Offscreen Notes
Diversity in Film
I love films of beautiful imagery, thoughtful dialogue, dramatic events, and historical purpose—films that reveal human complexity.
“Films that embrace diversity are more likely to resonate with audiences, leading to box-office success and ultimately long-term sustainability for the industry,” wrote Darnell Hunt, the UCLA administrator, upon the release of a survey on the American film industry in March 2024. “The study found that in 2023, films with casts that were 31 to 40 percent people of color earned the highest median global box office receipts, while films with casts that were 11 percent people of color were the poorest performers,” summarized National Public Radio’s Andrew Limbong (online at NPR, March 7, 2024). That follows the greater attention paid to film diversity as a result of the “Oscars So White” movement, inspired by the 2015 87th Annual Academy Awards season – when it was clear that little diversity was being recognized or rewarded; and, also, by the renewed discussion of American history, injustice, and brutality following George Floyd’s death by police action in 2020. Hollywood racism had been examined in Donald Bogle’s Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks (Bantam Books, 1973), and more recently in Reel Inequality by Nancy Wang Yuen (Rutgers, 2016), The Hollywood Jim Crow: The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry by Maryann Erigha (NYU Press, 2019) and the Encyclopedia of Racism in American Films (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), books that document discrimination against African-Americans behind and before the camera, and the repression of multiculturalism in American film. (Of course, that is part the legacy of colonialism, enslavement, and prejudice written about by W.E.B. Du Bois, Eric Foner, John Hope Franklin, Orlando Patterson, Eric Williams and other historians.) It is that history that the film industry and its academy and the academy museum have been attempting to address with public works, including the creation of new art.
How does one create a new future? By looking at the opportunities of today, and by being honest about the limitations (or suppressed glories) of the past. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, its building supervised by Renzo Piano, part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus on Wiltshire Boulevard, opened in 2021, and included artifacts such as the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz and the sled from Citizen Kane and the shark from Jaws; and its inaugural galleries included exhibits focusing exploring the people who work on film credits and the director Hayao Miyazaki as well as on Citizen Kane and directors Spike Lee and Pedro Almodóvar, and the movements Black Lives Matter and #Me Too, and on labor relations, Bruce Lee, movement, and film editor Thelma Schoonmaker. The museum took ten years to complete. “We are keenly aware that we’re working towards the opening of the Academy Museum during a time of great challenge. Over the past century, motion pictures have reflected and impacted major historical issues and events. The stories we tell in the Academy Museum are part of those bigger stories, and we are committed to highlighting the social impact of motion pictures. We look forward to brighter days for everyone, everywhere,” Bill Kramer, director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, had said in 2020 (online at museum site, April 5, 2020).
On its September 30, 2021 opening day, the museum screened the film The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), starring Judy Garland; and a year later for its first anniversary, September 30, 2022, it screened The Wiz, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Diana Ross, who had performed with the Supremes before a stellar solo career that included the film Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972), with co-stars Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, and Lena Horne; and about The Wiz, critic Wesley Morris, writing in the New York Times, said, “The film was a peculiar study of urban melancholy in general and of Ms. Ross’s blackness in particular. Here was this rich, black star looking to get home to Harlem. And she was doing so alongside three black men whose bodies were missing essential organs. They were lost, numb, scared.” Fascinating. Morris went on to say, “The film was post-blaxploitation and post-black power. It was as much about communal self-belief as the stage show, but Mr. Lumet provided a touch of trauma,” and about its near-closing song “Everybody Rejoice / A Brand New Day,” Wesley Morris wrote, “The soundtrack version of the song is the best, post-Motown-era studio singing that Ms. Ross has ever done. She performs with an abandon that makes me cry. It’s the joy of freedom. You feel as liberated as she does” (December 4, 2015). Diana Ross, the recipient of the American medal of freedom and a Grammy lifetime achievement award, would perform live at the museum’s anniversary gala, October 15, 2022 (the gala raised $10 million).
The museum, as of August 2024, is featuring exhibits on Hollywood’s Jewish founders, Boyz N the Hood and Casablanca and The Godfather, Agnes Varda, animation, and composer Hildur Gudnadottir. What more might the museum do? How much of history will it present? One assumes it will continue to be informed by dynamic research, by new knowledge. Scholars and journalists, in various books and articles, have attempted to address neglected matters: Multicultural Films: A Reference Guide by Janice R. Welsch and J.Q. Adams (Greenwood Press, 2005); and Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity by Viola Shafik (American University in Cairo Press, 2017) and Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jack Shaheen (Olive Branch Press, 2001); Native Americans on Film: Conversations, Teaching, and Theory by editor M. Elise Marrubio and Eric Buffalohead (University Press of Kentucky, 2013) and Native Americans in the Movies by Michael Hilger (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); and Asian Americans and the Media by Kent Ono, Vincent Pham (Polity, 2008) and Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood by Clara Rodriguez (Oxford University Pres, 2008) are some of the books that attempt to fill in the gaps of a significant history of culture. Of course, the museum has more work to do, as do other institutions, as do film and television and the other arts. The state of art of cinema and television, and the work still to be done, was attested to, for instance, by “Erased or Extremists: The Stereotypical View of Muslims in Popular Episodic Series” by Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (Variety, September 7, 2022): “Muslims represent 1% of all characters (8,885) across 200 popular TV shows in four countries — and less than one-tenth of 1% of all characters were in comedy series (a total of five characters). To add insult to injury, Muslims are too often shown as perpetrators or targets of violence, and more than 30% are part of extremist groups. These stereotypes have been perpetuated for decades, and these egregious tropes can contribute to aggression toward, and fear of, this community,” wrote Smith with Al-Baab Khan and Katherine Pieper.
I remain curious about culture, and about how the art of film, and its dissemination and discussion, will become ever more true to human complexity.
By Daniel Garrett
FYI:
Hollywood Diversity Report 2024 (UCLA)
The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (and Race)
Inequality in 1,700 Popular Films, 2007 to 2023
Hollywood Black: The Stars, the Films, the Filmmakers by Donald Bogle
Colorization: 100 Years of Black Films in a White World by Wil Haygood
