Reel Inequality
eBook - ePub

Reel Inequality

Nancy Wang Yuen

Share book
  1. 208 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Reel Inequality

Nancy Wang Yuen

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

When the 2016 Oscar acting nominations all went to whites for the second consecutive year, #OscarsSoWhite became a trending topic. Yet these enduring racial biases afflict not only the Academy Awards, but also Hollywood as a whole. Why do actors of color, despite exhibiting talent and bankability, continue to lag behind white actors in presence and prominence?    Reel Inequality examines the structural barriers minority actors face in Hollywood, while shedding light on how they survive in a racist industry. The book charts how white male gatekeepers dominate Hollywood, breeding a culture of ethnocentric storytelling and casting. Nancy Wang Yuen interviewed nearly a hundred working actors and drew on published interviews with celebrities, such as Viola Davis, Chris Rock, Gina Rodriguez, Oscar Isaac, Lucy Liu, and Ken Jeong, to explore how racial stereotypes categorize and constrain actors. Their stories reveal the day-to-day racism actors of color experience in talent agents’ offices, at auditions, and on sets. Yuen also exposes sexist hiring and programming practices, highlighting the structural inequalities that actors of color, particularly women, continue to face in Hollywood. 
  This book not only conveys the harsh realities of racial inequality in Hollywood, but also provides vital insights from actors who have succeeded on their own terms, whether by sidestepping the system or subverting it from within. Considering how their struggles impact real-world attitudes about race and diversity, Reel Inequality follows actors of color as they suffer, strive, and thrive in Hollywood.  

