Hollywood’s Global Expansion and Racialized Film Industry

Abstract

A theory on the political economy of image production argues that the U.S. film industry, namely, Hollywood, prioritizes financial considerations over racial justice or political correctness. Decisions made in the production and marketing processes are to minimize financial risks, but they often limit the representation of racial–ethnic minority filmmakers and actors. At the same time, Hollywood incorporates foreign-born directors and actors to reach international audiences. This article assesses how Hollywood’s “going global” impacts local racial–ethnic minority politics in the U.S. film business. As a part of a larger study examining the 100 top-grossing films in the United States from 1995 to 2014, we closely examine films where racial–ethnic minorities comprise the majority of the cast or films where minorities are the lead actors. We argue that the incorporation of foreign-born directors and actors undermines U.S. racial–ethnic minority filmmakers’ efforts to tell cinematic narratives from a critical perspective. Also, Hollywood fails to promote black films and black actors based on the assumption that they cannot appeal to international audiences, but our findings illustrate that black films directed by black directors perform well domestically and they show great potential with more support from Hollywood.

Keywords

Hollywood globalization black films film production film marketing

Reflexive Statements

Minjeong Kim: I first watched Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) at a special screening on my college campus in South Korea. The film did not get a theatrical release for its unflattering portrayal of the Korean immigrant shopkeeper, so it was not an easy film to catch. As a serious film buff, I was keen to catch the film that Korean progressive critics lauded for its honest portrayal of race relations in the United States. I could not understand all the cultural and social references, but I remember being excited about various elements in the film—the beats, Lee’s facial expressions, brutal dialogues, and the explosive ending. After I moved to the United States, I gradually learned about the racial divide in film production, marketing, and consumption. I realized that while nationalism brought the restriction of Do the Right Thing in South Korea, it has been Hollywood’s unrelenting greed and racism that has limited the full mainstreaming of black films and African American filmmakers both domestically and internationally. Born out of deep appreciation for the history of black filmmaking and all racial–ethnic minority filmmakers, this article critically examines the global–local encounters in Hollywood with the hope to watch stories that have yet to be made into films.

Rachelle J. Brunn-Bevel: I often joke with friends that being a sociologist has “ruined” many things for me such as music, TV shows, and movies that I used to enjoy purely for leisure. As a result of my sociological lens, I find it very hard to watch, read, or listen to any media text uncritically. Close friends and family know that I still consume questionable entertainment “strictly for research and teaching purposes.” Since graduate school, I have enjoyed teaching about how popular culture can tell us a great deal about racial–ethnic relations in the United States. Students continue to be moved by the racial stereotypes and generalizations that become visible when you peel back the surface of a media text. This project has truly allowed me to delve deeply into a topic that I am fascinated by–the sociology of media and popular culture. I have learned a lot about the media production process and what goes on behind the director’s chair in Hollywood. In many ways, it is just as compelling as what we end up watching on the screen.

African American director, John Singleton (2013) has argued that Hollywood executives rarely hire African American directors for high-profile dramas on black American stories. In a similar vein, when 12 Years a Slave was first released in 2013, some members of the African American film community protested that its director Steve McQueen is British. They charged that American producers felt it would be “safer” to hire McQueen, implying a “softer” portrayal of slavery (Akinyemi 2014). In the film industry, national boundaries are permeable as evidenced by international film festivals, multinational co-investments, foreign location shooting, overseas production, and global circulation of Hollywood films (Miller et al. 2001). However, when Hollywood produces films about African American stories without considering “cultural nuances and deep-seated emotions that help define the black American experience” (Singleton 2013), it contributes to perpetuating racial divides in both cultural representations and institutional structures.

Moviemaking is an artistic endeavor, but the film business is fundamentally an economic enterprise. Theories on the political economy of image production argue that a small number of “political and economic elites” control media images that audiences see, and they do so through three strategies in media ownership—concentration, conglomeration, and integration (Croteau and Hoynes 2014; Gamson et al. 1992; McChesney 1999). In this context, these authors argue that the U.S. film industry, namely, Hollywood, prioritizes financial considerations over racial justice or political correctness and takes into account cultural and political considerations only in relation to economic returns. We extend this framework to understand how Hollywood’s “going global” impacts local politics of racial–ethnic minority representation in the U.S. film business. By going global, we focus on two aspects: the incorporation of foreign-born talent and Hollywood’s pursuit of international box office domination. These two aspects are not mutually exclusive as the former is a strategy for the latter. But each also presents distinct challenges for racial–ethnic minority filmmakers in the United States.

As part of a larger study examining the 100 top-grossing films in the United States from 1995 to 2014, we analyze the race and ethnicity of directors and the films’ budget, domestic, and international gross with a focus on films where racial–ethnic minorities comprise the majority of the cast or films where minorities are the lead actors. We engage in public debates surrounding significant films by examining major newspaper articles related to them. In this article, we ask two central research questions. First, how does the involvement of foreign-born directors and actors influence cinematic narratives of racial–ethnic minorities in the United States? Second, how does emphasis on the global film market impact the representation of racial–ethnic minorities in Hollywood? By closely examining the patterns we found in the data from the 20-year period, and filmmakers’ and commentators’ views in the public domain, this article assesses how global interests fostered by Hollywood’s search for international box office success impacts local filmmakers and domestic audiences.

