Hollywood’s lack of on-screen diversity persists

WHEN it comes to representations of diversity, Hollywood still has a long way to go. A study coming from the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative looked at the representation of women, LGBTQ+ and different communities in film. While there is some progress, it remains uneven and limited.

The study in question, led by professors Stacy L. Smith, Katherine Pieper and Sam Wheeler, analysed 1,600 films between 2007 and 2022, focusing on the most popular films in 2022. In total, no fewer than 69,858 characters were examined for this project, taking into account gender, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ sexual identity as well as characters with disabilities.

"This is the largest, most rigorous, and comprehensive analysis of identity in popular movies in the history of social science research," the study noted.

Women still underrepresented

Although the study was released at a time when the ‘Barbie’ movie is racking up hit numbers at the box office, on-screen parity was not reached in 2022. According to the study, the number of lead and supporting roles played by women nevertheless reached a 16-year high with 44 of the top 100 films of the year featuring a female as a lead or co-lead.

Despite this, the percentage of female "speaking characters" did not increase significantly, remaining at 34.6%, 4.7 points higher than in 2007 (29.9%). The study even showed that only 15% of the 100 most popular films of 2022 featured a gender-balanced cast (defined as featuring women in between 45% and 54.9% of speaking roles).

"It is clear that the entertainment industry has little desire or motivation to improve casting processes in a way that creates meaningful change for girls and women," said Professor Smith. "The lack of progress is particularly disappointing following decades of activism and advocacy," she added.

In terms of representations of race/ethnicity, 31 of the most popular films in 2022 had lead or co-lead characters of colour. This is fewer than in 2021, when there were 37 such films, but more than in 2007, when there were 13.

However, the study did highlight progress in the representation of Asian characters, rising from 3.4% in 2007 to 15.9% in 2022. In 2022, 15 films contained no black or African-American speaking characters, 46 films contained no Hispanic speaking characters and 34 films contained no Asian speaking characters.

"These trends suggest that any improvement for people from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups is limited," said Smith. "While it is encouraging to see changes for leading characters and for the Asian community, our data on invisibility suggests that there is still much more to be done to ensure that the diversity that exists in reality is portrayed on screen."

The same goes for LGBTQ+ characters, present in just 2.1% of speaking characters among popular 2022 films: Of the 87 LGBTQ+ [speaking or named] characters [in the top films of 2022], more than half were men and 58.8% were white. "In 2022, 72 of the 100 top films did not feature even one LGBTQ+ speaking or named character on screen. Eighty-four films were missing LGBTQ+ girls/women.," the study read.

Disability on screen is still taboo, since the study found only 1.9% of speaking characters had a disability. – ETX Daily Up, August 24, 2023