Desolate Diversity in the World’s Most Influential Place
By: Sarosh A. B. Shivji
As a child, I always looked for someone like me on television and in movies. Finding an opinionated, free, and powerful Indian girl on youth television shows was pretty hard. The closest character I could find was Princess Jasmine, but I was never able to connect to her lavish life, and her deep knowledge of her own culture. When my parents moved to Alberta in the 70’s, they stripped themselves of all of their culture and identity; they learned to blend in. I was never all that interested in films I couldn’t connect to. This is directly connected to the lack of diverse executives in Hollywood. Producers, directors, and writers are rarely a part of minority groups, leaving fewer opportunities for minority representation. The people value diversity, again taking away opportunities from people of colour and minorities in film and television. The same “diverse” creatives are called upon time and time again, taking all of the few opportunities that minority content creators are given in Hollywood. Ten billion dollars are stolen from minority actors, writers, and executives because they are not included on screen. Ten billion dollars could help our falling economies if we include more people when we make a movie. Ten billion dollars can change countless LGBTQ2S+, BIPOC, and minority lives.
Zendaya once said, “I am Hollywood’s acceptable version of a Black girl and that has to change. We’re vastly too beautiful and too interesting for me to be the only representation of that.”
Creatives, like actors and film and television crews, are so diverse, and there are millions of stories that still need to be told. Ten billion opportunities are missed every time we refuse to include diverse people in our art, films, and television.
Citations
Sperling, N. (2021, March 11). Hollywood loses $10 billion a year due to lack of DIVERSITY, study finds. Retrieved April 1, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/movies/hollywood-black-representation.html
Zendaya: ‘I’m Hollywood’s acceptable version of a black girl’. (2018, April 24). Retrieved April 1, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-43879480