Political Economy of Hollywood

The film industry consists of three processes: production to make films, distribution to market, and bring films to exhibitors and exhibition to show films (Rhines 1996). Movie theater companies for exhibition are mostly independent from production and distribution processes. The main players of the U.S. motion picture industry, dubbed as Hollywood, are those involved in production and distribution. The so-called big six companies—Warner Bros., Disney, Universal, Fox, Sony, and Paramount—dominate the field, accounting for more than 80.4 percent of the domestic box office in 2017 (Statista.com n.d.).

These major studios exercise ownership of the film industry in three ways: concentration, conglomeration, and integration. They control the broad processes of creating, producing, marketing, and distributing films; integrate films with different types of media (e.g., printed media, television, or music); and are connected to businesses in different fields (Croteau and Hoynes 2014). Owners aim to create synergy between their company holdings through cross-promotion (Croteau and Hoynes 2014). The film industry is not just about films but is an important economic force intimately related to a variety of areas such as the beauty and cosmetics industry, clothing and apparel, travel and leisure destinations, sports and entertainment, and other markers of conspicuous consumption, both domestically and internationally.

This institutional approach hypothesizes that media ownership patterns shape media products. This framework also helps us understand how media ownership impacts the stories that are told in films. Croteau and Hoynes (2014) asserts, “One possible political consequence of the concentration of media ownership is that, in some ways, it becomes more difficult for alternative media voices to emerge” (p. 50). This sentiment is quite evident in Hollywood. Independent films, and more specifically the black film industry, are one source of divergent media voices that centers on the stories and experiences of racial–ethnic minorities in a nuanced way and that often rejects the stereotypes widely promoted in mainstream films (Yearwood 2000). However, the film industry, a fundamentally capitalist system, does not readily indulge the audience with independent films, despite their unique contributions, because they are deemed as not having the potential for financial profits.

Ultimately, film producers follow a “logic of safety that revolves around minimizing the risk of losing money,” seeking projects that are likely to draw a mass audience (Croteau and Hoynes 2014:55). Consequently, the profit-driven logic of safety encourages producers to replicate successful films, avoid so-called risky or controversial film topics, and utilize movie stars, if possible, to maximize profits (Croteau and Hoynes 2014; Lewis 2003). In other words, what guides film studios and producers is how well they predict films will do at the box office. For example, spectacular action films and universally appealing comedies starring actors with a track record of successful films are the safest bets. Sequels and franchises are worthwhile to grant big budgets because of the existing interest of the audience. Sci-fi fantasies are usually low risk as they can appeal to the younger population who are the main consumers.

This logic of safety creates a challenging context for racial–ethnic minority filmmakers. Conventionally, Hollywood has long considered a white audience as mainstream and believed that films with racial–ethnic minority lead actors and/or films that focus on the stories and experiences of nonwhites could not appeal to the broader audience, thus, labeling such films risky. Therefore, even in the films with racial–ethnic minorities as the majority of the cast, white actors take or share the lead roles so that the films could attract a white audience. An alternative approach to reducing risk of racial–ethnic minority-centered films, such as black films, is to spend less, setting lower budgets for production and marketing, which leads to narrowly advertising black films to an “urban market” domestically and forgoing international marketing completely. This has contributed to perpetual racial–ethnic inequality in Hollywood in terms of actors, filmmakers, and stories represented on screen.

Racial Politics in Hollywood

When no people of color were nominated for major acting categories at the Academy Awards for two years in a row (2015 to 2016), the twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite became a critical sound bite. In her book, Reel Inequality (2017), Nancy Wang Yuen called #OscarsSoWhite “a symptom of Hollywood’s larger race problem” (p. 5). From its inception, white inventors, actors, and capitalists have dominated the film industry. Racial–ethnic minority actors and filmmakers struggle to carve their places in the relentlessly competitive industry, but they still face the issues of segregation, marginalization, and devaluation.

For African Americans, filmmaking has been not only artistic and commercial enterprises but also social and political endeavors, from entertaining the black audience locked out of white theaters in the Jim Crow era, to portraying black representations and aesthetics omitted in mainstream films, to bringing the stories of racial conflict and tension from African American perspectives (Cripps 1977; Rhines 1996). Thus, it is not surprising that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People recognizes outstanding works of people of color in film and television at the Image Award.

Although several African American actors, such as Will Smith, Denzel Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, are major actors with sustaining box office power, black films—films revolving around topics especially relevant to black communities (e.g., fighting racism, overcoming adversity, religion and spirituality, kinship) and/or where black actors comprise the majority of the top-billed cast—are primarily targeted to “urban markets” because of their perceived “limited appeal” (Alexander 2000). Successful “crossovers” are not readily assumed, so African American actors active in black independent films are usually undervalued in the mainstream film industry. For example, Tyler Perry is a successful producer, director, and actor of several popular black television shows and film series including the Madea series. Even though Perry succeeded in the crossover, he has yet to lead a mainstream film or direct a film that could be potentially recognized by mainstream film awards.¹

Hollywood—the mainstream studio system—does not just reign over the U.S. film industry but also the global cultural economy (Miller et al. 2001). Discussions of globalization frequently point to Hollywood as a signifier and/or a vehicle of U.S. global domination as the expansion of Hollywood projects the values of neoliberal economy and the global stature of the United States. When Hollywood’s blockbuster movies backed by abundant budgets and cutting-edge technological innovations keep the global audience’s attention, “Hollywoodcentrism” in the global film industry overshadows innumerable cinematic productions in Third World countries or the indigenous “Fourth World” (Shohat and Stam 1994:29). Moreover, Hollywood movies can be a powerful yet insidious medium for Eurocentric retelling of colonial histories or U.S.-centered narration of international political history, which inherently bears racial ideology.

