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Gender inequality in the movie industry
Gender inequality in the film industry
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In earlier years, women and minorities were barely compensated for their roles in film and there is not much of a difference today. This should not come as a surprise to anyone because of the effects of gender inequality and white supremacy that still exists. While they are idolized and celebrated for their roles the reality is that they are often underpaid in Hollywood. The gap between genders and race on the pay scale exists throughout all businesses in the United States, and Hollywood is no exception. In comparison to the earlier years of film, they probably do get higher wages today, but that gap is still noteworthy. Women, minorities, and especially minority women in film and television make significantly smaller salaries than their male Charlize Theron, known for her starring role as the evil queen in “Snow White and the Huntsman”, is one who demanded that her salary was to be equivalent to her male co-star, Chris Hemsworth who played the huntsman, whose salary was $10 million. This was the only way that she would act in the film (Fuller). This proves that as a woman it pays to negotiate and demand a better salary in Hollywood; it is worth going through the Many have come to realize that it is important to negotiate and demand more of what they want if they want to be better compensated. If this continues and these people come together, possibly in a form of protest, a change in the way that women and minorities get paid in Hollywood might just occur for the better, minimizing and hopefully eventually closing that ever so large and unfair pay
The views of African-Americans have changed drastically from the 1930s to 1980s and the film industry has been able to captures some of the more dramatic changes on film. Dating back to the 1930s, there has been films produced that depicted African-Americans as docile individuals who live to serve white families. As times changed and America made progress in integration of cultures, African-American rose to a new role on the big screen. Initially, African-Americans were introduced on the screen as closer equals to their white counter parts. However, these films did not accurately depict African-Americans as whites wrote the roles. America made greater strides towards equality in all areas, including the film industry that allowed for the development of new roles for African-Americans. This grittier and more intense approach was only achieved through African-Americans taking on the major behind the scenes. African-Americans were only to achieve a more accurate depiction onscreen as American’s perceptions of race were challenged over a 50-year period and African-Americans took on roles behind the scenes.
...n American woman to be awarded the Sundance Film Festival’s best director prize in 2012 for her film “Middle of Nowhere” (Keegan). In the interview of DuVernay, she explains how even though only 9.9% of speaking characters are black, with a black director that percentage rises to 52.6% of black speaking characters (Keegan). This explains a lot of why there are is such a small amount of minority speaking roles in movies. This means that because of the majority of the directors being white, they therefore want to hire and have more whites speak in their movies rather than minorities. At the end of the article, Keegan elaborates on how people are now noticing this race and gender inequality in films and are trying to improve it. For example, as stated in the article, the Motion Picture Academy is working on making their company more diverse and not merely white males.
It’s September, the kids are back in school, and it’s time for another new season of television. Another round of must see Felicity, Friends, and Frasier, with a side of ER and some Nash Bridges for dessert. Loads and loads of Caucasian males and females making us laugh, and cry. What you do not see are Black, Hispanic, or other minorities making us laugh, and cry. In this day and age, where everyone gets a fair shot at doing what they really love, the same can not be said for minorities in the film industry. More and more minorities are being turn away in favor of Caucasian actors. It’s not only actors that are feeling the pinch, its also writers, directors, producers, and network execs.
In today’s society, pre-existing assumptions and stereotypes of other ethnicities and individuals play a large part in the way we see others. This social construct of stereotypes has placed restrictions on many people’s lives which ultimately limits them from achieving certain goals. In this sense, stereotypes misrepresent and restrict people of colour to gain casting within the Hollywood film industry. The issue of how casting actors to certain roles and how these actors are forced to submit and represent these false stereotypes is one worthy of discussion. White Chicks (2004), directed by Keenan Wayans, illustrates this issue through the performance of Latrell, performed by Terry Crews, and his performance of the hyper-sexualised “buck” will be a prime example in this essay to discuss the racial politics and stereotypes in Hollywood casting.
The gender pay gap is not only a problem in the past. To my surprise, Hollywood has a gender pay gap. I would have never thought the industry that makes billions of dollars through movies and television shows would pay women less than men. This is a huge problem and in 2015 women in Hollywood should not have to worry about the gender pay gap. Furthermore, minority women should not get fewer opportunities for an acting jobs (Berg). It is absurd that women in Hollywood do not have equal pay. Instead of setting an example of equal pay to other occupations Hollywood is setting an example of a gender pay gap.
The Impact of Hollywood on the World In this piece of writing I will be looking at the impact of 'Hollywood' on the world. The word 'Hollywood' is used as a collective word across most of the world when we talk about media throughout the world such as; films, television programmes, music and global broadcasters such as MTV and Disney. It is believed that Hollywoodaffects a lot of things people do, think and say. I will be looking at whether Hollywood affects the world in a positive or negative way.
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...
The persistence of the gender wage gap in contemporary American society is not new. However, in 2015, the issue started garnering much public attention, especially since Patrica Arquette’s Oscar speech. Arquette asserted, “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all,” upon receiving the Best Supporting Actress award. Arquette is not the only high-profile Hollywood actress to address the issue: Diane Keaton, Meryl Streepe, Gwyneth Paltrow among many others have all shared their experiences of gender wage gap in interviews.
Those who deny the existence of the racism rooted into modern day Hollywood are far from reality. They may think that in the United States we are getting closer to equality when it comes to casting but we in fact are not. While there is the belief that America has progressed when it comes to social issues, the percentage of roles held by black actors in film and TV has dropped from 15 to 13 percent from the early 2000’s to 2011 (McClintock and Apello 2).
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
Today, only 16% of protagonists in movies are female, and the portrayal of these women is
It is very important to be concerned about the issue because it is constantly increasing throughout the United States. It upsets me that women are paid less than men because women have the same ability and work ethic as men do, but they are looked at differently. According to AAUW, women make 77 percent of what men make. This rate hasn’t changed since 2002 (Hill, 2013). Statistics show that women will never make as much as men due to the thought of never being comparable to men (Williams, 2013).
During a review by Vox, of the gender biases in Hollywood that were reported by the data visualization website Polygraph, over 2,000 movies underwent scrutiny in determining why men have more dialogue in movies, even in those that are supposed to be focused on the lead female characters. In what was stated to be one of the largest analyses of script reviews of all time, it was determined that the male characters within the study overrule women in over 78% of the analyzed films. This was concluded through a cross-analysis of character information such as name, gender, and age, with the information reported by the popular movie database, IMDB. The results of their study are astonishing. In the 2,005 screenplays across all movie genres that were reviewed by Polygraph, only two movies were delivered 100% by the lead female character. Conversely, the male dominated list has not only the largest number of results;
Women’s right to equal pay or gender pay gap has been a subject of discussion over the years in the united states, women perform similar jobs to men, but are paid
Hollywood is starting to become more and more harmful to society. Many people wonder why it is this way. Simple, Hollywood is a very high power in the world; that power leads to being influential. Individuals look up to celebrities as good role models, when in fact, they aren't good ones at all. They aren't themselves on the set of a movie or a TV show. They are playing a role that the producers have written up. Since the characters aren't real, America gets the wrong impression of almost everything. Children get false ideas in their heads of what the world is really like. Teens and adults get false perceptions of how much they should weigh, what size clothes they should wear, and what they should look like. All ages get the wrong idea of what they should and shouldn't do. They also think Hollywood is perfect but it isn't. The effects of Hollywood on society today are very detrimental to all ages.