66% Versus 3%: How Race is Painfully Visible on the Big Screen
Anya English and Chloe Robinson
From the glamorization of Hollywood cinema in the late 1920s, to AMC theatres in the late 2000s, movies are a staple of modern culture, both crafting a narrative to the public and reflecting societal norms. The subjects of our films are indicative of both what stories the industry thinks are important to tell, as well as what consumers want to watch. The movie industry is infamously reflective of the racist and sexist biases of society. In this study, we illustrate what stories are told by Hollywood and how this was influenced by race and gender. With an analysis of the demographics of Hollywood biopics, we posed the questions: to what extent are biopics diverse? Do women have adequate representation in these biopics? Does Hollywood assign people of color to stereotypical roles? Finally, is there a relationship between sales and the characteristics of the lead role?
The dataset we analyzed was curated by Hannah Fingerhut and includes 676 biopics released from 1900 through 2014. Entries for each film include its title, a link to the imdb page from which Fingerhut collected her information, the country in which the film was made, the film’s release year and box office earnings, the director’s name, the number of subjects, the subject’s name, the subject’s occupation or what they were known for, whether the subject’s race was identified, the subject’s race, whether or not the subject is a person of color, the subject’s sex, and finally the actor or actress the subject is played by.
There is some missing data in the dataset. For example, the box office earnings were not recorded for every film, and Fingerhut was not able to identify all subjects by race- about 25% are marked “race unknown.” Additionally, the box office earnings were not adjusted for inflation, making it difficult to compare earnings of films from different eras. A key piece of information that was not included was the race of any of the actors; sometimes actors played a character of a race different from their own. In the data set, racial categorizations are often too ambiguous or inexact. For example, “Indian” and “Asian” subjects are grouped separately, even though India is part of Asia. It seems the label “Asian” was applied to biopic subjects from East and Southeast Asia only. An additional ethical issue in this vein could be that the dataset might identify a biopic subject in a different way than a subject would have categorized themself, forcing them into a label that is not self-bestowed.
This exploratory analysis reveals a stark contrast in Hollywood biopics. The vast majority of biopic subjects are white. Concurrently, the majority of most-featured actors are white. Biopics featuring multiple subjects are also dominated by white men. The roles played by BIPOC people were largely confined to tropes like “athlete” and “criminal.” Outside of the athletic realm, Black actors are most likely to be featured in films about Black trauma, playing the roles of activists. The roles for subjects of color are constrained to particular racial narratives. About 13% of Hollywood biopics feature a person of color, and unlike white women, women of color have been virtually erased from Hollywood narratives. Investigating the monetary aspect of Hollywood biopics, we observed the demographics of the highest grossing films. In the top ten highest grossing biopics: 9/10 featured men, 7/10 had white leading subjects, and there were no women of color. Although we cannot isolate just one variable to explain this data, the difference between the monetary gain of popular biopics and the demographics of the lead role could be indicative of broader public racial and gender hierarchies.
Figure 1 (above) delineates the demographics of Hollywood biopics in relation to gender and race. The graph visualizes acutely the contrast between white subjects and subjects of color featured in biopics. 87% of the subjects in biopics are white, and about 24% are women. Perhaps more disconcerting: 20% of biopics feature white women, and 2.76% feature women of color; 66% of biopics have a white male lead, juxtaposing roughly 3% of biopics featuring a woman of color. More white women are cast than men of color, and more men of color are cast than women of color (about 10% to 3%).
Figure 2 (below) reiterates how biopics are most likely to feature an African American in the role of an athlete, provoking the question: in terms of the roles that Black people play, what does the movie industry deem digestible for its viewership?
Figure 3 (below) expands this question to include all people of color. Strikingly, the largest type of biopic role that is a person of color (besides “other”) is a criminal.
The long-standing history of white actors usurping the role of BIPOC characters is one of both material and immaterial consequences, serving both to reinforce the whitewashing of history, packaged and presented by popular media, and to systematically bar BIPOC actors from employment. Although this practice has waned in modernity, we saw specific examples of this in the data: in 2014 Christian Bale played the role of Moses, although there is an ambiguity shrouding the race of biblical figures, it is clear that he was not a white man. Following a similar line, there is contemporary debate surrounding the race of Jesus. Contrary to popular conception and media depiction, Jesus was a Middle Eastern man. However, actors selected to play this role are not. In fact, movies were exclusively played by white men: Jeffery Hunter in 1961, Ralph Fiennes in 2000, Diogo Morgado in 2014, and Henry Ian Cusick in 2003. Debates over ‘the color of Jesus’ reveal an intimate relationship with race and religion in modern culture; translated into Hollywood film (an industry already wrought with lack of diversity), we see how one of the most ubiquitous cultural figures of our time was manufactured to be white.
Further exploration on the demographics of Hollywood film is necessary; we explored the roles that Black and POC actors played, the proportion of representation they held, and how this varied by gender. The next direction of this research should create a linear progression of how the demographics of biopic roles have changed over time, observe if there was a broader inclusion of BIPOC women in film, and use this to predict how the industry will continue to evolve. Further, it would be interesting to document how the roles that women are cast into have developed over time, how much money films make at the box office when the lead role is person of color versus a white person, a white woman versus a woman of color, and how movie reviews correspond with the demographics of the lead role respectively. Delving into a new aspect of identity, it would be equally pertinent to conduct research about queer representation in film. It is clear that Hollywood has substantial work in the realm of diversity, and this task is of utmost importance. We must shift the passive myth of a ‘woke’ Hollywood into active efforts to diversify.
