Top-Grossing Films Still Mostly White, Straight and Male

2015/08/08 Leave a comment

More confirmation of the biases we all have (Hollywood responds to these as well as reinforcing them):

Looking at the 700 top-grossing movies from 2007 to 2014, researchers at the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California found that on-screen characters are predominantly straight, white and male. Here are some of their most notable findings:

  • Gender: Only 30.2% of speaking roles or named characters in those 700 movies were women. Of the top 100 movies in 2014, only a fifth had a leading or co-leading actor who was a woman, and women only made up 15.8% of behind-the-scenes roles—directors, producers, writers.

  • Race: Of the top 100 movies last year, 73.1% of all characters were white, and only 17 of those movies had a leading or co-leading actor who was a minority. The study authors say this represents “no change” when compared to castings in the top 700 films from 2007-2014.

  • LGBT: In the top movies of 2014, only 19 characters were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and none of them were transgender. The LGB characters portrayed reflect other industry biases: they, too, are mostly white men.

Top-Grossing Films Still Mostly White, Straight and Male | TIME.

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6 Depressing Facts About Diversity in Film | TIME

2014/08/07 Leave a comment

Not too surprising:

The Media Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism issues a report every three years analyzing diversity in film. In its most recent study, published Monday, the initiative analyzed the 600 top-grossing films over the last six years. Its report found there has been no meaningful change in the racial diversity of films since 2007, despite last year’s hits like 12 Years a Slave and Best Man Holiday.

Here are five other findings from the report:

  • Only a quarter of all 3,932 speaking characters were from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups in 2013’s films
  • Latinos were especially underrepresented: Only 4.9 percent of all speaking characters were Hispanic, even though that demographic represents 25 percent of the moviegoing population and Hispanic women are the most avid summer moviegoers
  • Animated films are the worst culprit: Less than 15 percent of animated characters in films from 2007, 2010 and 2013 the last three reports were from underrepresented groups, even though they are the films to which children are most frequently exposed
  • None of 2013’s top-grossing films featured a female director
  • Only 6 percent of directors across in 2013 films were black

6 Depressing Facts About Diversity in Film | TIME.

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