Two Words: Inclusion Rider
With movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp taking the film industry by storm in the hope to bring light to the struggles of women in the work place in regard to sexual harassment, assault, abuse, and general inequality, screen stars are taking action; demanding the exposure and expulsion of abusers, help for survivors, and equal pay. Hollywood is becoming more vocal and political than ever in the current climate, and diversity is one of the issues on the cards.
In her powerful speech at this year's Academy Awards, actor Frances McDormand - winner of the Best Actress award for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017) - addressed the crowd and an audience of over 26 million watching at home. After the formalities of thanking the cast and crew, McDormand placed her Oscar on the floor and asked that all of the female nominees of the night take a stand. Aside from the 10 acting nominees each year (Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress both have 5 nominees), only 47 women were nominated, "which is a mere 3% increase from the 2017 Oscars." (Rearick, 2018). This number may seem big, but it's nothing compared to the 151 men that were nominated outside of the gender specific acting categories.
In her powerful speech at this year's Academy Awards, actor Frances McDormand - winner of the Best Actress award for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017) - addressed the crowd and an audience of over 26 million watching at home. After the formalities of thanking the cast and crew, McDormand placed her Oscar on the floor and asked that all of the female nominees of the night take a stand. Aside from the 10 acting nominees each year (Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress both have 5 nominees), only 47 women were nominated, "which is a mere 3% increase from the 2017 Oscars." (Rearick, 2018). This number may seem big, but it's nothing compared to the 151 men that were nominated outside of the gender specific acting categories.
At the end of her speech, McDormand said "I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: 'Inclusion Rider'." (2018). The idea of an Inclusion Rider, first discussed in a 2016 TED talk by Stacy Smith - the founder and director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, is "a clause that an actor can insist be inserted in their contract that requires cast and crew on a film to meet a certain level of diversity." (Belam and Levin, 2018). Talent that adopts the Inclusion Rider are free to adapt it in ways they see fit, ensuring the proper representation, inclusion, and equal pay of many marginalised groups both in front of, and behind, the camera (2018). If properly implemented, these riders could make film sets much more diverse and inclusive places of work.
In line with the idea that Hollywood is a place where diversity takes a back seat, and that people of colour are usually shown through tokenistic or badly represented characters that don't serve much of a purpose, Legally Black created a media storm with its poster series that highlighted the lack of black actors in major leading roles.
On their website, Legally Black says "we are four Advocates of Social Justice from South West London and we have come together to combat the way black people are portrayed in the media." (2018). They hope that by making people aware of the distinct lack of black people in leading roles, they will want to do something about it. Inclusion Riders would hopefully encourage production companies to make roles more diverse, including leading roles in major, big-budget films.
Of course, not only black people are underrepresented by Hollywood and the British film industry, with Asian and Latinx people highly marginalised in many cases. In a 2017 article for The Guardian, Sam Levin writes, "Asian American actors said they rarely, if ever, got auditions for leading roles, and when they did get parts, they were frequently secondary to the plot or portrayed offensive tropes." (2017), with a study by the University of Southern California (USC) stating that "of the top 100 films of 2015, 49 included no Asian or Asian-American characters and 17 featured no black / African-American characters." (2016). This proves that all minority ethnic groups can suffer from the lack of exposure and proper representation both on camera and behind the scenes.
With celebrities now speaking on issues such as these, there's hope that more people will listen. As Oprah Winfrey said in her 2018 Golden Globes Cecil B. de Mille award acceptance speech: "A new day is on the horizon!" (2018).
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