To understand the politics of racial ideology represented in films, Stuart Hall, Evans, and Nixon (2013) propose the concept of “a regime of representation” which they define as “the whole repertoire of imagery and visual effects through which ‘difference’ is represented at any one historical moment” (p. 222). This “difference” of the racialized “Other” from the majority group has been treated with a variety of “tropes,” which reflect different historical epochs, and both the difference and degrading treatment of the Other became naturalized in western popular culture and society. Hall argues that these tropes or racial stereotypes are significant parts of a “racialized regime of representation” in contemporary society (Hall et al., 2013).

Mainstream Hollywood, which is mostly controlled by white producers and directors, has primarily made and promoted white-centered movies to court white audiences who are more valued than other racial groups. Even when films portray people of color in seemingly positive light, the narratives reinforce white normativity or superiority (Bogle 2001; Hughey 2009; Ross 1996). Stereotypical representations are not just imagery on screen, but they affect people’s lives, justifying discrimination and violence against them (Collins 2000). They are circulated through cultural globalization and become a vehicle for “transnational racialization,” inculcating racial hierarchy to those who have not been regularly exposed to black or white people (Kim 2008).

However, Hall et al. (2013) further argue that “a racialized regime of representations” is also a site of change with diversified creations. Demeaning and patronizing stereotypes and controlling images have been contested and challenged not only by critical voices but also by alternative imagery and representations created by independent filmmakers of color (Hall et al. 2013). Unfortunately, the film industry’s relentless pursuit of monetary returns both domestically and globally, combined with the unabated racial hierarchy, has made it challenging for filmmakers of color to show diverse cinematic representations.

In this context, we return to the question earlier posed by John Singleton, can this much-needed diversity be fulfilled by foreign-born directors of color? Can they deliver the representational needs of racial–ethnic minorities in the United States? At this juncture, this article focuses on the implications of Hollywood’s global film production for local racial–ethnic minorities. In most discussion of globalization, “global” is usually represented by the U.S. power and “local” by elsewhere. But, as Appadurai (1996) has articulated, local and global encounters are heterogeneous. In this article, racial–ethnic minorities in the United States are a local point in a mediascape dominated by the Hollywood’s global film businesses. At the risk of appearing self-serving nationalist discourse, our examination aims to fill a gap in understanding Hollywood’s impact on racial politics in the United States.

Method

For our larger project on the performance of racial–ethnic minority actors and directors with the broader audience, we put together a list of the 100 top-grossing films from each year in the period of 1995 to 2014 (N = 2,000). The 100 top-grossing films are likely to feature the most well-known actors and directors, receive the overwhelming majority of media coverage, and be widely released across the United States and marketed globally. The lists include many films that have had significant impacts commercially and culturally. Using two popular film databases, the Internet Movie Database and Box Office Mojo, we compiled a database including film titles, top-billed actors of racial–ethnic minorities, directors, production companies and distributors, production budgets, domestic and international grosses, and award information. We then coded the films on the basis of whether minority actors were in lead or supporting roles and the director’s race—white, black, and other.² Sociologists have shown how race is socially constructed (Omi and Winant 1994) and the film industry that creates images of “plausible stories” bend the rules of race to their advantage. Thus, racial categorization is not clear-cut. For the cast, we relied on how they appear on screen (i.e., the character’s race) and when unidentified, the actors’ self-identified race.

We coded the films into seven categories based on the actors’ race (see Table 1). First, three major categories include (1) black films featuring black actors as the majority of the cast and/or based on African American perspectives—“BF” (e.g., Soul Food [1997] and Beloved [1998]), (2) films with one or two black actors in lead roles—“BAL” (e.g., Bad Boys [1995] and Flight [2012]), and (3) films with black actors in supporting roles and white actors in lead roles—“BAS” (e.g., Batman Begins [2005] and Lincoln [2012]).

Table 1.

Film Category Definition.

Category	Definition	Examples
BF	Black actors in the majority of the cast	Beloved (1998) Guess Who (2005)
BAL	With black leads	Bad Boys (1995) Training Day (2001)
BAS	With black supporting roles	Batman Begins (2005)
OF	Other racial minorities in the majority of the cast	Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001) Anna and the King (1999)
OAL	With other racial minority in the lead	The Eye (2004) Fools Rush In (1997)
OAS	With other racial minority in supporting roles	Twilight (2008)
W	White in the majority of the cast

The other set of three categories are equivalent to the first three, but they pertain to Other—nonblack racial–ethnic minorities: (4) films with other racial minority actors as the majority of the cast—“OF” (e.g., Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [2001]), (5) films featuring other racial minority actors in lead roles—“OAL” (e.g., Enough [2002]), and (6) films featuring other racial minority actors in supporting roles—“OAS” (e.g., Twilight [2008]). The last category “W” feature white actors as the majority of the cast with no top-billed racial minority actors.

Figure 1 shows the number of top-grossing films by the category in each year. It is not surprising to see the largest category is W (n = 907, 45.4 percent). The second and third largest categories are BAS (n = 560, 28 percent) and OAS (n = 202, 10.1 percent). The decrease of W films and the increase of BAS and OAS indicate that more films feature racial–ethnic minorities but primarily in supporting roles.³ However, the number of films with racial–ethnic minority leads did not have notable increases.

