Diversity In Hollywood Essay

For all of its existence, the United State of America has suffered with its representation of minorities in media. From minstrel shows to The Birth of a Nation, diversity in media has been almost non-existent until the latter half of the twentieth century. Although there have been some bright spots like There Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and the works of Langston Hughes, most media have been almost exclusively from a white, oftentimes male, viewpoint. According to a 2016 diversity report done by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, minorities are underrepresented 3 to 1 among film leads, 5 to 1 in film writers, and 3 to 1 among film directors. This surprising, as the same reports states that America’s increasingly diverse audiences prefer diverse casts and films, pointing to the fact that diverse films had higher median global box office receipts.

In 2013, Latinos accounted for only 4.9% of the roles in the top 100 films of the year. From the beginning, Hollywood had always been dominated by white men and women. However, as time progressed there was a very slight change in cultural and ethnic diversity. Though it is more likely now than ever to find a Latino or Latina in a Hollywood film, their roles are often small, stereotypical, and almost entirely unimportant. As if it wasn’t hard enough to get any role in any Hollywood film regardless of ethnicity, Latinos have to endure playing a harshly demeaning role. Latino men are often cast as comedic relief and play gardeners, janitors, or thugs. Latino women are often cast as maids or mistresses. Aside from this, when women are cast as mistresses they are often submissive to their white male partners, meaning that not only are these roles ethnically demeaning, but also sexist. Along with Latino female sexualisation, though, Latino men are also heavily sexualized. Both Latino women and men have to deal with the exploitation of their culture for stereotypical roles in a movie. However, these are only some of the vicious patterns that attribute to the everlasting ethnic misrepresentation in the biggest part of mass media, Hollywood.

Television and film is a huge part of American culture. As the “face” of America changes, it is expected for our media to reflect it. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Since the beginning of film, minorities have been misrepresented and underrepresented. While there has been a significant increase in minority actors since the beginning of film, there is still a huge underrepresentation present in American television and film. Our media needs to reflect out diverse country. This topic is always important and relevant because race, gender, and sexuality, in general, have been issues throughout the growth of television and film. Even today, minorities are subject to

African American women have not had the opportunity to land career changing roles in many years. Most roles that are offered are small roles where they are seen and not really heard. There has been a shift in the past few years where African American women have increased in their appearance in television shows. Minorities have been underrepresented in television shows in the years, however in recent years there has been a trend of more minorities entering to the realm of broadcasted television shows. The Hollywood DIversity Report states,“ Minority talent claimed 16.8 percent of lead roles on cable reality and other shows during the 2012-13 season, up 3.6 percentage points from the 13.2 percent share the group claimed in 2011-12” (pg. 17). African American women roles in television have developed into two categories: the hypersexualization theme and the angry black woman theme.

In the 2017 media article “How Fair is Hollywood” the main problem is the lack of inclusion that Hollywood has been using throughout their movies . This problem can be solved by having an actor play the role of the corresponding race of his/her character.As noted by Media Mix news in paragraph 1, the author explicitly describes “People have reported frustration with Hollywood’s casting process. That’s because they see non-white actors repeatedly kept out of the spotlight. There is also the phenomenon called “whitewashing,” when roles are written for minorities are given to white actors”. This indicates that people are being displeased by the fact that Hollywood has been doing negative things to put actors to play a  different race from what

Back in the 1800’s, when calculating the population, African Americans were counted as 3/5 of a person (Antonia, p2). One would think that in the past two hundred years people’s beliefs would have changed a little bit, but the general white public are stuck into believing the common stereotypes commonly portrayed in movies. In films and television shows blacks are almost always portrayed as murderers, robbers, rapists, pretty much anything negative, like American History X, for example. Two black men are shown breaking into a white man’s car. People see this, and in turn believe that all black men will try and steal their car; as stupid as it may seem, it is true, and as a result, film

Television still doesn’t completely represent the diversity in America. Roughly three-quarters of film actors were white in 2014. There was only 12.5% African American, 5.3% Asian, and 4.9% Hispanic actors while there was 73.1% white actors. Studies also show the majority of actors are male. According to the annual 100 top grossing films 2007-2014 only 30.2% of speaking or named characters were women, while 73.1% were male whites.

Over the years we have seen the same white story told a thousand times that we have become desensitized to it, never expecting anything else. America was a European-White country but it has become one of the most diverse countries in the world, so American isn’t just white anymore. We are at a place in our society where we can and should be talking about race and one of the best ways to do this is through film, but there has been little to no change over the past decades. Films tend to lean toward white backdrops because it is more “relatable”; Noah the 2012 film used an all white cast because they were considered

As I reflect on my identity, I notice that many shows that I regularly watch contain a cast made up of predominantly white actors/actresses. Furthermore, I believe that many shows in general consist of a dominant white cast. As we’ve seen, the amount of white representation in media compared to the white population is

People can easily recognize the lack of diversity among the producers, writers, casting directors, and actors in Hollywood. It has contributed to the perpetuation of racial minorities. Diversity in the film industry is the important thing to connect people over the world. However, the dominant groups tried to exploit the minority groups. According to a recent University of California, Los Angeles report, it shows on the top 100 films of 2015, there are 49 films had no Asian character and zero film has Asian leading role.

The Effects of Minority Representation in Hollywood and the Media on Racial Perspectives in The U.S.

Theses are all very popular sitcoms that show little to none representation for people of color. The television show Girls, created by and starring Lena Dunham, has received many complaints on the fact that there were no people of color in the show when it had first aired, and there are still barely in it today. In the article ‘I’m a White Girl’: Why ‘Girls’ Won’t Ever Overcome Its Racial Problem, written by Judy Berman, Berman states, “Dunham continues to cast non-white actors only when race defines their character.” (Berman). What Berman means by this statement is unless the character’s race has to do with the role they’re playing, you most likely won’t see a person of color in the show. The only times you will probably see a person of a different race would be if their character was either in the background, playing a character that isn’t given a major enough role to even be given a name, or playing a role where they are seen in a negative light, such as a bum in the streets or a racially stereotypical character, such as an angry black man. A research project had been conducted at the University of Southern California to analyze and come to a conclusion as to how diverse Hollywood actually is. The researchers looked over several hundreds of films from the years 2007 to 2014, not including 2011, and studied more than 30,000 characters to reveal how truly diverse films in

Movie have always been a huge part of American culture. Moreover, we should all know that the United States of America is a culturally diverse nation. So, you would think that writers should attempt to make movies that are ethnically correct. For example, filmmakers play off of archetypes, and tropes, because Hollywood believes that we are incapable of understanding, and we could not possibly fathom a Latina women being anything other than the spicy Latin lover. It is also shocking to see that not many films focus on other cultures, beyond the “majority” white culture in the United States.

Films have the power to both influence and reflect society. The stereotypes prevalent throughout American culture are reflected in most films. While the United States is becoming an increasingly diverse country, this diversity is not portrayed within American cinema. Minority figures often occupy

“Oscars So White” a phrase that began trending on social media sites after the 2016 Academy Awards announce their nominees for Best Actor and Best Actress, it was predominately white for a second year in a row. The movie industry is no stranger to controversy and since its inception it’s constantly been guilty of underrepresenting ethnic people. It’s evident that film is a type of mass media that has a certifiable amount of power to influence audience’s views, yet this platform constantly disregards the need for diversity in favor of stereotypes. Movies such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Scarface (1983), and Pan (2015) are all guilty of this. The depiction of non-American characters in Hollywood movies are constructed around racial