How to Fix the Racist Oscars—and Hollywood – The Daily Beast

More on the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and detailing the extent of Hollywood’s problems:

It’s not just the Academy that’s lacking diversity, either. Researchers at the University of Southern California analyzed the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014 and came to some staggering conclusions. They determined that, of the top 100 highest-grossing films of 2014, only 17 of the top movies featured non-white leads or co-leads, and the overall breakdown of actors was: 73.1 percent White, 12.5 percent Black, 5.3 percent Asian, 4.9 percent Hispanic, and 4.2 percent Other.

“I know many members who wouldn’t even see [Straight Outta Compton] because it represented a culture that they detest or, more accurately, they assume they detest,” an Academy member said.

These frustrating numbers inspired “Every Single Word,” an eye-opening Tumblr by Dylan Marron that highlights every single word spoken by a person of color in a mainstream film. Marron’s shocking findings show, among many examples, that in the entire Harry Potter film series, only five minutes and 40 seconds are spoken by characters of color (they total over 20 hours). In The Lord of the Ringstrilogy, it’s 46 seconds (if you count the Orcs). E.T.: nine seconds. Into the Woods: seven seconds. Moonrise Kingdom: 10 seconds. Last year’s Best Picture winner, Birdman: 53 seconds.

Hollywood is also a business, so some of the explanation for the lack of diversity is financial. A decade ago, the U.S. box office comprised 51.3 percent of worldwide gross. Today, it’s less than 40 percent, so over 60 percent of a movie’s overall take is international. But a big problem that the industry doesn’t know how to address is the tastes of international audiences, which are, quite frankly, far more narrow-minded than that of Americans. With the exception of the Fast and the Furiousfranchise, many films with mainly black casts don’t travel too well abroad. Look at Straight Outta Compton, which made just $39 million internationally out of $200 million total, or Creed, which took home $30 million of its $137 million total outside the U.S (the previous entry with a white lead, Rocky Balboa, made $70 million domestic and $85 million abroad). In the Sony hack, a controversial email surfaced from a producer to Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton decrying the tastes of international movie audiences.

“I believe that the international motion picture audience is racist—in general pictures with an African American lead don’t play well overseas,” the producer wrote in an email pegged to the Denzel Washington-starrer The Equalizer. “But Sony sometimes seems to disregard that a picture must work well internationally to both maximize returns and reduce risk, especially pics with decent size budgets.”

Source: How to Fix the Racist Oscars—and Hollywood – The Daily Beast