“You are a little old and a little white”: the complex representation of diversity issues in late night television in Late Night (Ganatra, 2019)

Abstract

This article focuses on the movie Late Night (2019, Nisha Ganatra) and explores the limits and efficiency of its discourse on issues of racism and misogyny in the working environment that is the world of late-night television in the United States. The story takes place behind the scenes of a fictional late-night show, Tonight with Katherine Newbury, whose host, played by Emma Thompson, is about to be retired because of her poor ratings. She is saved by the arrival of Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling), a young, and inexperienced, Indian American writer, then the only woman and person of color in her all-white male writers’ room. While the movie presents a counter-hegemonic stance, critical of the lack of diversity in late-night television, upon closer analysis, its argument appears to be somewhat limited. Indeed, the movie does not really question the root causes for the continued absence of women and/or people of color, both in front and behind the cameras of late-night shows, nor does it challenge issues of institutional racism. Mindy Kaling, who wrote the script, focused the story on Molly saving the show and finding her place in the writers’ room, thus delivering a prime example of what has been dubbed “neoliberal multiculturalism”: celebrating the success of the few while ignoring structural inequalities.