With the slight increase in roles for the underrepresented communities, it is easy to over-credit Hollywood for its work in the representation of all communities.
Many often praise Hollywood when the representation of minority groups even increases just by one percent, but what people fail to understand is how far we are from an accurate portrayal of many groups and how long overdue this all is. To bring us back to reality, many studies are released every year to call to our attention how far we are from justice in Hollywood.
At the start of 2016, Dr. Martha M. Lauzen released a study titled It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: Portrayals of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2016 in order to accentuate the lack of female roles in the top films we spend our money on. For this study, Lauzen analyzed the percentage of women holding lead-roles, speaking roles, and directorial roles.
Unsurprisingly enough, an equality between males and females holding protagonist roles was nonexistent. Women accounted for 37% of lead roles, which was a historical high; the slope to perfect equality is moving slowly, but at least it seems to be moving in a positive direction.
As for females holding speaking roles, they held 32% of roles which was a small decrease from the year prior. This shows that while one portion of inequality may be looking promising for the future, the injustice goes a lot further than one may believe.
Reading studies like this force us to understand what big of a deal the inequality in Hollywood is and encourage us to find solutions. Women, for one, continue to be underrepresented time after time both onscreen and behind the camera.
While everyone is fully aware of this issue, the statistics don’t show anyone trying to make a difference.
Women in the entertainment industry are considered underrepresented in the sense that they are constantly denied roles and jobs simply because of their gender. It is the negative connotations associated with women that many refer to when depriving women of the same jobs that men receive without a problem. These negative connotations that act as a disadvantage to any woman trying to receive a position in power include being emotion, soft, and not being able to convey power; all the communal attributes that are ascribed to women.
According to Women’s Health Data USA, slightly over 50% of the US population is female, while women are not even near 50% when it comes to representation on screen.
Another reason women are underrepresented is grounded in the principle that men are simply threatened by a woman’s potential. Men are typically ascribed more strongly to agentic attributes which include ambition, leadership ability, or power.
Women, we are aware, are capable of all these attributes just as well as men are capable of possessing communal attributes. However, men hold the masculinity and many refuse to give these leadership roles to women, because of the way our society has been male-led and dominated for all of history. Some have trouble progressing past history.
Finally, the reason women have not been accurately portrayed in films is obvious when we look at the shareholders who hold much control over the films. Due to the nature of Hollywood, everyone’s top priority is making money. If a film is not guaranteed to make a decent profit, the probability of shareholders to get behind it is less likely.
All in all, these problems are what makes Hollywood financially sustainable for those in jobs, but impossible for those who are minoritized and have trouble finding their spot in the industry.
And until we start making changes, we will continue to see the same faces on screen repeatedly, faces that do not reflect what our society looks like.
Hollywood, it’s time to be realistic.
