The Effects of the Lack of POC Representation in Hollywood
Written and edited by: Fiorina A. Siamir
It’s no secret that Hollywood has had their long history plagued by systemic inequalities. People of color have fought for equal and accurate, non-stereotypical representation in movies and TV shows for many decades. Like many, I grew up watching Disney films and some Hollywood classics. I never really realized how lousy representation for people of color truly is until I got a bit older, because shows and movies with inadequate representation (or no representation at all) were just passed off as entertainment. But when we get older, we look back and see just how harmful that is. As time went on, media started to become more inclusive in their cast; in some cases, they’d add 1 or 2 people of color to the cast as background characters - this is called tokenism, and some studios tend to do this as a blatant attempt at ‘diversifying’ their casts. When we look back on some of our childhood comfort movies, it’s become painfully obvious how the industry needs to change.
In 2019, when it was announced that Halle Bailey, a black woman, would be playing Ariel in Disney’s live-action remake of its 1989 classic The Little Mermaid, many went livid. “That’s not my Ariel!” users wrote online, even though there technically wasn’t a ‘real’ Ariel considering the film was an animated one. So, we wonder why this is the case, right?
Many of us grew up watching Disney films; whether it be the classic princess movies with the typical white leads or some more modern, more ‘diverse’ Disney efforts, it’s no surprise that for some, our entire childhood revolved around the world of Disney. When we were toddlers, watching yet another princess movie, we didn’t notice the lack of representation on our screens or question why there weren’t princesses or main characters that looked like us. But as we got older, we started questioning these things because back then, those issues were considered ‘trivial,’ swept under the rug, and passed off as entertainment. So what if there were no princesses of color before Tiana or Pocahontas? Children didn’t care all that much, but the studio executives should have. In Halle Bailey’s case, why were people livid about a black woman playing an animated film character? Perhaps it was because of past Disney live-action remakes; 2015’s Cinderella and 2017’s Beauty And The Beast had lead actresses who resembled the animated character. Maybe it was because we have seen these princesses in a certain way — in the way Disney wants us to see them, for decades that some uptight people can’t imagine anything other than an ‘exact’ representation for the live-action remakes. Alongside Bailey, whose movie is set to come out next year, West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler is also following in her footsteps by playing Snow White in a live-action remake. She also faced racist backlash over her casting: “You don’t normally see Snow Whites that are of Latin descent,” she said.
Although it is one of my favorite movies, I was honestly appalled when I first watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s because of Mickey Rooney’s character, Mr. Yunioshi. He was the upstairs neighbor of Holly Golightly, and he basically only showed up to make noise complaints from her apartment. The character was Japanese in the film, but the actor who played him, Mickey Rooney, was a white man. He put on a fake tan to make him seem more “yellow,” prosthetic buck teeth, taped back eyes, and a long, drawn-out Japanese accent to play the role.
This was in the 1960s, when Hollywood had virtually zero representation, but even then, who hires a white actor to play a Japanese character? If we delve deeper into it, why did the character have to be an angry, bitter Japanese guy in the first place? The racial stereotypes Mr. Yunioshi possessed are ridiculous if you think about it — the so-called “representation” (even though it obviously isn’t, considering he was more or less a side character) was so inaccurate and way too stereotypical. Today, however, most studios don’t pull this trick anymore - they’ve actually started to hire POC actors and actresses for POC roles. It took Rooney over four decades to realize that the role he played could be viewed as racist.
On-screen, Hollywood has come a long way from a white guy playing Mr. Yunioshi, but off-screen, it’s still pretty much the same, primarily dominated by white males. In 2019, only 14.4% of directors were people of color. The Executive ranks are just as bad, if not worse. According to a 2020 report by UCLA’s college of social sciences, titled “Hollywood Diversity Report 2020: A Tale of Two Hollywoods”, the study finds that 91% of studio heads are white, and 82% of that are male. Senior management is similarly disappointing - 93% white and 80% of that are males. According to a 2021 report from the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, Hollywood is losing approximately US$10 Billion a year due to the lack of diversity and representation, both on and off-screen.