Figure 1.

Number of Films by Category, 1995 to 2014.

In order to assess the implications of Hollywood’s global collaboration on local minority films, we consider a variety of factors from our database including the racial–ethnic background of lead actors and directors, the film’s budget, and the international gross. To contextualize key events and certain controversies, we also examine relevant newspaper articles.

Foreign-born Talent and Racial–ethnic Minorities in Hollywood

In addition to the director, Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave stars several foreign-born actors, notably Chiwetel Ejiofor, an English actor playing the protagonist Solomon Northup, and Michael Fassbender, an Irish actor who plays the main antagonist. Selma (2014), a historical drama about a voting rights campaign in Alabama with Martin Luther King, Jr., as the central character, also features an English actor David Oyelowo as one of the most significant African American figures in U.S. history. This casting reflects international collaboration in the world of moviemaking, which often sparks uneasy controversies over who is selected to direct or star.⁴ In Hollywood where racial–ethnic minority actors and filmmakers have long dealt with a variety of issues including objectification of black bodies, cultural appropriation, stereotyping, whitewashing, invisibility, and white-centered storytelling, the social distance between foreign-born talent and local minority communities can lead to the former group failing to recognize discriminatory practices and unwittingly replicating the same strategies.

One example would be foreign-born talents’ oversight of local minorities’ cultural, historical, or political endeavors and experiences. Regarding 12 Years a Slave, the well-circulated narrative has been that McQueen’s partner introduced him to Northup’s book, which eventually led McQueen to make the award-winning film (Lee 2013). As indicated in the title of NPR’s Fresh Air (2013) article, “‘12 Years a Slave’ was a Film that ‘No One Was Making,’” the media repeated how Northup’s story, which was largely forgotten, was now brought into the light. Unfortunately, McQueen failed to recognize that the African American director, Gordon Parks who is best known for creating the blaxploitation genre with Shaft (1971), adapted the book for a 1984 television movie, Solomon Northup’s Odyssey. This oversight of an important African American artist’s work did not go unnoticed (Jackson 2014). Ebiri (2013) of Vulture compares the two films with an excerpt from Parks’s memoir about the director’s accounts of making the film in Atlanta in the early 1980s when racial tensions were high after the contentious decision of establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It was a rather different era from 2013 when McQueen’s film was backed by international star Brad Pitt’s production company.

After examining who makes the highest-grossing films starring racial–ethnic minorities, this section interrogates how hiring and casting foreign-born directors and stars impact films’ content in two ways: first, an association between a director’s racial–ethnic identity and cinematic narratives on African American experiences and, second, foreign-born racial–ethnic minority directors’ roles in white-dominated Hollywood representations.

Who Is in the Director’s Chair?

Table 2 shows the number of the films featuring racial–ethnic minorities by the film category and the directors’ racial–ethnic background. Overall, white directors made 89.3 percent of the 2,000 films that comprised the 100 top-grossing films in the two- decade period. So, it is not surprising that white directors represent the majority of most categories. BF is the only category where black directors make up the majority.

Table 2.

Number of Films by Film Category and the Director’s Race.

Dir. Race	BF	BAL	OF	OAL	W^a	Total
BD	68 (65.4%)	18 (12.9%)	—	8 (13.6%)	16 (1%)	110 (5.5%)
OD	—	4 (2.9%)	16^b/8 (55.2% / 38.1%)	12 (20.3%)	72 (4.3%)	104 (5.2%)
WD	36 (34.6%)	117 (84.2%)	13 (44.8% / 61.9%)	39 (66.1%)	1,581 (94.7%)	1,786 (89.3%)
Total	104 (100%)	139 (100%)	29 / 21 (100%)	59 (100%)	1,669 (100%)	2,000 (100%)

Note: BF = black actors in the majority of cast; BAL = with black leads; BD = black directors; OD = other racial minority directors; OF = other racial minorities in the majority of the cast; OAL = with other racial minority in the lead; W = white in the majority of cast; WD = white directors.

^aIncluding BAS and OAS

^bIncluding eight imported films.

Steve McQueen, the director of 12 Years a Slave, became the third black director nominated for the Directing category in the 80-plus-year history of the Academy Awards. Of 68 BFs made by black directors, only 2 films were nominated for both Directing and Best Picture by the prestigious Academy, the other being Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire (2009) helmed by African American producer and director Lee Daniels.⁵ Even though Daniels’s next film, The Butler (2013), was an award hopeful, it was edged out of the award competition, failing to snag a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. In the next year, when #OscarsSoWhite started, Selma (2014) was nominated for Best Picture but Ava DuVernay, whom many hoped would be the first black woman director nominated for the Oscars, was snubbed.⁶ On the other hand, 36 BFs directed by white directors include 6 high-profile films that earned Oscar nominations for Directing and Best Picture: Beloved (1998), The Hurricane (2000), Ali (2001), Ray (2004), Dreamgirls (2006), and Django Unchained (2012).

