"Nightbitch" Proves DEI Hires Are A Mistake

Nightbitch has been positioned as the avant-garde feminist darling of the year. Adapted from Rachel Yoder’s surrealist novel, the story of a mother transforming into a dog was billed as a darkly comedic exploration of modern motherhood's "chaos." With feminist director Marielle Heller at the helm, it was tailor-made for the DEI devotees: girl power, "representation," endless grievances, and another attempt to flip ideas about motherhood on their heads. Spoilers ahead!

It's the tale of a woman who, fed up with being a stay-at-home mom, starts transforming into a dog—metaphorically? Literally? No one knows for sure. The story follows her as she grows fur and extra nipples, develops a tail, and starts sniffing out everything wrong with her life, including society’s dreaded "unrealistic expectations of motherhood."

Stuck in a rut of isolation and artistic dissatisfaction, she dives into a canine identity to escape it all—playing fetch with her son, eating from dog bowls, and even killing small animals like the family cat. Her transformation allows her to reconnect with her creative passions, all while navigating the family dynamics with a growing sense of canine freedom.

After some family drama, a trial separation, and a reflection on her mother’s similar transformation into a dog (obviously), she finds harmony between her animal instincts and artistic ambitions. In the end, she gives birth to a daughter, presumably with a bit more emotional clarity...and that's it.

In short: Nightbitch is a feminist fever dream where motherhood, identity crises, and possibly perimenopause meet werewolf vibes. The movie's defenders will tell you it’s some kind of deep metaphor for motherhood and losing oneself in the chaos of child-rearing. The rest of us? We see a rage-filled, self-indulgent mess.

A Lecture, Not a Story

Critics haven’t been kind, either. Words like “pretentious,” “alienating,” and “incoherent” come up often, and for good reason. The film is so laser-focused on wallowing in grievance that it forgets to tell a compelling story with a redemptive arc. This isn’t an anomaly—it’s the predictable result of Hollywood’s obsession with prioritizing messaging over mastery. What should feel like art ends up feeling like a lecture from your weird feminist professor.

This is largely thanks to Hollywood’s decade-long commitment to DEI initiatives, which have the industry more interested in ticking ideological boxes than achieving excellence. Most of the major agencies have all but openly deprioritized quality scripts in favor of identity-first projects. Talented, Oscar-nominated writers, directors, and cinematographers—especially those who are older, male, straight, and white—have been ghosted in favor of newcomers chosen for their alignment with Hollywood’s political agenda.

But the rise of Hollywood’s DEI-driven storytelling isn’t just about representation—it’s rooted in an ideology that sees all social hierarchies as products of scarcity and oppression. The assumption goes like this: if one group holds power, it must mean another group has none, and the only solution is to invert the hierarchy entirely. If men have historically held power, women must now have all the power. If a majority race has dominated, the minority race must take its place. Nuance, cooperation, and shared excellence don’t fit into this zero-sum equation.

This ideology also assumes that any advantage that the "enemy" group has—even if it’s rooted in skill, discipline, or creativity—is purely the result of privilege. Take Hollywood’s sidelining of experienced, straight white men with decades of successful work under their belts. Their achievements aren’t viewed as the product of studying and perfecting their craft but as unearned rewards from a system rigged in their favor. The solution, according to DEI logic, is to replace them with creators who meet identity criteria and bring “subversive” ideas to the table. But swapping out talent for ideology simply doesn’t yield the same results.

The irony is that DEI’s obsession with dismantling hierarchies often creates new ones, equally rigid and stifling. Instead of fostering collaboration between different voices, it pits creators against each other in a race to out-subvert one another. Great storytelling thrives on the truth and shared human experiences, not the politics of inversion.

Writing for film isn’t just self-expression; it’s an art of precision and structure, the creation of characters whose growth and redemption resonate universally. But when a political ideology comes first, you don’t get groundbreaking cinema—you get Nightbitch.

And here’s the real kicker: it will never be enough. No matter how many ideological concessions Hollywood makes, it will always fall short of satisfying the most vocal progressive critics. These projects still face backlash from the very audience they were trying to please because they're still too "white," too "cis," and too normal.

The woke audience demands every line, every character, and every plot point must conform to an ever-evolving standard. Even when a project is temporarily celebrated, new ideological demands arise, rendering it obsolete. The result? A vicious cycle of appeasement that alienates mainstream audiences and still leaves progressive critics demanding more. Thankfully, their influence is dwindling fast, and Hollywood should take note.

Women Deserve Better

What’s most insulting about Nightbitch is how it reduces marriage and motherhood to dystopian nightmares, completely detached from reality. While some feminists have lauded it for portraying "real female rage" and the "gore" of motherhood, there’s nothing remotely "real" about it. It’s a resentment-fueled fantasy that fixates on a perceived "loss of agency," stretching itself into a convoluted justification for wallowing in victimhood instead of embracing perspective, gratitude, or meaningful transformation.

At its core, Nightbitch romanticizes self-pity and glorifies bitterness, rejecting even the possibility that perspective or positivity could coexist with the challenges of motherhood. Choosing gratitude in the face of life’s demands? Oppression. Focusing on what’s best for your family because you love them? Still oppression. For this particular protagonist, literally anything outside the pursuit of being a free-spirited artist is some subtle form of oppression.

Great stories about motherhood—Little Women, Steel Magnolias—capture both the difficulty and the profound joy of raising a family. In contrast, DEI-driven narratives like Nightbitch revel in subversion, trading in traditional virtues like resilience and strength for cleverly disguised weaknesses.

Hollywood’s fixation on DEI and the grievances that come with it has robbed its protagonists of moral complexity, replacing growth arcs with aimless characters who rage against societal structures without ever reflecting on their own flaws. For now, Nightbitch serves as another reminder of what happens when storytelling bows to politics: uninspiring characters, grievances galore, and a lot of barking up the wrong tree.