Opinion: The film industry still needs a lot of diversifying
By Ishika Muchhal
Hollywood: home to magic, movies, entertainment and very few women and people of color.
Representation for people of color and women is lacking in every area of the film industry.
Behzad Dabu, a South Asian actor known for “How to Get Away with Murder,” has been a bold advocate for representation.
“Representation is still not close to even being in the realm of equitability,” Dabu said.
This is not just an issue for those in the industry. It impacts everyone.
In 2019, a PBS study found that young adults see representation as empowering, and the lack of it can bring a person’s self-esteem down.
Not seeing yourself represented feels like looking into a mirror, but there’s no reflection.
The trend of underrepresentation is visible from the numbers alone.
Every year, UCLA releases a Hollywood Diversity Report detailing how diverse films and TV shows were that year. In a jump from 2019, the report on films made in 2020 shows that this is the first year when female and BIPOC actors have approached representation proportional to their U.S. population demographic.
Was 2020’s diversity an anomaly because of the pandemic? 54.6% of films were released through streaming services because of theater closures.
“Indeed, it appears as if there were streaming films that ranked among the top 200 films in 2020 that might not have made the cut in a more typical year,” the UCLA report said.
Only time will tell whether this uptick in diversity will last.
The public wants to see diverse films.
The UCLA report showed that films with 40% or more diverse cast members were the highest grossing films at the box office.
Diversity in film is like dominos.
Films with diverse producers are more likely to have an underrepresented director.
Those directors are more likely to work with writers from minorities.
Those writers are more likely to tell stories that feature diverse casts.
Those diverse casts are more likely to make audiences feel seen.
Those audiences are more likely to watch and recommend those movies, thus making more money at the box office.
Having more diversity literally pays.
“When we see things cast homogeneously, we say, ‘You’re doing that in spite of the fact that it’s not good for your wallet,’” Dabu said.
So what is stopping them from getting made and recognized? It comes down to leadership, money, reviews and votes.
White men still dominate the top Hollywood offices. How can we expect movies to be diverse if the people who greenlight them are not?
The report also said that films produced, directed and/or written by women and people of color are chronically underfunded.
A USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s report “Critic’s Choice?” found that movie critics for the top 100 films in 2017 were mostly — wait for it — white and male.
Voting bodies are not diverse either.
Out of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s 87 voting members, NONE are black.
The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences has gone through a long journey with its evident lack of diversity. After the 2015 #oscarssowhite backlash, the academy took reactionary measures by doubling the number of women and people of color.
In September, the academy announced their Academy Aperture 2025 plan. Starting in 2024, films will have to meet two of the four inclusion standards to be eligible for best picture: on-screen representation, themes and narratives; creative leadership and project team; industry access and opportunities; and audience development.
But diversifying films is more than a statistic.
It means authenticity and relatability, not tokenism, stereotypes, “white savior” narratives and misrepresentation. The only way to stop perpetuating stereotypes is to diversify stories and storytellers.
Quoting USC Annenberg studies, Dabu spoke about how most people don’t have friends outside of their race and most people of color are cast in roles seen as threats. Media representation leads to off-screen perception.
“The media representation and what’s happening in society is directly connected,” he said.
Artists can only be recognized for roles that exist.
As Viola Davis said in her 2015 Emmy acceptance speech, “The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.”
Women and people of color deserve to be the main character.
