The flaw of this controversy is that it is directed at the wrong people. The people that should be blamed for this 'white-washing' are the movie producers themselves, not the Oscars. The movie producers and casters are the ones filling up Triple-A movies with white actors and actresses. The Oscars are being unfairly criticized for something they can't help, it is not their fault that there is a lack of black leads in movies. But can blame be casted on the movie producers? Hollywood producers have a target demographic to adhere to. Film demographics usually mirror the demographics of the country in which the film is produced, in this case, America. In 2013, people reported as 'white' made up 77.7% of America's population. It is obvious the reason for filling up these movies with white actors is to pull a larger audience. But, to answer the question, can they be blamed? Not really. The movie business is, well a business. Something that creates for the purpose of profit and revenue; they are not a non-profit organization. By catering …show more content…
No way. Misrepresentation in the media dwells back to even the beginning of the 20th century, when television and movies started becoming a common form of entertainment. It is ridiculous to say that in over the 200 years mainstream media has been around, that it is only now misrepresenting men. Men have been misrepresented as much as women have since the dawn of mainstream media. Men have always been shown as sex-driven emotionless income owners, with this stereotype dawning back to as early as the 17th century. This isn't a new problem, it's just a new form of it, in the form of Internet and social media. The Internet has further increased the reaches of the media, with acceleratingly fast spread. News stories can now be uploaded to the Internet at anytime, rather than having to wait until the 6 o'clock news, showing just how much more free it is to spread information on the
Most people are likely to relate Hollywood with money. If a person lives in the Hollywood area, people assume she or he is probably rich. If she or he is a Hollywood movie star, the person probably makes a lot of money. Therefore, to follow that line of thought, when Hollywood producers make a movie, they make it just for money. And some filmmakers do seem to make films only for the money the movies will earn. The action movie "Die Hard", the fantasy movie "Star Wars", and the adventure movie "Jurassic Park" are examples of exciting movies that were made just for the money by satisfying the audiences' appetite for escapism.
It is because Hollywood has most of the biggest influential films in American cinema. Hollywood has had the power to influence essentially society’s perceptions and it has but not always been for the good. In her chapter Diawara, M. talks about two critical terms, which are “Black spectators”. She uses this term to describe the experience of African Americans in the film industry not only the actors but also the African American community that she refers to as the spectators. The black spectators notice the wrong that the film is doing to their community how is misrepresenting them and making them looking bad.
A Nielsen report found African-Americans favor programming with diverse casts. According to the report, African-Americans watch 37 percent more television than other demographics, and their consumption proclivities are equally influential. Every year for the past half-decade, the average white American has bought a ticket to fewer films than the average black, Hispanic or Asian moviegoer, industry data shows. Though 37 percent of the U.S. population, minorities bought 46 percent of the $1.2 billion in tickets sold in the United States last year.
This tokenism featured in movies is not only damaging to the Black actors and actresses in the industry who accept those jobs because of lack of parts and ...
Author Michael Omni states in his work “In Living Color: race and American Culture”, “ The power of the media lies not only in their ability to reflect the dominant racial ideology, but in their capacity to shape their ideology in the first place” (542) . The media has the ability to make society see any race in any light they choose. For example African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics are all tied to smoking marijuana, excessive alcoholism, broken sentences, being indolent, jobless, and imprisonment. These are sometimes true in every race but they portray these listed races in an inaccurate way in every film. Hollywood directors do have a social responsibility to stop stereotyping different ethnic groups. Through analyzing various films such Friday, American Me, and Skins you will be able to see the prejudice stereotypes and the negative affects its causes in society.
We do not live in a post-racial America. Racism is a huge factor of which most careers are being affected in. There is a new way of casting actors now, which is colorblind casting. It is a practice of casting a role without considering an individuals ethnicity. However, that does not always work and can sometimes be looked in a bad way. It has plenty of controversy leading towards whether it work for people of color or not. A solution to this problem is obviously to make television media more diverse but, how so? Producers as well as directors need to consider color conscious casting and make an effort to have each individual ethnic group feel it is a diver and non-biased casting. This will not only make casting more equal but also, make the
There has been a pressing issue of the lack of diversity in mainstream media in front and behind the camera. For many years the face of Hollywood was white, occupying roles as actors, directors, screenwriters and other prominent positions in the industry.
Alot of people do not have the exact same opinion about everything, and not everyone thinks the same exact way because thats what makes us individuals; right? Thats what I think, but I seem to see everybody's starting to lose their originality in this world due to the media. I see it in the hallway, the classrooms, I see it outside of school. People are scared, their terrified, afraid of acceptance. People want to be accepted so bad that they even go to extra lengths just to fit in, just to be apart of something. They even begin changing their own opinions even if it is not exactly what they feel,thats the way they think they need to do, and how they should act, they even start to dress different and soon they just lose themselves.
