Popular disappointment with white actors replacing people of color in fictional roles, a process critics have dubbed whitewashing, has led to movements mainly through social media. These include hashtags such as #OscarsSoWhite and #StarringJohnCho, an artistic endeavor to replace white leading actors with Asian-American actor John Cho on various movie posters. Senior Chloe Molinos thinks the social media campaign makes an effective statement on representation.
“To be able to do this with so many posters says a lot about movies and casting in Hollywood,” Molinos said.
The Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at USC Annenberg published their first Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment in February, which examined 414 stories in film, broadcast, cable and digital series from 2014 through 2015. The team found that out of their sample, only 12 percent of all stories featured a cast that was representative of the U.S. Census demographic.
“While I do realize that Asians are a minority, it’s just not proportionate to the population of America,” Molinos said. “It kind of messes with Asian-American kid’s esteems when they don’t see the representation they deserve.”
The disparity between population demographics and film representation doesn’t only appear in the acting industry. The Ralph J. Bunche Center for African-American studies at UCLA found that people of color directed 12.9 percent of the 163 films they examined from 2014, down from 17.8 percent in 2013.
A recent example of this issue in the acting industry is white actress Scarlett Johansson’s upcoming role in a live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell, a Japanese franchise.
“The simple solution is really just to cast Japanese people as Japanese characters,” freshman Madeline Humphreys said. “It would be a change for the better if they could actually cast appropriate actors for roles.”