Although all these high-profile films are deserving, their awards nominations and/or wins are attributed to their studios’ and stakeholders’ rigorous advertising campaigns as well as deliberate production plans to increase their odds of winning the Academy members’ votes (Levy 2003; McNamara 2016). It is no doubt that recognition and accolades from their peers in the filmmaking industry in the form of Oscar nominations and wins give the recipients great pride and privilege. However, these coveted award nominations also positively impact films’ commercial values (Levy 2003). Immediately, Oscar visibility is a great marketing tool to increase ticket sales around the globe, which is especially important for films with relatively small budgets. Also, there are cumulative advantages for the films’ DVD and Blu-ray sales, and sales for broadcasting rights, and stars’ and directors’ name values. Given that older, white men dominate the Academy membership, which is 94 percent white, 77 percent men, and the media age of 62, the studios appear reluctant to hire African American directors for high-profile films that have potentials for awards and financial returns because they feel that white directors are more likely to receive the broad support of Academy voters (Horn, Sperling, and Smith 2012).⁷

Scholars and pundits have criticized black films directed by white filmmakers for exploiting African American suffering, “taming” them, or highlighting self-serving narratives of whites overcoming racism (Hughey 2009). For example, the film, 42 (2013), was directed by a white writer-director, Brian Helgeland. In our process of categorizing the films, even though the film is a biopic of a notable African American figure, Jackie Robinson, we could not easily decide whether it was BAL or BF because the top-billed cast had more white actors than black actors. Chadwick Boseman who played Jackie Robinson was then a newcomer with postgraduate education in both the United States and England, while Harrison Ford, a much bigger star in his own right, plays the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey. Although the protagonist is Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey, who was depicted as the champion of Robinson by dismantling the color lines in baseball, is highlighted in the white savior role. Before Helgeland’s film, African American director Spike Lee had long been attached to a Jackie Robinson project, but what Lee envisioned was critically different from 42. Instead of focusing on how Robinson learned to “peacefully” endure racist reactions as he entered the Major League, Lee reportedly planned to highlight Robinson’s complex political career in post-Major League life, drawing attention to Robinson’s involvement in civil rights movement (Singleton 2013; Zirin 2013).

It is difficult to generalize individual filmmakers’ artistic and narrative choices or to comment on their qualities. Many black films directed by white filmmakers have been effective in portraying African American stories with dramatic and nuanced effects, but they also have been charged with dramatizing that whites triumphantly champion anti-racist efforts or overcome racial inequality to stress racial reconciliation. In doing so, they downplay deep-seated, prevalent racism in the past or ongoing racial conflicts and tension to appease white audiences as well as (white) film critics and Academy voters. At the same time, African American filmmakers, especially those with critical perspectives on racial relations in the United States, struggle to secure finances to make films. Like Lee’s unrealized vision of a Jackie Robinson film, one can argue that African American filmmakers could present critical perspectives and cultural aesthetics uniquely grounded in black American experiences as they construct cinematic (counter)narratives that are satisfying to and/or empowering African American audiences (Hall 1993). In this context, Hollywood’s inclination to work with foreign-born talent like McQueen, other black British actors, or even white British writers (e.g., the Butterworth brothers for a James Brown biopic, Get On Up [2014]) contributes to further marginalizing African American filmmakers and actors and missing opportunities to bring black Americans’ innovative storytelling to screen, which ultimately limits audiences’ exposure to multifaceted and nuanced depictions of black lives. This lost opportunity is particularly acute in countries outside of the United States where personal interaction with black populations is rare. Ultimately, the global circulation of talent, especially one way from, say, England to the United States, not vice versa, further delimits African American filmmakers’ paths.

Foreign-born Directors Making “Universal Stories”

McQueen, along with four producers, won a best picture Oscar for 12 Years a Slave, but he lost the Directing award to Alfonso Cuarón, a Mexican director. In fact, all directing Academy Awards between 2012 and 2015 went to foreign-born, nonblack racial–ethnic minority directors: Ang Lee for Life of Pi (2012), Cuarón for Gravity (2013), and Alejandro G. Iñarritu for Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015). It was Lee’s second Oscar after his first win for Brokeback Mountain (2003). Iñarritu became the third director in the Oscars’ history to win Best Director two years in a row. Notably, except for Life of Pi, all of these films have white lead actors.

Asian and Latino directors making white-led films is not unusual. In the two-decade period, we identified 26 W films directed by racial–ethnic minority directors and featuring white actors as the majority of the cast. Of the 26, 5 films were directed by four American directors, such as Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur (2004) and M. Night Shaymalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999). The other 21 films were directed by 16 foreign-born directors (see Table 3). For example, Ang Lee, who was born and raised in Taiwan and received postsecondary education in the United States, initially made his name through Taiwanese films such as The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). In the 1995 to 2014 period, Lee’s five films made the 100 top-grossing film lists and three films, Sense and Sensibility (1996), Hulk (2003), and Brokeback Mountain (2006), were W featuring white actors as the majority of the cast. Alfonso Cuarón, a Mexican director with the fame of Y Tu Mamá También (2001), directed four films in our list—two W films, Great Expectations (1998) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), and two BAS/OAS films with white protagonists, Children of Men (2006) and Gravity (2013).

Table 3.

W Films by Racial–ethnic Minority Directors.

