The Academy Awards have been notorious for acknowledging the elite in the film industry since the late 1920’s (History.com Staff, 2009). Whether they are actors, actresses, costume designers or directors, each nominee is commended for their strenuous work. As a devout Academy Awards fan, I feel as though I have witnessed history being made through my viewings. Meryl Streep becoming the most nominated actor/actress in Academy Award history and Jennifer Lawrence being the youngest actress to have three nominations, are just a few of these history making examples. These pivotal moments, amongst others, have also made me aware of the not so bright side of things, which has sparked a controversy in the world we live in today. In 2016, the Academy …show more content…
Awards became the talk of the nation due to its lack of diversity amongst their nominees. Merriam-Webster defines the word ‘diversity’ as “the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization” (Merriam-Webster 2016).
For two consecutive years, the movie industry has failed to fulfill that definition. In 2015 and 2016, all twenty Academy Award nominations in the lead and supporting actor/actress categories have been white (Patrick Ryan, 2016). Although this lack of diversity may seem shocking to some, it is nothing new to the Academy. In fact, over the 88-year history of the Academy Awards only fourteen black actors/actress have won an Oscar for acting (Patrick Ryan, 2016). There is a key piece of information missing to this controversy, who is to blame for the lack of diversity? According to CNN, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, says she has urged studio executives to “expand their thinking in terms of diversity but there is, little her members could do to address the issue” (Brandon Griggs, 2016). In short, the Academy has no say in who is hired/casted in the movie industry therefore the committee has limited options while selecting nominees. Regardless of who is at fault, the lack of diversity needs to be addressed as a …show more content…
whole. While we live in a world where society is becoming more integrated everyday and African Americans are earning higher ranks in careers such as politics and professional sports, it is hard to imagine why African Americans are not equally represented in the movie industry. April Reign, an activist, decided to publically show how she felt about this issue via twitter in 2015 (Lilly Workneh, 2016). Reign decided to send out to the world, “#OscarsSoWhite they asked to touch my hair”, which was originally meant to simply point out the lack of diversity at the 2015 award show, but the tweet eventually escalated into a movement towards just representation and acknowledgment for people of color in the film industry (Lilly Workneh, 2016). With recent events against African Americans like police brutality, the lack of diversity in an award show hits on a broader issue. According to AOL News, “Black Americans are more than twice likely to be unarmed when killed during police encounters than whites” (AOL.com Editors, 2015). This staggering statistic is an example as to how African Americans are mistreated, which has one to believe why the equal representation in the public is so important. In a world where there is deliberate discrimination, it is time for an overall change and create equality amongst all people especially in the film industry. Critics of the “#OscarsSoWhite” movement can question, what is the real importance of this predicament?
One may argue that a movie has nothing to do with racial discrimination or some roles in a film are meant for a certain person. There are also many films and television shows that represent more diversity than one may think, they are just not nominated for awards (Mary McNamara 2016). Wesley Morris from the New York Times says, “some of this is a matter of there not being enough movies in the pool” and “some of it is the studios’ misunderstanding the worth of the movies they have” (Dargis, Morris, Scott,
2016).
Tangled was an entertaining eye opening illustration that included action, romance, comedy, that would be enough to keep the whole family entertained. Time and time again, Disney films are being criticized by the public because of the lack of ethnic diversity; this lack of ethnic diversity can be illustrated through the film titled Tangled. In 1995, Disney gave us Pocahontas and in the year of 1998 Disney had released Mulan. This showed the public that, Disney was in fact capable of creating films in which the lead protagonist was not white, however it wasn’t till more recently that racial diversity truly had taken stand when The Princess and the Frog (2009) was released. While, I applaud the efforts of Disney in attempting
Since many of the roles are given to white actresses, actresses of color are underrepresented in the industry. Only six out of the top 500 box office films feature a woman of color as their protagonist, none which are at the top 200. This only leaves it to around 1% of the protagonist to be a woman of color. As we head towards a better society, more and more examples of media that challenge these statements are being created.
The two-time Oscar nominee, 50, took the opportunity to make a statement about racial inequality in Hollywood. She also thank the people who helped get her into a leading role.
“And in a very Disney way, we are including everybody. I think this is for everybody, and on the screen we’ll see everybody. And that was important to me” (Petit). This quote is from the director of the movie, Bill Condon, who thinks that diversity is a definitively “Disney” quality. In recent years, I would agree, that there are beginning to have more
Diversity has always been one of Hollywood’s greatest weaknesses. For the most part, the industry absolutely strives with its rich narratives, beautiful cinematography, and moving performances but it fails when it comes to diversity. The representation of both women and people of colour have been lacklustre, often with poor characterisations and distasteful stereotypes and character tropes.
Although blacks have won Academy Awards for acting, screenwriting, and music production they still find trouble in getting quality roles within the film industry. (Common Black Stereotypes) Long before television and films were being produced, there were plays and different forms of entertainment where blacks were stereotyped. They were often played by white people in a demoralizing fashion. Over time blacks became seen as the same and that was bad people.
In today’s society, pre-existing assumptions and stereotypes of other ethnicities and individuals play a large part in the way we see others. This social construct of stereotypes has placed restrictions on many people’s lives which ultimately limits them from achieving certain goals. In this sense, stereotypes misrepresent and restrict people of colour to gain casting within the Hollywood film industry. The issue of how casting actors to certain roles and how these actors are forced to submit and represent these false stereotypes is one worthy of discussion. White Chicks (2004), directed by Keenan Wayans, illustrates this issue through the performance of Latrell, performed by Terry Crews, and his performance of the hyper-sexualised “buck” will be a prime example in this essay to discuss the racial politics and stereotypes in Hollywood casting.
