In recent years, Hollywood has seemingly spearheaded the fight for social justice and gender equality across a range of issues, including diversity and inclusivity. Though the industry has come under fire on many occasions in the past, it often tries to take steps to improve its standing in the eyes of society. But for all its claims and efforts, a recent studyshows that the American film industry is far from fair, vastly underrepresenting Latinxs and promoting harmful stereotypes of the community in pretty much all its movies.
A revealing research
The study, conducted by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, had four key findings:
1) The prevalence of Latinx leading actors is vastly out of step with the U.S. population.
2) Erasure, not inclusion, is the norm for Latinos on the screen.
3) What little representation there is tends to promote harmful stereotypes.
4) Hollywood employs few Latinx content creators behind the camera.
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Taking into account the top 100 grossing movies in Hollywood from 2007 to 2018, merely 3% of them had a Latinx, either starring or co-starring. That's 3 out of 100 movies, with women representing just 49% of those leading or co-leading roles. What's worse, about 30% of those went to a single actress—Cameron Diaz. Other than her, only Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, and Eugenio Derbez were consistently hired for leading roles.
All in all, over 1,000 movies were sampled to assess just how prominent Latinxs representation is in Hollywood, and the results are truly discouraging. Out of all speaking characters throughout that decade, a mere 4.5% were Latinx, which is 13.8% below the corresponding census in the U.S. That's actually an unacceptable difference, considering the Latinx community is one of the largest ethnic groups in the country—comprising 39% of the population in California and 49% of Los Angeles'. Over 75% of U.S. states and territories have a higher Latinx population than Hollywood's rate of Latinx representation.
Ridiculous stereotyping
And it's not only under-representation that is the problem. Misrepresentation in the form of harmful stereotypes is also a notable issue for Latinxs in Hollywood. Specifically, nearly a quarter of all Spanish-speaking characters were depicted as violent criminals, and more than 60% of all Latinx characters that were shown engaging in illegal activities were part of organized crime, especially as gang members or drug dealers. Almost 40% of these criminal characters were murderers, thieves, or ex-cons.
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The community is also associated with poverty in Hollywood. Nearly 20% of the top-billed Latinx actors was depicted as poor, with many of all Latinx characters being unemployed or in impoverished conditions. And even when a Latinx is shown with a job, they are mostly given work that requires no college education, such as a construction worker. It is extremely rare to see a Latinx character with a top white-collar profession or other such high-level occupations. You're not used to seeing a Latinx as a top scientist in Hollywood films, right? That's a problem.
The problem extends behind the camera
Unfortunately, the issue is not restricted to actors and actresses. Latinxs are pretty much missing in almost all Hollywood jobs behind the camera as well. For example, out of all the films analyzed, only 3% featured Latinx producers, another 3% had people from the community in charge of casting, and a mere 4% of all the 1,335 Latinxs holding top jobs in the industry were directors.
Unsurprisingly, every film that featured either a Latinx director, producer, or casting director, had a noticeable increase of Latinx characters on screen.
Overall, these numbers make Hollywood look truly bad, especially considering the industry boasts the banner of diversity and inclusiveness. But the numbers don't lie. “No matter which part of the film ecosystem we examined, Latinos were vastly underrepresented,” Stacy L. Smith, co-author of the report and the founder/director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said. “At a time where Latinos in our country are facing intense concerns over their safety, we urgently need to see the Latino community authentically and accurately represented throughout entertainment.”
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However we look at it, Latinx representation in Hollywood shows the industry still has a long way to go in terms of equality and its treatment of minorities. Hopefully, the more light is shed on this issue, the quicker the trend will be turned around.