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Reel Inequality an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Reel Inequality by Nancy Wang Yuen in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medien & darstellende Kunst & Filmgeschichte & Filmkritik. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Rutgers University Press
Year
2016
ISBN
9780813586311
Topic
Medien & darstellende Kunst
Subtopic
Filmgeschichte & Filmkritik
1
Hollywood’s Whitest
Tonight we celebrate Hollywood’s best and whitest, sorry . . . brightest.
—Neil Patrick Harris
Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris satirized the Academy’s all-white acting nominations in 2015.1 The following year, Oscar host Chris Rock dubbed the Academy Awards as “the White People’s Choice Awards.”2 However, Hollywood’s white dominance is not a joke. From media ownership down to the average working actor, whites saturate the ranks. Whites are 62.6 percent of the US population but make up between 74 and 96 percent of Hollywood personnel—from professional actors to decision makers responsible for creative and casting choices.3 White male decision makers fund projects by white men, who tend to tell stories with white male leads.4 Nearly all of the 2016 best picture Oscar nominees told stories of white men triumphing over enormous odds.5 By making white men the center of nearly every narrative, Hollywood films and television shows naturalize their positions of power in every institution.
Hollywood’s stories, though fictional, transmit real ideologies. When film and television privilege white stories over other stories, they reinforce a racial hierarchy that devalues people of color. Not only do dramatic racial disparities indicate employment discrimination in Hollywood, the underrepresentation of people of color in film and television can also have wider societal consequences. Since the media landscape can blur reality and fiction for viewers, the erasure of actors of color on screen can skew real-life perceptions. When audiences never see actors of color in major roles, they are less likely to perceive them as on equal footing with whites. Inversely, when whites and their stories are celebrated more than their fair share, audiences begin to associate significance, admiration, and power with that group over others.
Hollywood’s biased employment practices have contributed to the dominance of whites across its ranks. For instance, Hollywood’s union admission policies—past and present—have perpetuated a predominantly white workforce. Historically, nepotism reigned supreme in Hollywood, allowing only relatives of existing members (the majority of whom were white) into its unions.6 Today, unions such as the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and the Producers Guild of America (PGA) still require member endorsements and sponsorship.7 This inevitably leads to racial insularity because white Americans have social networks that are 91 percent white.8 As a result, Hollywood’s unions remain primarily populated by white people, who recommend or refer their white friends and family. Furthermore, creative industries like Hollywood rely on social networks, resulting in a majority-white hiring pool. Even if whites in the industry do not consciously bar people of color, union policies and social networks effectively do so. To better understand the scope of white dominance in Hollywood, I examine racial disparities, both in front of and behind the camera.
PROFESSIONAL ACTORS
In 1977, the US Commission on Civil Rights released Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities in Television, the first report on network television’s racial and gender exclusionary practices and stereotyped portrayals.9 Little has changed in the almost four decades since this report. While people of color made up 37.4 percent of the US population in 2013, actors of color were significantly underrepresented in film and television (see fig. 2). Even in 2015, regular actors of color on broadcast prime-time television lagged 9.2 percentage points behind the corresponding US population’s percentage.10
Actors of color fare worse in lead roles. In 2013, actors of color occupied fewer than one-fifth of cable television and film leads, and fewer than one-tenth of broadcast television leads (see fig. 2). In 2014, the number of leads of color remained low, dipping even further in cable television and film.11 Coveted lead roles typically speak the most lines, have the longest time on screen, and display the most emotional depth and complexity. Audiences are most likely to identify with leads in film and television. Given the importance of lead roles, the overrepresentation of white actors as lead characters not only gives them a professional advantage but also constructs a narrative of white supremacy.
Figure 2. Actors’ share of roles by type and race (2013)
Sources: US population (2014 estimate): US Census, “State and County Quickfacts,” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html; “Film (Speaking)” (2013): Smith, Choueiti, and Pieper, “Race/Ethnicity in 600 Popular Films: Examining on Screen Portrayals and Behind the Camera Diversity”; “Film Leads” (2011–2013), “Broadcast TV Leads” (2012–2013), and “Cable TV Leads” (2012–2013): Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramon, “2015 Hollywood Diversity Report: Flipping the Script” (Los Angeles: Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, 2015).
African American Actors
Compared with other groups of color, African Americans have been more visible in US popular culture. The black/white binary is fundamental to how the Americans conceptualize race and race relations given the complex racial history of the United States.12 Consequently, since The Birth of a Nation (1915), African Americans have “figured prominently in Hollywood’s racist symbolic relations” because of their “unique history of material and cultural oppression as well as their rich expressive resources.”13 African American actors have had more opportunities than any other nonwhite group to make the “Ulmer Hot List,” a ranking list of top A-list actors.14 The visibility of African Americans is reflected in their role shares—often at or above their 2013 percentage in the US population (see fig. 3). African Americans occupied 14 percent of both film and cable television roles in 2013. Though African Americans fell below their population percentage in the 2013–2014 television season, accounting for 10 percent of broadcast regulars, their numbers rose to 14 percent in the 2014–2015 season.15
Despite having a greater presence, African American actors still face limitations. A significant number of film and television shows have no black characters.16 In 2013, the percentage of African Americans in more than half of the top-grossing films was smaller than in the US population, while nearly a fifth of these films had no African American characters at all.17 Similarly, 16 percent—37 percent of all cinematic, television, or streaming stories in 2014–2015 failed to portray a single speaking or named African American on screen.18 Many African American actors find roles in all-black films and television shows, which typically have lower budgets and limited distribution.19 Consequently, upon closer examination, even when African American actors reach population parity, they do not enjoy the same breadth of representation as white actors.
Figure 3. African American shares of roles by type (2013)
Sources: US Population (2014 estimate): US Census, “State and County Quickfacts,” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html; “Film (Speaking)” (2013): Smith, Choueiti, and Pieper, “Race/Ethnicity in 600 Popular Films: Examining on Screen Portrayals and Behind the Camera Diversity”; “Cable TV” and “Broadcast TV” (2012–2013): Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramon, “2015 Hollywood Diversity Report: Flipping the Script” (Los Angeles: Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, 2015).
Lead roles also remain elusive for African American actors. Chris Rock wrote, “When it comes to casting, Hollywood pretty much decides to cast a black guy or they don’t. We’re never on the ‘short list.’ We’re never ‘in the mix.’”20 Similarly, Will, a black male actor in his late twenties, told me about his limited opportunities compared with those of a white male actor friend:
I have a friend. . . . We moved to New York together . . . good-looking white guy, leading man. His opportunities and my opportunities are so different. This guy gets so many opportunities, and they’re leads. They’re big, big leading things, so much that at the busy times of the year, he can’t go in on everything. He gets so many opportunities that he’s tripping over them, while I’m going in for three lines.
African American female actors experience even fewer quality lead roles because of a combination of racial and gender limitations. Hollywood is less likely to cast an African American woman opposite an African American man because the industry operates according to the myth that international audiences will not see films with black couples.21 For example, Hitch (2005) intentionally cast Latina actor Eva Mendes opposite African American actor Will Smith instead of an African American woman.22 Prior to Scandal’s premiere in 2012 on ABC, a black woman had not led a network television drama in nearly forty years.23 Viola Davis described black female actors as having only “two or three categories,” compared with white female actors, who have different roles for every age category.24 Beating the odds, Viola Davis became the first African American female actor to win an “outstanding lead actress in a dramatic series” Emmy in 2015. Taraji P. Henson won the 2016 Golden Globe Award for the best actress in a television drama, the third African American female actor to do so in seventy-three years. Though African American actors still lag behind white actors in opportunities, they have made tremendous strides toward greater representation and recognition.
Latina/o Actors
Compared with other groups of color, Latina/o actors have the biggest disparity between their on-screen presence and US population percentage. Despite being the largest nonwhite group in the United States (17 percent of the population), Latinas/os were severely underrepresented in film and television in 2013. Specifically, Latinas/os represented only 5 percent of film speaking roles, 3 percent of cable television regulars, and 2 percent of broadcast television regulars (see fig. 4). Latinas/os were underrepresented by a factor of more than eight to one in broadcast television. In 2014–2015, Latinas/os played only 5.8 percent of all speaking/named characters in film, TV, and streaming services.25 Chris Rock wrote, “But forget whether Hollywood is black enough. A better question is: Is Hollywood Mexican enough? You’re in L.A, you’ve got to try not to hire Mexicans.”26 Latinas/os make up 48.3 percent of Los Angeles County.27 Blanca Valdez, who runs a Latina/o casting agency in Los Angeles, said that Latinas/os have a difficult time auditioning for roles unless the call specifically asks for “diversity” or “multiethnic”; in any case, most are secondary roles, such as a neighbor or a bank teller.28
US film and television have rarely cast Latina/o actors in lead roles. In 2013, no Latinas/os starred as leads in the top ten movies or network television shows.29 In 2014, only 2.7 percent of lead roles in films went to Latinas/os.30 Just two US broadcast television shows in the 2014–2015 season starred Latinas: Jane the Virgin and Cristela. Cristela was cancelled after just one season. In 2015, Gina Rodriguez became only the second Latina actor to win a lead actress Golden Globe Award when she won for Jane the Virgin. In her acceptance speech, Rodriguez said her win “represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes.”31 Even with Rodriguez’s win, Latinas/os remain the lowest represented racial group compared with their percentage in the population.
Figure 4. Latina/o shares of roles by type (2013)
Sources: US Population (2014 estimate): US Census, “State and County Quickfacts,” http://q...

Table of contents