For the 2024 Academy Awards, films seeking to receive the “Best Picture” award must fulfill a new diversity requirement, one that demands casting an actor from an “underrepresented racial group” for a lead or major character’s role. This new emphasis on diversity is not just limited to the Oscars; it reflects the recent trend in Hollywood that spotlights casting diversity and cultural representation while putting film quality and accuracy in second place.
The 2010s and 2020s have seen an unprecedented level of emphasis on diversity, which, although is a positive change, places diversity of characters or story line in higher regard than actual film quality or canonical accuracy.
Increase in diverse portrayal in media
Along with the Civil Rights Movement and other social changes promoting racial equality across the U.S. from the 1930s to today, the representation of minority groups in films increased exponentially. However, many films of earlier eras depicted Black and Asian characters through stereotypical and reductive lenses, reflecting societal biases rather than offering accurate or meaningful representations of these cultures.
Take “Gone With the Wind,” which premiered in 1939: Hattie McDaniel became the first Black woman to win an Academy Award for her role as a slave in the epic historical romance film. However, her role, along with the cast of other slaves, poorly represented the actualities of the generational abuse and trauma they endured. “Gone With the Wind” portrayed slaves as complacent, meek and enthusiastic to serve their owners — a cruel inaccuracy of the history the film reflects.
Furthermore, despite McDaniel’s success and recognition for her work, Jim Crow laws meant that she was not permitted to view the first screening, and was prohibited from sitting with her white colleagues during the award ceremony. Other successful Black actors and actresses faced similar discrimination in subsequent decades.
The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of the Civil Rights movement, and the urge for equality led to a new era in filmmaking that is commonly referred to as “Blaxploitation.” As the name suggests, the Blaxploitation movement exploited the societal shifts for increased profit, with films commonly portraying Black characters as aggressive and vengeful toward their White counterparts. Despite being openly capitalized for box office revenue, the Black community nevertheless recognized the newfound representation that they had in the film industry.
While some embraced any representation, whether positive or negative, others objected to the stereotypes being portrayed in these films. Seeking to accurately reflect the racial clash in America, the 1989 film “Do the Right Thing,” depicted a culturally divided Brooklyn community, successfully becoming both a welcome break from “Blaxploitation” and a great commercial success.
However, as the 2000s approached, instead of merely trying to portray characters and events accurately, it became evident that diverse representation started becoming the primary goal instead of artistic merit.
Diversity or canonical accuracy?
A current example of this trend is Disney’s upcoming 2025 live-action representation of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,” a universally known fairy tale. The protagonist, Snow White, is described as having “hair as black as ebony, lips as red as the rose, skin as white as snow.” Despite this description, producers Marc Platt and Jared LeBoff decided to cast Rachel Zegler, a woman of Colombian descent, as Snow White’s character well, but doesn’t uphold her inalienable trait of being as “white as snow.”
There was no reason to change Snow White’s race, especially as a main character distinctively linked to the physical description of skin is “as white as snow.” There isn’t a reason to deliberately change Snow White’s race and profit off the amendment as a selling characteristic of the film, since race does not contribute to the development of the movie’s plot.
Additionally, to adhere to politically correct language, the producers of the film have omitted the “Seven Dwarves” part of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” In a very controversial decision, they chose not to cast actors with dwarfism for the role of Snow White’s helpers to avoid “reinforcing stereotypes.” Ironically, though, the producers who seem to be striving for “inclusivity,” are instead deliberately avoiding the casting of already underrepresented actors.
The upcoming film has faced widespread — and in my opinion, valid — criticism and backlash about its casting choices and alterations to the original story. Changing the plot and characters of a classic fairy tale is unnecessary; after all, who wants to see their favorite childhood stories altered for the sake of political correctness?
If film studios quit using misleading language such as “proportional representation” and “inclusion,” all of these choices can be reworded into diversity hires. Actors should be hired based on merit, not by the color of their skin or their physical stature, and it seems to be a trend that many of these “inclusive” and “diverse” films are receiving unfavorable reviews and tanking at the box office. While poor performance is likely also influenced by the existence of external factors — such as lack of budget or poor directing — Hollywood still needs to step back and reconsider their priorities.
Undoubtedly, many cultures are underrepresented in Hollywood, but remakes of existing stories with crucial aspects completely missing or altered will only garner backlash and criticism. Instead of producing subpar remakes of classics for political correctness or exploiting long-lasting stereotypes, film studios should strive to create original works that incorporate aspects of these cultures and advertise films with unique, relevant and novel plots.
