Maybe it's just me...

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Federal court strikes down 'discriminatory' Texas voter ID

The Inequalities in Hollywood are HUGE

Vanity Fair has a piece that makes me cringe about Hollywood.

Some of know that the lack of equality in directors, writers and producers, but now the issue is not cute. Hollywood seems to be keep things young, white and male.

Here's more:

After seven years of collecting data from the 100 top-grossing fictional films from 2007 to 2014, the group has produced a report titled “Inequality in 700 Popular Films.” Here is just some of what they found:

Gender: In the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014, only 30.2 percent of the 30,835 speaking characters were female. That means for every 2.3 guys with lines, you’ll only see one speaking woman. And while there’s no analysis of the quality of the lines given to women, the 2015 blockbusters don’t exactly paint a pretty picture.

Age: Nestled inside the gender statistics is the fact that in the 100 top-grossing films of 2014, “no female actors over 45 years of age performed a lead or co lead role.” (Nope, not even Meryl Streep. As Manohla Dargis of The New York Times points out, in 2014 “the hardest-working woman in cinema had only supporting roles, including in the Disney musical Into the Woods.”) And outside of the lead roles the study notes that “only 19.9 percent of the middle-aged characters were female across the 100 top films.”

Race and Ethnicity: Of the speaking characters in the 100 top films of 2014, 73.1 percent were “White,” 12.5 percent were “Black,” 5.3 percent were “Asian,” 4.9 percent were “Hispanic/Latino,” 2.9 percent were “Middle Eastern,” less than 1 percent were “American Indian/Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander,” and 1.2 percent were from “other” racial and/or ethnic groupings. Given that statistic, the uproar over Emma Stone’s controversial casting in Aloha seems pretty justified. As the report points out, sadly, this represents no change “in the portrayal of apparent race/ethnicity” from the previous seven years.

Sexual Orientation: As corroborated by GLAAD’s annual report, things aren’t much better for L.G.B.T. characters. Despite advances in the realm of television, the U.S.C. study reveals that “across 4,610 speaking characters in the 100 top films of 2014, only 19 were Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual. Not one Transgender character was portrayed. Ten characters were coded as Gay, 4 were Lesbian, and 5 were Bisexual.”

The “700 Popular Films” study also revealed that in 2014, women were still heavily sexualized over men. Female characters were more likely to wear sexually revealing clothing (27.9% of females vs. 8% of males), display nudity (26.4% of females vs. 9.1% of males), and have their good looks commented on (12.6% of females vs. 3.1% of males).