Do You Identify with the Hero's and Heroines in today's movies?

I am guessing that the answer to that question depends on who you are.  Recently I have been noticing more than usual that most of the characters, especially the main characters in movies are predominantly white and male.  When there is a female lead, she is white and most of the time blond.  The male leads vary in age, size and attractiveness, while the female leads tend to be young, thin, pretty and predominantly white blonds.

The poor, elderly, minorities, the over weight, physically disabled, mentally disabled, if present on screen at all are either positive supporting characters (typically die if it is a horror movie or Science fiction flick), or they are cast as villains.

This is clearly not an accurate representation of reality, so what is it a representation of?  Perhaps it is a representation of the movie industry trying to satisfy it's customers?  If you look at women, they tend to be overrepresented in both as movie goers and as those who buy the most tickets.

Yet if you look at the representation of characters, especially leading characters, women are highly underrepresented as a group.  This indicates that women are willing to go see movies where they are underrepresented in lead roles, but this is nothing new, minorities and all the other groups I have mentioned also keep going to the movies.  It also indicates that those making movies are not really making movies for their audiences.

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Data source: •Executive Summary

In some cases movie makers do cater to some of their audience, the percent of people under 24 years, who go to the movies, is higher than their percent of the general population, and Hollywood has responded to them by making more movies that would appeal to them, however they seem to have forgotten that 52 percent of their audience is over 25.



When looking at ethnicity, again we find that minorities as a group (Hispanics especially) are over represented with them being 33% of the general population and 40% of the movie going population.  This number is going to increase as the demographics of the country changes over time. 

The numbers of minorities in movies do not reflect this changing reality.  In the charts below you can see a comparison of the percent of either men or women of each race in the actual US population compared with the movie character population (e.g. black men in movies represent 8% of the male population compared to 12.33 percent in the actual US population).  Considering that Hispanics are overrepresented as movie goers, it is interesting that they are the most underrepresented group when it comes to characters in movies.

 Data source: •Executive Summary

 Data source: •Executive Summary

It seems clear that movies are not trying to cater to their movie going demographics, when the only concession that has been made has been to those aged 23 or under, while ignoring women, those aged 24 and over, and minorities.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the reality of those who are making movies.  All the statistics show that those making films are not very representative of the rest of the US.  Women as a group are very underrepresented and the situation has really not changed it seems since 1998, and in some cases the situation has deteriorated for women and minorities in the film industry.

The first chart looks at the proportion of men and women making movies (directors, creators, writers, producers etc)

From: It’s a Man’s (Celluloid)World: On-Screen Representations of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2011by Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D.

The following charts look at the percent of women in each film making category, again the field is clearly dominated by men regardless of if you are looking at Movies (as in the first chart),

From: It’s a Man’s (Celluloid)World: On-Screen Representations of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2011by Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D.

 Or on TV as in the chart below women are clearly underrepresented in the creation of movies and the stories that are told to us through them.

It was relatively simple to find information regarding gender and movie making, it was a little harder to find information about race and movie making.  I did find the following data

Which shows how who are directing the movies we see, and through whose eye we are all being seen.  This is perhaps why, it is rare that I identify with characters on the screen.  If the movie is well written, the story engaging, the actors compelling and the move is well directed it usually does not matter, I walk out of the movie feeling good about having seen it.  However, it is nice every now and then to feel a connection with the characters on screen, to see yourself represented in a positive manner, or in a varied manner (i.e. not as a limited number of stereotypes), or in some cases, to see yourself represented at all.

Do you see yourself reflected back from the silver screen?  What about from the little screen?  I think in some areas (children's programming) we have made great strides, but in other areas I think we still have more work to do:

Perhaps one day in our post racial society these covers will be blended, and we will have some older, Hispanic, Asian, overweight, disabled and less classically beautiful women :)