Representation Matters
Written by guest writer Chris Carthern. You can see more of his work here.
Cosplays By Shinobi/Chris Carthern
Unless you have been living under a rock you will notice the lack of representation for Black people and many other groups of people in Hollywood. Here is a personal story about a young black child. A young black child went to her mother and cried because she wanted to be white with straight hair. She felt this way because that is what she saw on TV. That is what the TV told her it was to be beautiful. Her mother cried and created the talent agency for children called Look Like Me. We need more representation. Black people should not feel ugly or less valued because of the images that are depicted on TV. It was not until her daughter saw Quvenzhané Wallis playing the role of Annie with her afro that she thought she was beautiful. This is why representation matters.
Hollywood has a horrible tradition of whitewashing movies. Many biblical movies feature white actors but are set in the middle-east or northern Africa. These people should not be white. Johnny Depp played a Native American in the Lone Ranger. Director Ridley Scott said without casting big-name white actors, his 2014 movie Exodus: Gods and Kings would never have been made, saying, "I can't mount a film of this budget ... and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. ... I'm just not going to get financed.” This statement in itself is a huge problem and is why Hollywood is so white. The list of films goes on and on. Other examples include the Prince of Persia and The Last Airbender. In the Nickelodeon show The Last Airbender the main characters were Asian or Native American descent but were casted all white in the movie. In the movie 21 most of the team members from the card counting team were Asian males but you wouldn’t know that from watching the movie. Tilda Swinton’s character in Marvel’s Doctor Strange is not white in the comics but an elderly Asian man. I will stop here but do your own research on whitewashing in Hollywood to become better informed.
It is quite stupid to maintain Hollywood’s whiteness even from a business perspective. Diverse movies make more money. Period. So even making more money won’t make movie studios push for inclusive movies. Eight out of the top ten television shows have at least 21% of minorities meaning these shows are preferred to all-white casts. Give the people what they want. We don’t have any black people leading a single movie studio. No leading voice here. Women are also underrepresented in movies. It is horrible. Think about Marvel Studios. They have become one of the largest productions over the past 10 years. Consider the fact that we had to wait 18 movies to see a black superhero lead movie and 21 movies before we saw a female lead superhero movie. How is this acceptable?
In 2015 #oscarssowhite trended due to the lack of the award show’s diversity. Little has changed since then. In 2020 at the BFI Awards not a single person of color was nominated for best actor. Of all the women with speaking roles among the top-grossing movies in 2019 20% were black, 7% were Asian and 5% were Latina. This is a disgrace and needs to change now. Only 2 out of 10 lead actors in movies or television series are people of color. 1.3 out of 10 directors of movies are people of color and it is the same number for directors that are female. Less than 1 out of 10 movie writers are people of color.
We let white people in Hollywood tell black stories from a white perspective about our culture and continuously make movies to make white people comfortable while trying to appease black people “complaining” about representation. But Green Book won the Oscar for best film. Green Book was a movie made by a white man about one of the best composers in music history where his white driver was the main character. A major movie studio made a movie about one of the greatest composers to ever live and the main character was his white driver. How does that make any sense? Let’s talk about Hidden Figures which did a good job highlighting these smart black women that worked at NASA. This movie suffered the “white savior” storyline where Kevin Costner’s character had this grand scene where he takes a crowbar and bashes the sign of the colored restroom and states vehemently, “Here at NASA, we all pee the same color.” This was fictitious and unnecessary in a story that is meant to highlight black women that have not been acknowledged for their accomplishments. Katherine Johnson was the one that stood up to injustice by walking in the whites only bathroom so why isn’t this what is depicted? There was another scene where Katherine’s boss invited her to watch John Glen’s launch from the control room where she watched it from her desk. Show the truth. White people need to see what really happened. Stop giving white people credit where they haven’t earned it. This has been done enough. Viola Davis regretted making The Help because the same white savior narrative was displayed in another movie made by a white man.
Black writers are constantly only asked to write for stories with black characters as if they can only write those stories. We live in the same world that you do and normally have more diverse experiences so why can’t we write these stories? When agencies draw up a list of writers for TV shows, nine out of ten of those are usually white males. They have no problem letting white men write stories about gay people, black people, and women which often are over sexualized in their portrayal in movies. Women come in all shapes. Everyone should not be a stick figure. Women should see themselves also represented in movies. Women are beautiful and society needs to stop telling them that they aren’t because they are not a size 0.
Source: Source: Wanting to be White — an Analysis of Whitewashing in Hollywood
Movies with female or black lead actors and actresses are seen as a risk and they receive much smaller budgets. Hollywood needs an entire shock to its system to implement better staffing practices and bring forward new writers with diverse experiences so we can get diverse stories. We need diversity in crew, directors, producers and all levels of executives. There are talented creators that are not white men that deserve the same chances in creating content. This systemic oppression in Hollywood must end now. Stop making us the “diversity hire” that has to constantly prove ourselves and hold our entire race on our backs. If a white director makes a horrible movie, they get a second, third and fourth chance. Give us the same chances and the same resources to be successful. Stop making us have to be twice as good to be successful. This is why our independent movie studio, Mystery Dinner Studios, is focused on making diverse content with social justice themes with people that are often not given a chance in Hollywood. The demand is here for diverse content and we will be the studio to provide it.
