should all be forgotten because there were no women or people of color,” they wrote.

“Wrong. Black females put men into outer space,” someone responded.

Indeed — Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson were mathematicians and engineers who worked at NASA during the height of the space race, yet it wasn’t until the 2016 release of the aptly titled movie dramatization of their lives, “Hidden Figures,” that the women were given their due onscreen.

There are countless other examples of women, people of color and L.G.B.T.Q. people being erased or sidelined from historically based films.

… All-white period dramas set in Tudor England overshadow the scholarly research that has in recent years uncovered a significant African presence and integration into English life during this era. (And they were not all enslaved.)

… Instead, the root of the criticisms of “The Irishman,” “1917” and the others like them for being so white and male seems to be a sense of weariness and boredom.

Why do the same stories about the same types of people keep getting made?