Year	Rank	Film Title	Director	Dir. Race	Country of Origin
1997	96	Fire Down Below	Félix Enrique Alcalá	OD	United States
1999	2	The Sixth Sense	M. Night Shyamalan	OD	United States
2004	20	The Village	M. Night Shyamalan	OD	United States
2004	59	King Arthur	Antoine Fuqua	BD	United States
2011	50	Justin Bieber: Never Say Never	Jon Chu	OD	United States
1998	67	Great Expectations	Alfonso Cuaron	OD	Mexico
2004	6	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	Alfonso Cuaron	OD	Mexico
1999	48	Message in a Bottle	Luis Mandoki	OD	Mexico
2004	48	Hellboy	Guillermo del Toro	OD	Mexico
2008	42	Hellboy II: The Golden Army	Guillermo del Toro	OD	Mexico
2014	77	Birdman	Alejandro G. Iñárritu	OD	Mexico
1996	37	Sense and Sensibility	Ang Lee	OD	Taiwan
2003	15	Hulk	Ang Lee	OD	Taiwan
2006	25	Brokeback Mountain	Ang Lee	OD	Taiwan
2007	75	The Messengers	Pang Brothers	OD	Hong Kong
1998	57	Bride of Chucky	Ronny Yu	OD	Hong Kong
1999	88	Anywhere But Here	Wayne Wang	OD	Hong Kong
2011	64	Insidious	James Wan	OD	Australia
2013	19	The Conjuring	James Wan	OD	Australia
2013	42	Insidious Chapter 2	James Wan	OD	Australia
2012	59	Project X	Nima Nourizadeh	OD	England
2012	97	House at the End of the Street	Mark Tonderai	BD	England
1999	70	Elizabeth	Shekhar Kapur	OD	India
2001	21	The Others	Alejandro Amenabar	OD	Spain
2005	28	The Ring Two	Hideo Nakata	OD	Japan
2005	99	Dark Water	Walter Salles	OD	Brazil

Note: BD = black director; OD = other racial minority director.

When foreign-born Asian or Latino directors make white-led films in Hollywood, it is fair to assume that they understand white-led films as the norm. For example, many Hollywood remakes of foreign-language films entail replacing the characters with Americans, usually white actors as the leads.⁸ The Ring (2002), a remake of a popular Japanese horror film, Ringu (1998), stars white actor Naomi Watts as the protagonist. For a sequel to the remake, The Ring Two (2005), the producers hired Hideo Nakata, the director of the original Japanese film to direct it, again with Naomi Watts. Similarly, for The Grudge (2004), a remake of another popular Japanese horror film Ju-on: The Grudge (2002), the American producers hired Takashi Shimizu, the director of the original Ju-on series. Although the remake’s story line is even set in Japan, white actor Sarah Michelle Geller stars as the protagonist.

Not included in Table 2 are BAS and OAS films with white actors in lead roles and racial–ethnic minorities in main supporting roles. Many of these films were made by foreign-born directors. John Woo, a Hong Kong director famous for stylistic action sequences, made five films in our list—Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997), Mission: Impossible II (2000), Windtalkers (2002), and Paycheck (2003)—and all of them star white leads. Hiring foreign-born directors signifies diversity in Hollywood and arouses great pride in the people of their countries of origin. Yet, one must question what it means for local racial–ethnic minority filmmaking communities and if or how the directors reify insidious patterns of racial hierarchy in casting and filming.

Missing Stories

When it was announced that Scarlett Johansson was going to star as the lead in the movie Ghost in the Shell (2017), the Internet erupted protesting that it was another example of whitewashing in Hollywood (Child 2015). The film is based on a Japanese manga series and Johansson’s character was a cyborg originally named Motoko Kusanagi, so many fans complained that an Asian actor should have been cast for the role. The manga’s publisher and the director of the original Japanese animated film supported the casting decision saying that the character can be played anyone since it is a cyborg (Kilday 2017) but that did not stop Asian American actors publicly speaking out about discriminatory practices in Hollywood (Hess 2016).

Slightly different from racist black-, brown-, or yellow-facing of white actors, whitewashing is hiring white actors to play characters that were racial–ethnic minorities in source materials, another trend that keeps racial–ethnic minorities out of the film industry. For example, in 21 (2008), white actor Jim Sturgess plays the lead role based on a Chinese student of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in real life; in Doctor Strange (2015), white actor Tilda Swinton plays the Ancient One, originally a Tibetan man; and in Aloha (2015), white actor Emma Stone plays Allison Ng, an Asian-white biracial character. Amid a series of the whitewashing controversies in these recent movies, #starringJohnCho went viral. This high-profile social media project posts modified movie posters, with John Cho (a Korean American actor featured in the Harold & Kumar series, Star Trek into Darkness, and American Pie) as a male lead on them. It specifically calls out the lack of Asian representations in traditional lead roles, or more specifically Asian Americans. Also, it was intended to interrupt the black–white framing of #OscarsSoWhite.

Our list has only 29 OF films (1.5 percent) with nonblack racial–ethnic minorities as the majority of the cast, including 8 imported films (see Table 2). Of 21 U.S.-produced films, 13 films (62 percent) were made by white directors, 5 films (23.8 percent) by Latino American directors, and 3 films (14.2 percent) by two Asian directors, Ang Lee and M. Night Shyamalan (see Table 4). Fifteen films are set in other countries, such as Japan in Memoirs of Geisha (2005), China in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Mexico in Desperado (1995). Only four films set in the United States all feature Latino Americans and the other two starring Asian protagonists are set in Europe. While two films, the UK-produced Bend it Like Beckham (2003) and the U.S.-produced Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), tell the stories of Indian immigrants in England and France, respectively, what is conspicuously missing are stories centering on Asian American families or communities.

Table 4.

U.S.-produced OF Films by Plot Settings and the Director’s Race.

