Representation and Racial Hierarchy

Representation in a culture industry includes partaking in symbols and images, having presence in numbers and jobs, attaining cultural citizenship by participating in a nation’s cultural narratives, and climbing the hierarchy to occupy top and desired positions. This chapter defines and discusses various levels of representation: symbolic, numeric, civic, and hierarchic. African Americans and racial minorities in cinema have made significant progress in many stages, including winning awards at the Oscars and making gains in employment. This chapter highlights African Americans’ struggle to advance in Hollywood as it relates to penetrating the racial hierarchy. Despite Hollywood’s liberal public face, the film industry’s racial hierarchy takes on a Jim Crow structure that marginalizes, segregates, and stigmatizes racial minorities. The present struggle for representation should focus on dismantling this racial hierarchy.

Introduction

Jim Crow Hollywood describes how Hollywood insiders consider race when making decisions about moviemaking. Movies by and about white Americans are said to be worthy investments, while movies by and about Black Americans are said to be risky investments. This way of thinking has profound effects on the way movies and people move through the Hollywood system—shaping their production budgets, determining who directs lucrative tent pole blockbuster franchise movies, and creating stigma around race and moviemaking. This chapter gives an overview of the book’s approach, a summary of prior research on race in culture industries, and a preview of the book’s chapters. Quotes from film directors, statistics on over a thousand movies, and emails between Hollywood insiders reveal that race is back in the forefront regarding how decision-makers in American culture institutions rationalize inequality. Except now understandings about race are mixed with talk about economic investments and cultural preferences, making racial inequality more palatable to the everyday observer and further entrenching racial divisions that counteract post-Civil rights narratives of racial progress.

Manufacturing Racial Stigma

The Hollywood Jim Crow creates a resurgence of the Negro Problem previously articulated by W.E.B. Du Bois in which Blackness becomes a race stigma in need of remedy. Black directors’ perspectives and career trajectories are steered in a direction to overcome Hollywood insiders’ presumption of the unbankable label—that movies with Black casts or lead actors do not make enough money and are risky investments. Directors brand their movies as human and universal, stating they are relatable to all moviegoers and not just a subsection of Black audiences. Some directors are pressured to work with mostly white or multiracial casts if they are to have increasing production budgets. This retreat from Blackness undermines the notion that Black directors in Hollywood would necessarily bring more Black movies to the screen.

Remaking Cinema

This chapter outlines paths for improving cinema to be more racially inclusive. Remaking cinema can involve reforming Hollywood to be more inclusive to racial minorities in positions of influence, for example as directors of tent pole movies and as studio heads. Remaking cinema can also involve changing the way racial minorities make movies. This chapter puts forth the notion of a Black cinema collective, which involves an organized system of film production. A Black cinema collective means developing youth cultures around filmmaking, as well as having institutions to decide a slate of films to be released each year, to finance movies, and to create pathways for distribution. In addition, digital media talents can help put pressure on Hollywood to support movies and directors from racial minority backgrounds or else face mounting competition.

Labeling Black Unbankable

The Hollywood Jim Crow marks Black and racial minority movies culturally and economically inferior using the unbankable label—a presumption that they will not perform sufficiently well at the box office, especially in foreign markets. This chapter highlights how the unbankable label is present in Sony emails between Hollywood insiders. Unbankable becomes a new way to discriminate and explicitly use race to make decisions about moviemaking. Hollywood insiders suggest that Black cast movies will make less money and attract smaller audiences compared to white cast movies. Subsequently Black directors work on films with smaller budgets and targeted advertising and promotion to niche audiences. Hollywood decision makers overlook successful Black films as exceptions and still apply the unbankable label to Black cinema as a whole, limiting opportunities for Black and racial minority directors.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the main argument of the Hollywood Jim Crow. Hollywood insiders deploy economic and cultural logics that Black films will not make sufficient enough money to be viable financial investments, especially in foreign markets. This justification is used to devalue films with Black casts and directors, leading to racial marginalization, segregation, and stigma in film production and distribution processes. The chapter also highlights implications of systemic and explicit racial bias in a major culture industry, namely the legal barriers to access employment, cultural citizenship, and equality of opportunities and outcomes. In addition, the racial hierarchies a Jim Hollywood erects between groups can be replicated to produce racial bias in other fields, within culture industries and beyond. Furthermore, the chapter suggests directions for future research.

Making Genre Ghettos

This chapter demonstrates how racial segregation by film genre shapes directing paths in Hollywood. Black directors are over represented in the music genre, which is arguably the most performance oriented genre and also records the smallest average production budgets, figuratively placing them in the genre ghetto of the most impoverished genre. The music genre is also a literal genre with many Black-directed music genre films having themes of urban poverty and ghetto life. In contrast, Black directors are most underrepresented in the science fiction genre, which is thought to be intellectual-minded, and as directors of tent pole blockbuster franchise movies that are Hollywood studios’ core movie products. Black directors are therefore least represented in the most lucrative and commercial genre in American cinema. Racial segregation in genres lead to career disparities, as directing big franchise movies enables whites to attain commercial success that alludes racial minorities who less often direct tent pole movies.

Directing on the Margins

This chapter shows how racial minorities are marginalized as Hollywood directors. The unbankable label that assumes movies by or about African Americans have limited profit potential gives studio executives justification to discriminate against Black directors and their movies. This amounts to a racialization of Hollywood directing that places Black directors at the bottom of the hierarchy. Of all races, Black directors have the smallest average production budgets, are vastly underrepresented especially directing movies with major studio distribution, and find greater representation directing movies distributed by studio independents and independent companies. Even white-directed Black cast movies appear to have bigger average production budgets than Black-directed Black cast movies. Latinx and Asian directors are underrepresented relative to their proportion of the U.S. population, though their average production budgets are sizeable due to having directed a number of big budget movies. Black directors face additional barriers in the foreign market where their movies rarely get distribution. Black directors face a racial marginalization that ultimately impedes their career advancement in the film directing occupation.