Misguided Representation
A lack of women and minorities in film and television is an issue deeper than a hashtag.
“I didn’t expect her to be so black.”
Variations of this quote can be heard whispered behind sets and cameras in the Western film and television industry. Specifically, it appeared in the 2013 feature film Belle, as well as in the personal life of the film’s director, Amma Asante.
Asante, 46, was born and raised in London by Ghanaian immigrants. She began her media career as a child actress, but she left acting in her late teens to pursue screenwriting and soon founded her own production company, Tantrum Films. In 2004, Asante directed her debut film, A Way of Life. British media immediately proclaimed her to be an extraordinary prospect in cinema at the time, and she went on to direct the critically acclaimed Belle staring Gugu Mbatha-Raw in the lead role. Asante was honored by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in London, New York and Los Angeles for both films. In fact, she was the first black female film director to win a BAFTA for A Way of Life in 2005, 58 years after the British Film Academy’s conception by eight white men.
Representation of women and minorities acting in major film and television roles is nothing new and is very often discussed. Their representation behind the camera, however, is just as minimal. According to the 2015 Hollywood Diversity Report by the Bunche Center at UCLA, minorities are underrepresented in directing by two to one and women by eight to one. Meanwhile, 94 percent of studio heads in the film industry are white, 100 percent male, and television heads remain 96 percent white, 71 percent male.
Minorities make up nearly 40 percent of the US population and will soon become the majority in the country while women remain 50 percent of the population. Not only are women and minority populations high, but they are also “aggressive consumers.” However, they are still widely underrepresented in acting and production roles.
The facts prove this, but critically acclaimed diverse films have made it to cinemas followed by immense success.
The Slave Narrative
Asante’s Belle was released around the same time as the Oscar-winning film, 12 Years A Slave. Steve McQeen directed the Best Motion Picture and several lead and supporting people of color won awards or were nominated. Lee Daniels’ The Butler also won several awards and was surrounded with critical acclaim. All three films feature a black director and black leads. The difference, though, is in the narrative.
“I’m changing the narrative for little girls,” Asante told MSNBC, “and little boys as well have found the value in seeing a woman who is not a slave, who has dignity, and who is trying to affirm her identity in spite of what the world is telling her.”
Belle tells the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of a British admiral and an African slave. She was raised by her great-uncle, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield in Kenwood House, Hampstead. The film takes a closer look at how Belle influenced Mansfield’s legal rulings that led to the abolition of slavery. Belle stands equal to her white relatives in this story, though, and is not represented as a servant to them in any way.
This kind of film flips the stories Hollywood enjoys to tell that feature black people — that they cannot accomplish progress unless being disadvantaged.
“These films are created for a white, liberal audience to engender white guilt and make them feel bad about themselves,” — Douglas, The Guardian
Orville Lloyd Douglas wrote a piece in the Guardian on why he is done watching films that revolve around this issue. “I’m convinced these black race films are created for a white, liberal film audience to engender white guilt and make them feel bad about themselves,” Douglas stated around the release of 12 Years a Slave and The Butler.
Douglas’s opinions circle back to the underrepresentation of black people in Hollywood, specifically actors: “The narrow range of films about the black life experience…is dangerous because it limits the imagination…Yet, sadly, these roles are some of the only ones open to black talent.”
An Inclusion Crisis
When the Oscar nominations for the 2015 film season were released, people were shocked to see no actors of color on the list. This inspired the online trend #OscarsSoWhite and a subsequent boycott. However, after digging into a study from the University of Southern California, journalists have found that the diversity problem of the Academy Awards doesn’t even scratch the surface of this “inclusion crisis.”
“Films do worse because of long-standing myths about what makes a movie successful.” — Katherine Peiper, USC
Stacy L. Smith, director of the Annenberg School’s media diversity and social change initiative, was one of the study’s authors and discovered some evidence behind the “erasure of…women, people of color, the LGBT community.” The USC study analyzed about 400 television shows and films released between September 2014 and August 2015. Here is some of the data found:
· Women made up one-third of speaking characters, most likely being sexualized. People of color made up 28 percent of speaking characters. Half of the media studied had no Asian speaking characters, and about one-fifth had no black people.
· Television proved better than films — 7 percent of films had casts that matched ethnicity levels of the US population whereas broadcast TV was at 19 percent. Women directed only 3 percent of the films but 17 percent of broadcast TV.
Another author of the study, Katherine Peiper, suggested that television did better “because of long-standing myths about what makes a movie successful.” Peiper goes on to proclaim that the numbers found in this report are important for no other reason than consumer representation. “Doesn’t everyone deserves to have their stories told and see themselves on screens and part of the…cultural storytelling that we all embrace and enjoy?”
Affirmative Reaction
It didn’t take films about the disadvantageous populations rising above discrimination to make people recognize the modern representation crisis. Instead, recent controversies like #OscarsSoWhite have inspired some studio heads to reanalyze what goes into creating a well-represented piece of media.
“The Oscars controversy was a wake-up call to examine our role in expanding opportunities internally at Bad Robot and externally with our content and partners,” director and Bad Robot producer J.J. Abrams told The Hollywood Reporter. While Abrams’ most recent Hollywood blockbuster, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, featured a female (Daisy Ridley) and black (John Boyega) lead, he still recognized a need to expand diversity in the business.
Subsequently, Abrams and Bad Robot created a new policy to “encourage diversity in Hollywood.” The policy would require that women and minorities be submitted for directing, acting and writing roles proportionally to their representation in the population.
Abrams told The New York Times that that breaks it down to 50 percent women, 12 percent black, 18 percent Hispanic and 6 percent Asian in each department — directing, writing and acting. He included in his memo about the policy that in addition to women and minorities candidates, he welcomed those “whose religious or sexual orientation could provide us with voices that are underrepresented.”
“We’re working to find a rich pool of representative, kick-ass talent.” — Abrams
He assured the Times that his choice “was not about quotas or political correctness.” Instead, Abrams commits to working to “find a rich pool of representative, kick-ass talent and give them the opportunity they deserve and we can all benefit from.”
Some industry insiders told Deadline that this kind of search for ethnic talent might not be the answer. 2015 saw a wave of television pilots featuring many actors of color.
The new series, including Black-ish, Fresh Off The Boat and Empire scored huge ratings and influenced other executives to work on casting shows that are, similarly, dominated by ethnic talent.
Hollywood representatives have suggested that while casting actors of color as leads in successful shows has been organic at times, many broadcast pilots designating people of color as leads does not ensure the best outcome. “They need to say the best man or woman wins,” one rep told Deadline, condemning a policy stating diversity requirement in a role.
Expectations
Lady Ashford, played by Miranda Richardson, says the line, “I didn’t expect her to be so black,” in Asante’s Belle upon first seeing the young woman she had hoped to marry to her son. Asante’s mother-in-law, after meeting Asante for the first time, echoed the same surprise and said to her son, “She’s quite pretty but she’s very black. I didn’t expect her to be so black.”
Even with a wave of ethnic casting, data shows that Hollywood has a lot of ground to cover in diversity inclusion. Critics — and consumers, sitting back in the sofas clicking through the new NBC pilot — may still be shocked at how “black” (or Asian or gay or feminine) the lead or director is, but the tide is slowly shifting away from those common expectations.