Plot Setting	Dir. Race	Director
United States
A Walk in the Clouds (1995)	OD	Alfonso Arau
Selena (1997)	OD	Gregory Nava
Asia
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001)	OD	Ang Lee
The Last Airbender (2010)	OD	M. Night Shymalan
Life of Pi (2012)	OD	Ang Lee
Latin America
Desperado (1995)	OD	Robert Rodriguez
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)	OD	Robert Rodriguez
The Book of Life (2014)	OD	Jorge R. Gutierrez
United States
The Mask of Zorro (1998)	WD	Martin Campbell
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)	WD	Christopher Landon
Asia and Middle East
Mulan (1998)	WD	Tony Bancroft & Barry Cook
Anna and the King (1999)	WD	Andy Tennant
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)	WD	Rob Marshall
The Nativity Story (2006)	WD	Catherine Hardwicke
The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)	WD	Rob Minkoff
47 Ronin (2013)	WD	Carl Rinsch
Latin America
Frida (2002)	WD	Julie Taymor
Apocalypto (2006)	WD	Mel Gibson
Nacho Libre (2006)	WD	Jared Hess
Europe
Ninja Assassin (2009)	WD	James McTeigue
The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)	WD	Lase Hallström

Note: BD = black director; OD = other racial minority director; WD = white director.

Compared to OF films, 59 OAL films with nonblack racial–ethnic minorities as lead actors are mostly set in the United States. Again the majority (66.1 percent) of them are helmed by white directors. Notably, over 90 percent of the films in this category are action/crime/thriller films (n = 43, 72.9 percent) or comedy (n = 13, 22 percent) without what could be categorized as traditional dramas. Twelve films directed by Latino or Asian filmmakers include four Spy Kids series (all directed by Mexican American Robert Rodriguez) and two Fast and Furious series (both by Taiwanese American Justin Lin). Except two films—Spanish director Jorge Blanco’s animated film, Planet 51 (2009), and Mexican director Luis Mandoki’s Angel Eyes (2001)—all minority filmmakers are U.S.-born or U.S.-trained directors, yet they rarely incorporate minority characters’ racial or ethnic identities into the central story lines, except as a cultural backdrop associated with martial arts skills.

All OAL films, regardless of the director’s race, have somewhat diverse representations. Two multiracial actors, Dwayne Johnson and Van Diesel, are dominant figures, leading 11 and 7 films, respectively. While the actors identify themselves as people of color, they often portray “raceless” characters for “color-blind” action films.⁹ Spanish actor Antonio Banderas (5) is versatile and Jennifer Lopez (6) stands out, but Michael Peña, a colead of End of Watch (2012), is the sole Latino American actor. While John Cho and Kal Penn of the Harold and Kumar series (2) are notable Asian American actors, Jackie Chan and Jet Li are much more prominent, leading 8 and 5 films, respectively. One obvious fact is that, except for John Cho and Kal Penn, most actors mentioned above are frequent stars of action films, which Hollywood views as moneymakers. In other words, Hollywood features racial–ethnic minorities mostly in action and comedy films and more foreign-born stars than Asian American actors because they are safe bets in returns on investment.

Numerous independent racial–ethnic minority filmmakers struggle to put Asian American dramas on the silver screen; the issue is whether the mainstream industry is willing to open its doors to them or not. Director Wayne Wang, who was born in Hong Kong and educated in the United States, directed a 1982 film Chan is Missing, which is widely recognized as the first Asian American independent theatrical feature employing an all-Asian cast and crew (Xing 1998). Wang is best known for Joy Luck Club (1993), a rare mainstream film on Asian American families. In the period of our study, he worked with Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman for Anywhere But Here (1999), Jennifer Lopez for Maid in Manhattan (2002), and Queen Latifah for Last Holiday (2006). However, his 2007 double features about Asian immigrants, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Princess of Nebraska, did not have a wide release. Justin Lin also debuted with a critically acclaimed independent film, Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), a coming-of-age story of Asian American youth. Then, he built his career in the action genre with Fast and Furious movies and Star Trek Beyond. Although they feature diverse casts, Lin has yet to make mainstream films on Asian American stories. These two directors’ career trajectories indicate that Asian American filmmakers have to choose between accessing Hollywood’s fame and financial resources, and telling Asian American stories, but seemingly cannot do both.

Although racial–ethnic categories such as “Asian” or “Latino” can lump them together, the social distance between local U.S. filmmakers and foreign-born talent can create a disjuncture between the two. When Hollywood executives prefer British black actors because they are “more classically trained” yet British black actors do not appear in black independent films, the black American filmmaking community can be further segregated and devalued. When Japanese writers and actors support Hollywood’s decisions to cast white actors for the main roles of original Japanese manga series, they can compromise Asian Americans’ efforts to challenge the persistent issues from yellow face to whitewashing in the film industry.

Like with whitewashing, Hollywood’s unreconstructed strategies contribute to reinforcing racist ideology and racial hierarchy both locally and globally. Yet, for Hollywood, promoting racial justice is not a priority because “theatrical feature films are, first and foremost, commercial ventures” (Rhines 1996:6). Hollywood’s ways to promote diversity has taken a more global outlook, and it is to maximize their return from the international market, which Hollywood believes to have a deeper pocket than it seems.