According to the article “African American Representation In Hollywood”, the first person of color to win an Oscar was Hattie McDaniel in 1940 for Best Supporting Role, however it took 61 years later for another woman of color to receive an Oscar and in 2001 Halle Berry took home an Oscar for Best Actress in a Lead Role in ‘Monster 's Ball’ and the same night Denzel Washington also went home with a Best Lead Actor award in ‘Training Day’. Though many more people were nominated, less than a handful of minorities walked away with an award throughout the years. We wonder why, but according to the “2016 Hollywood Diversity Report”, studies show that “minorities accounted for 37.9 percent of the U.S Population in 2014, yet they were underrepresented by nearly 3 to 1 among lead roles for that year.” (p.10
African American representation in the film industry has always been a topic for discussion. Whether talking about character types and roles, the actors being cast or not cast, and the lack of diversity in front of and behind the camera. ‘The contemporary status of race in mainstream American culture is intimately bound to the process of representation within and through the mass media.’ (Rocchio, 2000, p. 4). Any role that was to be played by an African American kept in with the dominant stereotypes of the time of production; incompetent, child like, hyper-sexualised or criminal.
Hollywood’s diversity problem is well-known; however, the extent might be surprising to most Americans. According to a 2014 report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television, Film & New Media, found that females comprised only 30% of all speaking characters among the top grossing films of 2013. (Lauzen, 2014) However, minority women faired far worse than their Caucasian counterparts. As a matter of fact, if one looks at the numbers even female characters from other world’s were as better represented in film than some minority women; the numbers are as follow for women: Caucasian (73%), African American (14%), Latina (5%), Asian and other world tied (3%). (Lauzen, 2014) If the lack of representation were not enough consider a 2009 study which found that when minority groups are portrayed on television the portrayal tends to be negative. (Alexandrin, 2009) A study by Busselle and Crandall (2009) found that the manner in which African-Americans are portrayed, often as unemployed criminals, tends to have an influence on the way the public perceives African-American’s lack of economic success. Furthermore, the news media does an equally poor job in the ways that African-American’s are presented; according to the same study while 27% of Americans were considered “poor” in 1996 the images of America’s “poor” being presented by news media was heavily Black (63%). (Busselle & Crandall, 2002) Today, this can be seen in the way that African-American victims of police brutality are depicted in the media. Even when African-Americans are murdered at the hands of police for minor and non-violent offenses (e.g. Mike Brown, Eric Gardner, and Tamir Rice) they are often portrayed as thugs, criminals, and vandals. What’s more, seve...
Those who deny the existence of the racism rooted into modern day Hollywood are far from reality. They may think that in the United States we are getting closer to equality when it comes to casting but we in fact are not. While there is the belief that America has progressed when it comes to social issues, the percentage of roles held by black actors in film and TV has dropped from 15 to 13 percent from the early 2000’s to 2011 (McClintock and Apello 2).
Hollywood has long been the symbolic centre of the American film industry - It also dominates the world’s film industry. This essay will specifically
The Hurst book discusses in Chapter 8, that “whiteness is invisible to most whites,” this could be a reason that there is not a lot of diversity in Hollywood, but it could also be racism, and discrimination toward people of different ethnicities as well (Hurst, 183). According, to Hurst racism is “embedded in the structure and institutions, and defining racism individualistically rather than in structural terms, has allowed our attention to be defected from White privilege” (Hurst, 184). White privilege is present in Hollywood, everything is ran by white people, and it is the white writers and directors, they decided who they will cast in the show or movie. Racial and ethnic diversity in TV programming should not be a problem in the 21st century, this is a problem of the past and should not still be going on. The NPR article discusses the shift of more series with “non-white actors, and a more non-white cast, but that still is on 30% of all TV shows” that is a major improvement but there still needs to be more
Ethnicity and appearance has become a tremendous problem in the media due to the fact that they try to use it as a power to control creativity of abstaining the truth in media. According to journalist Nishijima, A, she refers to the Oscars and explains that it is very absurd how the media is slowly progression in lacking diversity. This was recognized when watching the Oscars and seeing that based off predominantly white nominees. Nishijima quotes “Boone Isaacs decl...
Feminism is a movement that supports women equality within society. In relation to film, feminism is what pushes the equal representation of females in mainstream films. Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist that is famous for touching on this particular issue of how men and women are represented in movies. Through her studies, she discovered that many films were portraying men and women very differently from reality. She came up with a theory that best described why there is such as huge misrepresentation of the social status quos of male and female characters. She believed that mainstream film is used to maintain the status quo and prevent the realization of gender equality. This is why films are continuously following the old tradition that males are dominant and females are submissive. This is the ideology that is always present when we watch a movie. This is evident in the films from the past but also currently. It is as if the film industry is still catering to the male viewers of each generation in the same way. Laura Mulvey points out that women are constantly being seen as sexual objects, whether it is the outfits they wear or do not wear or the way they behave, or secondary characters with no symbolic cause. She states that, “in traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote it-be-looked-at-ness.”(Mulvey pg. 715). Thus, women are nevertheless displayed as nothing more than passive objects for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Mulvey also points out through her research that in every mainstream movie, there is ...