Research Essay: Colorful Medium

COMM 3715: Academic Writing For Success

By: Shakyl Lambert

The entertainment industry is a very glamorous business. People are

rich, their faces on screens and billboards up to 50 feet high, and they
have a massive international following of millions. However, there is a
single image that is shown for the most part in the media, one that is
frustrating to see for people who do not fit that image. Whether it is in
film, television, or even video games, there is still a stunning lack of
representation for people of color in the media.

Movies allow us to see a huge amount of stories and see worlds we

would not imagine. They allow us to tell stories that take place in
different times and locations, with a variety of perspectives. That being
said, why is it that people of color are still being marginalized in film?
For example, this years Academy Awards have been least diverse
since 1998 (Dvalidze, Rosen, & Williams, 2015), having no people of
color nominated in any acting categories whatsoever. This propelled
the #OscarsSoWhite campaign on Twitter, almost leading to a protest
at the event. The statistics prove to be even more telling.

In a report done by UCLA(Bunche, 2014), out of 174 films released in

2011, 51% of films had a less than 10% of minorities in the main cast,
and people of color overall led only 10% of them. In addition, people of
color directed only 12% of films that year. One of the movies featured
both that year was Fast Five, the fifth installment in the long-running
The Fast and the Furious franchise. It is one of the few blockbuster
franchises that feature a heavily multi-racial leading cast.
Going to the movies, there are very few films in which a person of color
is the lead role. Traditionally, they are given a supporting role as either
a friend of the lead white actor, or nothing more than a stereotype.
Most of the time when they are given a leading role, it is because the
role demands a person of that race, or it is in a movie that is aimed
specifically for a certain demographic. There is rarely a time that a lead
that is a person of color will be aimed for a general audience. The only
way that happens these days is if the movie is lead by Denzel
Washington, Dwayne The Rock Johnson or Will Smith. Even worse is
when people of color are consistently villainized in films as the evil
foreigner archetype. This holds mainly true with most Arab characters
in cinema. In a journal on Arab-American characters in western media,
film and television establish Arab characters as anti-ethical to
projected values. These characters tend to be portrayed as irrational
and uncivilized, emphasizing loud dialogues in Arabic. (Wilkins, 2008)

Films such as Gladiator and The Kingdom continue to show Arabic and
Muslim lives as villainous and irrational.

From the big screen to the small screen, television is a place where
representation will have ups and downs, and they happen very
suddenly. There was a boom in the 90s where shows such like Living
Single, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Martin and In Living Color featured
black lead roles, but were marketed and enjoyed by a wide variety of
races. However, it seemed like a sudden stop in the mid 2000s.
Thankfully, this is slowly shifting towards another boom; new shows
like Scandal, Black-ish, Fresh Off The Boat and Empire all gaining
success on primetime, while shows like Community, Orange Is The New
Black and The Walking Dead still maintain popularity whilst featuring a
multi-cultural cast. That being said, while diversity may be growing in
front of the camera, its a whole different story behind the scenes.

Despite being a growing slew of show that feature shows with a diverse
cast, the writers room is anything but diverse. A recent staffing report
by the Writers Guild of America (Hunt, 2015) shows that during the
2013-14 TV season, only 13.7 percent of writers were people of color.
The highest percentage of minority writers was back in the 2011-12
season, which had a whopping 15.6 percent.

Video games are not exactly a place one thinks of when discussing
representation for people of color, but it is one of the places that suffer
the most from a lack of it the most. The topic of diversity in video
games has been a hot topic in the industry for the past year, which is
coupled with the fact that gamers themselves are diverse. Over 58% of
White people play video games, as well as 57% of Black people, 66% of
Asians and 67% of Hispanics. (Harland, 2014)
There clearly is an audience for a wider spectrum of video game
protagonists. Games such as Beyond Good and Evil, Mirrors Edge and
Telltale Games The Walking Dead have all earned critical acclaim
whilst having a lead character as a person of color.

Whether it is in movies, television or video games, there is an alarming

lack of diversity in entertainment. The world is a melting pot of people
of different shapes, sizes and colors. Its about time that a lot of them
get their equal time in the limelight.

References

Dvalidze, I., Rosen, C., & Williams, B. (February 20, 2015). Why It
Should Bother Everyone That The Oscars Are So White. The Huffington
Post. Retrieved March 24, 2015, from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/20/oscars-diversityproblem_n_6709334.html
Ralph J. Bunche Center, (2014). 2014 Hollywood Diversity Report:
Making Sense of the Disconnect. UCLA. Retrieved April 1st 2015 from

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/hollywood-failing-to-keep-up-with250007
Wilkins, K.G. (2008). Conquering Evil: Arab-Americans And Others
Interpretations of Ethnicity in Action-Adventure Heroes and Villains.
Journal of Middle East Media
Fall 2008, 4(1), 9-26. Retrieved from http://dproxy.library.dcuoit.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=ufh&AN=48477161&scope=site
Hunt, D. (2015). WGAW 2015 TV Staffing Brief. Writers Guild of
America. Retrieved April 7th 2015, from
http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/who_we_are/tvstaffingbrief2015.pdf
Harland, B. (October 23rd, 2014). What You Need To Know About
Diversity In The US Video Game Industry. Mintel. Retrieved April 9th,
2015 from http://www.mintel.com/blog/technology-market-news/videogame-trends