Hollywood’s diversity problem is well-known; however, the extent might be surprising to most Americans. According to a 2014 report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television, Film & New Media, found that females comprised only 30% of all speaking characters among the top grossing films of 2013. (Lauzen, 2014) However, minority women faired far worse than their Caucasian counterparts. As a matter of fact, if one looks at the numbers even female characters from other world’s were as better represented in film than some minority women; the numbers are as follow for women: Caucasian (73%), African American (14%), Latina (5%), Asian and other world tied (3%). (Lauzen, 2014) If the lack of representation were not enough consider a 2009 study which found that when minority groups are portrayed on television the portrayal tends to be negative. (Alexandrin, 2009) A study by Busselle and Crandall (2009) found that the manner in which African-Americans are portrayed, often as unemployed criminals, tends to have an influence on the way the public perceives African-American’s lack of economic success. Furthermore, the news media does an equally poor job in the ways that African-American’s are presented; according to the same study while 27% of Americans were considered “poor” in 1996 the images of America’s “poor” being presented by news media was heavily Black (63%). (Busselle & Crandall, 2002) Today, this can be seen in the way that African-American victims of police brutality are depicted in the media. Even when African-Americans are murdered at the hands of police for minor and non-violent offenses (e.g. Mike Brown, Eric Gardner, and Tamir Rice) they are often portrayed as thugs, criminals, and vandals. What’s more, seve...
War has been present since the beginning of human history. Likewise, war movies have been present since the movie industry began. Just like most other genres of film, war films have been created as a form of entertainment to profit a person or organization. More people are willing to spend their money and time on a feeling of action, excitement, heroism, and patriotism than gruesome and horrid images of real and common human destruction. Propaganda has been used by governments for a very long time and when motion pictures came into existence, governments almost immediately saw the new medium as an opportunity to influence the public. Governments such as the United States of America, cooperate with the movie industry to use this influence to promote a positive perception about war in order to gain support for wars. The movie industry portrays war in an exciting, glorified, romanticized, and heroic light and often demonizes the enemies; this causes an unrealistic public perception of war which leads to greater positive public opinion and support of real wars.
In Hollywood there is also a lack of representation with executives because the most of the power resides in people that are ethnically white. Brent Lang and Dave McNary believe that black films are usually not picked up by studios because very few people in powerful positions are black. Therefore, most studios don’t understand what would appeal to black audiences. This causes analysts to undervalue the potential profit of black films, turning executives away from being interested in pursuing black film projects. Examples of black movie profits far exceeding predictions are found in this quote from their article , How Tracking Fails Diverse Movies: “"Straight Outta Compton 's" $60.2 million debut was roughly $20 million more than most trade publications had predicted. "War Room," a faith-based drama about the power of prayer, more than doubled predictions with its $11.3 million launch. And last weekend 's champ, Sony 's "Perfect Guy," exceeded expectations by nearly $15 million when it kicked off with $29.4 million” (Lang and McNary). The history between black and whites in America come into play with the existence of a phenomenon called the “Hollywood plantation arrangement” which alludes to the relationship of black slaves and white slaveowners pre-civil war. This idea describes how “the relationship between African Americans and White Americans is rooted in a tradition of ownership, guidance, and responsibility” which “directly influences African Americans’ ability to access economic power and ownership, thereby limiting creative control and cultural protection (Ndoubou 7). The ruling class, which in Hollywood is the whites, use their power to maintain control by creating these images in media that make the blacks seem lesser...
The Hurst book discusses in Chapter 8, that “whiteness is invisible to most whites,” this could be a reason that there is not a lot of diversity in Hollywood, but it could also be racism, and discrimination toward people of different ethnicities as well (Hurst, 183). According, to Hurst racism is “embedded in the structure and institutions, and defining racism individualistically rather than in structural terms, has allowed our attention to be defected from White privilege” (Hurst, 184). White privilege is present in Hollywood, everything is ran by white people, and it is the white writers and directors, they decided who they will cast in the show or movie. Racial and ethnic diversity in TV programming should not be a problem in the 21st century, this is a problem of the past and should not still be going on. The NPR article discusses the shift of more series with “non-white actors, and a more non-white cast, but that still is on 30% of all TV shows” that is a major improvement but there still needs to be more
On a daily basis people are exposed to some sort of misrepresentation of gender; in the things individuals watch, and often the things that are purchased. Women are often the main target of this misrepresentation. “Women still experience actual prejudice and discrimination in terms of unequal treatment, unequal pay, and unequal value in real life, then so too do these themes continue to occur in media portraits.”(Byerly, Carolyn, Ross 35) The media has become so perverted, in especially the way it represents women, that a females can be handled and controlled by men, the individual man may not personally feel this way, but that is how men are characterized in American media. Some may say it doesn’t matter because media isn’t real life, but people are influenced by everything around them, surroundings that are part of daily routine start to change an individual’s perspective.
The Representation of Men and Women in the Media Men and women are both represented differently in the media these days. Then the sand was sunk. Ironically it was even represented differently in the title of this essay. Men came before women! I am writing an essay to explain how men and women are represented in the media.
Going to a movie with friends or family has been a tradition for many for a long time. Globalization has spread Hollywood movies all over the world, and our American movie stars are also the world’s movie stars. Some think that because of the way Hollywood goes about picking movies to produce, many of the mass public are looking for something fresh and new. Because of the “American style” of filmmaking, Hollywood produces profit-making movies with easy to understand stories. But is it right to flood other cultural and countries with our sometimes-biased movies? Is Hollywood replacing the cultural identity of many groups of people?