From the boardrooms of film and television studios to the actors in front of the camera, the industry is overwhelmingly white, male and heterosexual, the report by the University of Southern California found.
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Helping to illustrate Hollywood’s diversity problem at the movies is John Oliver, who delivered an amusing segment on the topic on this weekend’s “Last Week Tonight”.
The top-line takeaways from USC’s Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment, released today, paint a bleak picture of inclusivity in Hollywood, at a time when movements including #OscarsSoWhite and a campaign to reduce the gender gap seem to be constantly making headlines.
It is also revealed that the diversity in Hollywood is under the scrutiny of after Oscars body the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to nominate people of colour for acting awards for a second year in a row. “In general, the media landscape is dominated by whites”, the authors conclude. Worse, only seven transgender characters were counted, four of which could be found on one digital series. Altogether, the study examined 109 films and 305 series. “Among a set of broad, academic solutions, such as “alter stereotypical thinking” and “[create] target inclusion goals”, green-lighting films with female directors stood out as the study’s most concrete, actionable solution.
The underrepresentation of women shows up among film leads, film directors and writers, as well as the people who work in broadcast and cable TV, the study added.
Film studio heads were 94 per cent white and 100 per cent male, while senior managers were 92 per cent white and 83 per cent male. Researches didn’t have racial or ethnic background information, but found that women represent about 20 percent of corporate boards, chief executives and executive management teams.
When it comes to diversity, the lack of representation of black performers and artists has been oft-discussed, but this study points out “at least half or more of all cinematic, television, or streaming stories fail to portray one speaking or named Asian or Asian American on screen”.
Gender disparities are clearly highlighted in the study, showing that women made up only 28 percent of speaking roles in film. White characters made up 71.7 percent of speaking roles, 12.2 percent were Black, 5.8 percent Latino, 5.1 percent Asian, 2.3 percent were Middle Eastern and 3.1 percent accounted for “Other”.
In the 414 films and television shows included in the study, 87 percent of the directors were white. Moreover, LGBT characters were predominantly White and male. They also looked at more than 1,500 executives and graded 10 media companies for their onscreen and behind the scenes representation of women and people of color.
Disney, Sony, Paramount, Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. didn’t immediate comment Sunday night. None of the six major studios rated better than 20 percent overall; Time Warner fared poorest of all with a score of zero.
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Other notable exceptions were the CW, The Walt Disney Company, Amazon and Hulu, all of which “demonstrated strong performances across television and digital programming”. Disney and the CW ranked highest for inclusion in television.
