A recently released report by researchers at the Media, Diversity, and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California describes the representation of women, people of color, and people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in American movies. One of the purposes of the study to was to see if there was any evidence that representation patterns were changing to be more diverse and more reflective of the U.S. population as a whole.
The answer: no, not really.
According to a recently released content analysis of the 100 top-grossing films in 2014, females are still grossly underrepresented in popular film, making up 28% of characters that speak or have names. Yes, still. Yes, Katniss Everdeen is great. Black Widow rocks. But still, women and girls represent just 28% of the people who talk or are named in movies. This pattern, of course, is not new. A previous study, described here, by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film looked at the top 100 grossing films of 2013 and found that 30% of the characters in a speaking role were female.
The USC Study also looked at the race/ethnicity of characters in the most popular films of 2014. Here, also, the movies don’t reflect America, particularly in terms of the portrayal of Hispanic or Latino characters. Five percent of the speaking or named characters were Hispanic or Latino. According to the Census Bureau, 17% of the U.S. population identifies as Hispanic or Latino. According to data presented in The New York Times, 25% of “frequent moviegoers” were Hispanic or Latino last year.
Depictions of LBGT characters were also scarce. .4% of the speaking and named characters in these movies were identified in the films as lesbian, gay, or bi-sexual. None were transgender.
Maybe, someday, posts about under-representation in U.S. movies won’t be an annual event. It sure would be nice.
