to name a few. Major culture industries, therefore, should not be overlooked in efforts to close the racial employment gap.
Figure 1.2. 1963 March on Washington. Courtesy of National Archives.
Beyond images and gestures characterized by symbolic representation, numerical representation is preoccupied with questions of demography and parity, measured by proportions and employment numbers. The central aim of equality becomes to make the proportion of African Americans in Hollywood equal to or greater than their share of the general U.S. population. In this vein, sociological research has highlighted racial inequality in the occupational careers of African American writers, actors, and directors.14 For instance, studies by William and Denise Bielby and Darnell Hunt and colleagues have concluded that African American writers are well underrepresented in relation to the U.S. Black population. Recent studies have thoroughly documented various aspects of minority underrepresentation and marginalization in film directing, concluding that Black directors are underrepresented in relation to Blacks’ proportion of the U.S. population and are otherwise marginalized in the profession.15
A number of academic studies have demonstrated the significance of employment in power roles for other positions on film sets. Employment of African Americans in prominent positions of control, especially as Hollywood directors or producers, increases both the number of work opportunities for Black talent behind the camera and the number of on-screen speaking roles for Black actors. In a 2014 study of the one hundred top-grossing movies of the year, Stacy Smith and colleagues found that when no Black director was behind the camera, less than 11 percent of characters on-screen were Black; however, when a Black director was behind the camera, 46 percent of characters on-screen were Black. The presence of a Black director increased the number of Black actors more than four times over.16 The director Tim Story describes his efforts to diversify acting roles: “I make it a point to do those movies where I can actually put Black people as well as Latinos in those parts.”17 In addition, Chris Rock explains how he personally uses his platform to provide opportunities for entry into work for other African Americans: “I try to help young Black guys coming up because those people took chances on me. Eddie [Murphy] didn’t have to put me in Beverly Hills Cop II. Keenen Wayans didn’t have to put me in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Arsenio [Hall] didn’t have to let me on his show. I’d do the same for a young white guy, but here’s the difference: Someone’s going to help the white guy. Multiple people will. The people whom I’ve tried to help, I’m not sure anybody was going to help them.”18 By Story’s and Rock’s estimations, as well as through the testimonies of other Black directors and film scholars, the best advocates for African Americans’ employment have always been, and perhaps will forever be, other Black workers on the job.
In positions of influence on movie sets, Black Americans in larger and more powerful roles are able to advocate for and demand inclusion for Blacks in other positions. Their involvement facilitates a process by which they can break down color barriers on historically “lily-white” film crews, trade organizations, and technical unions.19 Underrepresentation in directing jobs leads to decreased opportunities for Black Americans in the workplace, which means less authority in the decision-making process and fewer profits.
More African Americans working in Hollywood would mean greater control over images that travel to audiences worldwide.20 Hollywood exerts a widespread domination of mass dissemination, production, distribution, and exhibition of popular culture in both American and global markets. According to the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, dominant groups monopolize control over public communication and therefore over public meaning and cultural influence in society.21 Dominant groups, which are best positioned to use cinema to serve their own interests, encode cinematic texts, for instance, to shape public events and to reinforce their ideologies. In contrast, marginalized groups are not generally well situated to create and disseminate their own meaning systems through popular movies. As it stands, marginalized racial groups exert little control over the production and content of cinematic images that are consumed by mass audiences. However, it is important for racial minority groups to penetrate all levels of the film industry in order to harness power and control over global media systems.
Representation in cinematic production and distribution is essential because directors hold immense power to influence what images come across our television and movie screens. Hollywood plays an important and critical role in the creation and dissemination of ideologies through images, narratives, themes, and genres. Calling cinema “a mind molding art form,” the director Neema Barnette stresses, “There are some of us who are storytellers who understand that film is the strongest political tool that we have. Some of us got into the art form because of that, and I’m one of them.”22 Barnette reflects on cinema as an art form that possesses unparalleled strength in its ability to move and affect audiences across the world, even in the face of new digital and communication technologies. Through the medium of cinema, film directors, as drivers of vehicles that influence and affect thoughts, perceptions, self-esteem, politics, and policy, play an important role in disseminating, legitimating, and rationalizing worldviews.
This is not to suggest a unidirectional relationship between movie directors and audiences that is uncontested; audiences also play a role in interpreting movie messages. For example, viewers heralded the decision to make a female reboot of Ghostbusters (2016), but many were unimpressed that the only Black female character (played by Leslie Jones), who is also the only nonwhite member of the Ghostbusters team, was the only nonscientist of the group. Instead, she played the role of a transportation worker. Jones responded to critics on Twitter: “Why can’t a regular person be a Ghostbuster? And why can’t I be the one who plays them, I am a performer.”23 On the one hand, viewers felt that the role kept Black women circumscribed into their narrow box of roles in mainstream cinema. On the other hand, the role brought the lived experience of workers to light through Jones’s performance.
As cultural objects, movies can be interpreted and evaluated in various ways, sometimes in manners that contradict intended meanings. Audiences embrace some portions of media and reject others. Social experiences and characteristics such as race, gender, class, education, political affiliation, religious affiliation, and locale also structure how people make sense of movies, often depending on how much a social category is privileged in a film. Besides individual readings, social-group interactions and dynamics can lessen or intensify evaluations of movies and movie characters.24 Even though audiences exhibit control over how they react to movies, cultural producers and creators, such as film directors, set the stage for what cultural objects are available for consumption and interpretation. Controlling this sphere of fictional reality gives cultural workers vast authority over the imaginings that the majority of audience members devour uncritically at leisure. The director of Meteor Man and The Five Heartbeats, Robert Townsend, remarks, “Films are powerful. Images are powerful—they can travel around the world.… Even though [Hollywood Shuffle] was my first film, it gave me an education on the power of images.”25 No doubt, directors’ presence or absence behind the camera helps shape what images are seen and what images remain invisible. But more than creation of images alone, representation in film directing is a measure of power to execute one’s vision of art and life in an influential culture industry.
Discussions around the politics of representation emerge in decisions about who should direct movies showcasing Black issues or icons. August Wilson, who wrote the play Fences and optioned the movie as a feature film before his death in 2005, said that he wanted a Black director to helm the film adaptation: “I declined a white director, not on the basis of race, but on the basis of culture. White directors are not qualified for the job. The job requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of African Americans.”26 Besides Wilson, other directors believe there is something more to directing movies of cultural or historical significance beyond technical proficiency. John Singleton chose not to direct a studio biopic about the late rapper Tupac Shakur, posting on Instagram,
The reason I am not making this picture is because the people involved aren’t really respectful of the
