For the sake of this article, it's important to note that the definition of people of color, or POC for short, is very broad. It basically refers to anyone who isn't white, which if you think about it, that's most of the people on this planet. Still, media in America often pigeonhole POC into stereotypes if they are at all in it. While our white counterparts are portrayed in every role, some in roles made for POC, while inversely we play the same tropes that are borderline, if not outright stereotypical. How many movies have you seen where the only black man is an athlete of some kind? Or an Asian American who’s really smart and plays either the piano or the violin? Or a super cool Latino guy who speaks slowly?
True in recent years, TV and film have made attempts to be more diverse, but this has come off more as ingenuine appeasement rather than an actual interest in diversifying something. A movie will have POC that either have no lines or are merely there to prop up the white lead. And a recent trend in which the POC that have any lines or impact on the story line are killed, sometimes graphically on screen for next to no reason. Such as Darwin (played by Edi Gathegi) in X-Men First Class (2011) is killed by Sebastian Shaw (played by Kevin Bacon) despite the fact that the character’s ability to adapt to literally anything, resulting in the only other black character in the movie exploding on screen.
The trope of “the black guy dies first.” is an often shown one in Hollywood, many horror movies that have a black person often kill them first. But even major stars aren’t safe from this trope, in the movie Passengers (2016) Laurence Fishburne playing Gus Mancuso wakes up halfway through the movie and dies shortly after due to organ failure from his sleeping pod that malfunctions. Scenes like this are written to make white leads seem more compassionate, add a note of what’s at stake, or simply traumatize them. Some people would argue that movie and TV studios do it simply because black characters aren’t marketable. The addition of POC in media just to have them brutally killed or have no impact on the storyline at all is just as bad if not worse than having none at all.
It wouldn’t be fair to not mention the arguments made against this. One popular phrasing among those who don’t see the problem is “if you don’t like what you see in media, create your own media.” It sounds like a fair point, but ultimately it just silences the legitimate criticisms. However when some studios actually attempt to be more diverse, the outrage from racists online is always immense. When Stars Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) was announced with screenshots of a black lead (John Boyega) in a Stormtrooper uniform, there were groups of people demanding boycotts of the movie. Some on the grounds of wanting to keep “the lore pure” despite the fact that it’s entirely possible for Stormtroopers to be different races, as they are no longer clones of the same person. Others being straight racists not wanting black people in Star Wars. When the popular TV series Young Justice (2010) many people online were saying that Kaldur'ahm (Aqualad) a black lead character was going to die within the first season because he wasn’t the true Aqualad. Studios might be thinking about racist backlash as a reason to not make movies more diverse, but taking cues from Star Wars and Netflix’s Marvel’s: Luke Cage which were very popular pieces of media in spite of backlash from racists online.
One has to wonder just what will it take for Hollywood writers and directors to catch up diversity. More successful movies such as Get Out (2017) that with a budget of $4.5 million raked in $276.9 million worldwide and is being critically acclaimed. Will that do? Or perhaps more movies with a lack of diversity, or with complete whitewashing totally flopping in the box office will wake them up. Such as Gods of Egypt (2016) which had a largely white cast despite being set in ancient Egypt. With Gerard Butler, a crowd puller, and a budget of $140 million, the movie raked in $150 million, barely covering its budget making it a flop of a movie.
The list of movies that have flopped because of this reason is almost embarrassingly long, but still Hollywood continues to make them. If more movies don’t do well with a relatively small budget such as Get Out the movie industry just might collapse in on itself. And as a movie lover myself, i personally don’t want to see that, but if Hollywood can’t get itself together, the future looks grim.
