Minorities And Film Essay, Research Paper
Alfredo Rolon
Prof. Lawton
English 102
25 Apr. 2000
Minorities and the Film Industry
It & # 8217 ; s September, the childs are back in school, and it & # 8217 ; s clip for another new season of telecasting. Another unit of ammunition of must see Felicity, Friends, and Frasier, with a side of ER and some Nash Bridges for sweet. Loads and tonss of Caucasic males and females doing us laugh, and call. What you do non see are Black, Hispanic, or other minorities doing us laugh, and call. In this twenty-four hours and age, where everyone gets a just shooting at making what they truly love, the same can non be said for minorities in the movie industry. More and more minorities are being turn off in favour of Caucasic histrions. It & # 8217 ; s non merely histrions that are experiencing the pinch, its besides authors, managers, manufacturers, and web White House.
This past autumn season, of the 26 new autumn plans, none had a minority dramatis personae in the lead. A recent study by a San Francisco protagonism group found 80 per centum of all primetime characters are white, 13 per centum are black, and 3 per centum are from all other minority groups. ( The Christian Science Monitor ) . I don & # 8217 ; t cognize about you but these Numberss do non sit right with me. Attempts by the NAACP to contend this job have been successful. In an understanding, which began January 6, the NAACP agreed with webs such as ABC and NBC, to engage minorities, to buy more from minority concerns, to project minorities in leads and other functions, and to guarantee that diverseness is brought approximately at other degrees. However helpful this may be, minorities hope that such moves do non take to token functions, with minorities chosen for their tegument colour, non their endowment. & # 8220 ; The 2nd you start passing a hole with quota systems, you open the door to people catching person of the right race as a place filler. & # 8221 ; ( Christian Science Monitor. ) Says Samantha Corbin, a author on The Practice. You might inquire yourself & # 8220 ; Why can & # 8217 ; T we go back to the good old 70 & # 8217 ; s, when everyone loved Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons. Or the 80 & # 8217 ; s, when Bill Cosby ruled supreme and small Arnold made us shout express joying on Different Strokes. & # 8221 ; . You might besides be inquiring when a minority would be traveling in following door to the dramatis personae of Friends. The replies could lie in the industry & # 8217 ; s most popular alibis.
The first alibi is economic sciences. The concern of Television is ruled by a simple declaration: Get the audience the advertizers want. The effect is that major webs forgo the mass audience for a niche of immature, urban, white people. Hence, the web agenda will reflect that. The webs are non precisely rewarded for advancing diverseness. Take these illustrations from Entertainment Weekly:
1.NBC, the lone web to do a net income last twelvemonth, besides boasts the whitest scheduling.
2.The WB & # 8217 ; s Felicity draws similar Numberss of 18- to 49- year-olds as the net & # 8217 ; s two highest- rated black series, The Steve Harvey Show and The Jamie Foxx Show. But last season, Felicity commanded about $ 80,000 per 30 2nd commercial while The Steve Harvey Show and The Jamie Foxx Show each drew less than $ 40,000 for an tantamount topographic point.
3.The WB lost 20 per centum of its black 18- to 49-year-old viewing audiences last season yet will gain record ad gross this autumn.
The facts do non lie and it & # 8217 ; s a admiration why none of the ad White House EW interviewed would travel on record. Because the place they are supporting is marginal racialist: White viewing audiences are worth more than black viewing audiences, they won & # 8217 ; t speak about it. And the studios portion a likewise narrow position: Networks generate less ad money from & # 8220 ; black & # 8221 ; shows, so they pay less to the studio. Plus possible gross from reruns and international gross revenues of black series are smaller.
Second alibi is the overplus of webs today. Back in the old yearss there were merely three loosely programmed webs. That all changed in the late 80 & # 8217 ; s
with the launch of Fox, a web that found early success aiming minorities with shows like “In Living Color” and “Martin” . WB and UPN followed in ’95, leting NBC, CBS, and ABC to inch off from the genre. But once these webs grew up, they besides moved off from the genre. “The launching of new webs has become the black man’s burden.” , “When a new web starts, they go after the starved audience. Once they find success, the [ black ] shows are used and discarded.” ( Entertainment Weekly ) .
The 3rd and concluding alibi is the shows themselves. The job today, harmonizing to the Godhead of The Jeffersons, Norman Lear, is that we are no longer doing cosmopolitan series with black characters. The black audience has its ain set of stars and viewing audiences. They have become used to seeing plans that have non merely black faces but besides have cultural mentions, things specifically for them. When they do non see that in a plan, they do non believe that it is for them. And the opposite is true. But the one true alibi and fright that webs have is a simple one, they fear bad evaluations. With bad evaluations come fewer viewing audiences, and with fewer viewing audiences is less money.
Actors and actresses are non the lone 1s to experience the pinch of favoritism. Behind the cameras and flashiness and glamor, there are the people that run the whole show. They are the web manufacturers and executives. & # 8220 ; This concern is highly fair-unless you go on to be Asiatic, black, Latino, cheery, or a woman. & # 8221 ; . The individual behind this quotation mark is an executive at a major amusement company, and one of the few minorities in a place of power in the amusement concern. It is of import to maintain the people in power diverse because they are the 1s who make all of the determinations. If they were unbroken diverse, so some jobs would non originate. Case in point: On an episode of Will and Grace on NBC, the original book called for a Salvadorian amah to be referred to as a & # 8220 ; tamale & # 8221 ; , which is considered as a slur to Hispanics. The term was subsequently dubbed over as & # 8220 ; honey & # 8221 ; , before the broadcast, but Latino groups rapidly condemned the use. And the consensus among the minority community was that if there were more minorities executives, the whole state of affairs would hold been avoided. At the six broadcast webs, there are about 80 people in programming places of frailty president or above. Merely twelve are minorities. At the WB, of the 11 upper programming degree occupations, there are no minorities. & # 8220 ; The determination shapers are people who live in Bel Air, Malibu, and Brentwood. & # 8221 ; , says Paris Barclay, who is the co executive manufacturer on the show & # 8220 ; City of Angels & # 8221 ; , & # 8220 ; They are merely non sensitive to the fact that America looks different from the America that they are populating in. & # 8221 ; . At Columbia studios Chris Lee was the highest-ranking minority, and he was the lone 1. Except for Time-Warner & # 8217 ; s Richard Parsons and Barry Meyer, there are no minorities at the top of the movie industry. And there are practically none at the following grade either.
Minorities have come a long manner in the last hundred old ages. From the slaves being freed after the Civil War, to the sermon of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and all other great minority leaders and people who have paved the manner for us. All of their work has paid of cause expression where we are now. Now it is clip to take over the amusement industry at all aspects. Just like the great leaders paved the manner for freedom and equality, we will make the same. We will pave a new route in the amusement industry, for all of the up and comers, so that there dreams an come true.
Poniewozik, James. & # 8220 ; The Vast Wasteland & # 8221 ; Time
26 July, 1999: 70-73 Flint, Joseph. & # 8220 ; WhiteWash & # 8221 ; Entertainment Weekly
30 July. 1999: 31-35
Takahashi, Corey. & # 8220 ; Color Blind & # 8221 ; Entertainment Weekly
8 Oct. 1999: 6-12
Wood, Daniel. & # 8220 ; USA & # 8221 ; The Christian Science Monitor
19 Jan. 2000: 3-6
