US group releases video featuring examples of homophobia in movies from the past five years and warns anti-gay message is being exported around the world

Hollywood films are falling behind trailblazing television shows such as Orange is the New Black, Transparent and Modern Family when it comes to fair and relevant representation of LGBT people, according to US gay rights group Glaad (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).

The organisation cited recent films such as Get Hard, The Wolf of Wall Street and Ted 2, all of which it said used homophobic terms or made jokes at the expense of gay characters. And it laid into Hollywood citing the group’s own recent report that no gay characters whatsoever were included in more than 80% of the 102 major studio films released in 2014.

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Glaad’s new online campaign, titled Hollywood Must Do Better, features a video highlighting movies which have employed gay slurs or even featured violence against LGBT characters. It has been released in the wake of television’s recent Emmy awards, which celebrated a number of shows with positive gay characters in a trend the group says is in marked contrast with the approach routinely taken on the big screen.

“We’re still the butt of the joke,” Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO and president of Glaad, told Variety. “We’re still infrequently seen and when we are seen, it’s in a negative light.”

She added: “We want to show people and to build awareness of how bad mainstream films are. Our greatest outcome would be for studios to take notice and understand that we are watching, we are paying attention and we are putting a concerted effort into changing things.”

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The video highlights a scene in Ted 2 in which Mark Wahlberg’s lead character is caught with a stash of transgender porn and blurts out: “I have a disease. I need help!”, as well as segments in which the terms “gay”, “faggot” and “homo” are used as insults in Pain and Gain, Hot Tub Time Machine and Horrible Bosses. Transgender people, it suggests, are usually depicted being spurned, dismissed or as objects of disgust. The video concludes: “These are the messages Hollywood is exporting to the world. No one deserves to walk out of the theatre feeling scared, humiliated or rejected. Hollywood must do better. ”

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Glaad is aware that LGBT themes have recently been prominent in independent films such as Freeheld, The Danish Girl and Roland Emmerich’s controversial Stonewall. But the group believes more commercial movies – specifically the big budget comic book and fantasy blockbusters which often do well overseas – are missing an opportunity to act as a trojan horse in countries such as Russia and China, both of which have a poor record on gay rights.

Stonewall has been in the news after campaigners vowed to boycott the film for “whitewashing” the story of the famous 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York. It has also received largely negative reviews.

Will Ferrell comedy Get Hard also hit the headlines in March after being criticised for presenting gay sex as something to be feared and lampooned. And there is a powerful sense at Glaad that Hollywood studios are failing to engage on the subject.

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“There’s a lot of the blame game,” Matt Kane, director of entertainment media for Glaad, told Variety. “Producers and writers are quick to cite other parts of the production process as where the problem lies. They say the scripts aren’t being written or writers are being told they can’t sell scripts with gay characters. It illustrates that it’s an industry-wide problem and old habits are dying hard.”