The Significance of International Markets

Hollywood producers have backed OF films set in other countries or OAL films led by foreign-born actors because they can attract the audience outside the United States and boost the films’ international gross. For example, foreign-born actors, like Jackie Chan and Jet Li who had been popular across East and Southeast Asia, were safe bets who could dazzle American audiences with their martial arts skills as well as guarantee box-office returns in Asia. As in the Rush Hour series, Shanghai Knights (2003), or War (2007), they were often paired with other American actors, which could further increase the films’ appeals to both domestic and international audiences. Unfortunately, their imagery perpetuated Asian stereotypes that have affected and were critiqued by Asian Americans without a channel of constructive communication between them. For example, despite Jackie Chan’s extraordinary run in Hollywood, leading films marketed with a particular brand of multiculturalism, cultural critics have pointed out the curtailed potential of political critiques in his films, which have mainly commodified Kung Fu and martial arts for profit and entertainment (Chan 2009; Marchetti 2001; Shu 2003). Ultimately, they did little to provide an opportunity to show meaningful representations of Asian Americans, which #starringJohnCho calls for. Fundamentally, we argue that this is in large part attributed to Hollywood’s relentless quest for bigger box-office outcomes in international markets.

The Power of International Markets

Table 5 shows the movies that topped the list in the second decade of our study (2005 to 2014). With the exception of American Sniper (2014), all the movies are blockbusters. Made with big budgets of US$130–258 million, blockbusters are expected to yield an extraordinary amount of box office income (Stringer 2003). American Sniper was a surprise hit boosted by moviegoers in the South and Midwest regions—unusual sources of box-office revenue (Epstein 2015). Despite its chart-topping performance domestically, American Sniper’s international performance is relatively weak in this list. Indeed, seven of the nine blockbusters made more money internationally than domestically, raising their total gross to more than double the domestic gross. This demonstrates why the international market is so important for Hollywood studios.

Table 5.

Highest-grossing Films, 2005–2014.

Year	Title	Budget (A)	Domestic (B)	International (C)	Total (D = B + C)	D/A
2005	Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith	113.00	380.27	468.48	848.75	7.51
2006	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest	225	423.316	642.863	1,066.18	4.74
2007	Spider-Man 3	258.00	336.53	554.34	890.87	3.45
2008	The Dark Knight	185.00	534.86	469.70	1,004.56	5.43
2009	Avatar	237.00	760.51	2,021.77	2,782.28	11.74
2010	Toy Story 3	200.00	415.00	651.97	1,066.97	5.33
2011	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2	125.00	381.01	960.50	1,341.51	10.73
2012	Marvel’s The Avengers	220.00	623.36	895.24	1,518.59	6.9
2013	The Hunger Games: Catching Fire	130.00	424.67	440.24	864.91	6.65
2014	American Sniper	58.80	350.13	197.30	547.43	9.31

Note: Budget (A), domestic gross (B), international gross (C), and Total (D) are expressed in US$m.

In 2014, the film that earned the highest international gross was Transformers: Age of Extinction or Transformers 4 (see Table 6). Its domestic gross ranking was seventh with $245.44 million, which managed to recover its expensive production budget, though not enough to recoup an additional $100 million in marketing costs (McClintock 2014). However, the international gross elevated its total gross to over one billion dollars. As shown in Table 6, international gross makes a considerable difference for the films’ revenues.

Table 6.

Top 10 Highest-grossing Films Internationally in 2014.

Rank	Title	Budget (A)	Domestic (B)	International (C)	Total (D = B + C)	D/A
7	Transformers: Age of Extinction	210.00	245.44	858.61	1,104.05	5.26
6	The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies	250.00	255.12	700.90	956.02	3.82
8	Maleficent	180.00	241.41	517.13	758.54	4.21
9	X-Men: Days of Future Past	200.00	233.92	513.94	747.86	3.74
12	The Amazing Spider-Man 2	200.00	202.85	506.13	708.98	3.55
11	Dawn of the Planet of the Apes	170.00	208.55	502.10	710.64	4.18
16	Interstellar	165.00	188.02	489.44	677.46	4.11
4	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	170.00	259.77	454.50	714.26	4.20
3	Guardians of the Galaxy	170.00	333.18	440.15	773.33	4.55
2	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1	125.00	337.14	418.22	755.36	6.04

Note: Budget (A), domestic gross (B), international gross (C), and Total (D) are expressed in US$m.

Transformers 4 made $320 million in China alone, becoming the highest-grossing film ever in China. This was not a coincidence. A part of the film was set and filmed in Hong Kong, China, and its world premiere was held in the city as well. It stars Chinese actors and is sprinkled with Chinese product placements (Lee 2016). That is, the film’s producers strategically marketed the film to attract the country that was transforming itself from a source of online piracy concern to the soon-to-be second largest box office market after the United States, and it paid off (Garrahan and Sender 2016).

Hollywood’s attention to the international market is not new but rather has been a critical part of production strategies and international policy negotiations. For example, South Korea, like many other countries, has had the screen quota system, which requires movie theaters to show domestic films for a set number of days a year. Like tariffs, the quota system is intended to protect domestic independent films from Hollywood’s glamorous blockbusters (Barry 2003; Jin 2006). Since the 1990s, through free trade talks, the United States demanded the removal of the quota system and devised other ways to undermine South Korea’s protectionist measures to expand its international market.

In the last few years as China’s purchasing power has increased, Hollywood has been sensitive about Chinese moviegoers’ reactions and their potential impact on box-office outcomes. For instance, when Red Dawn (2012), a remake of the 1984 film of the same name, replaced the enemy in the movie from the Soviets to the Chinese, the Chinese state-run newspaper, Global Times, published two editorials condemning the film for “demonizing China” (Fritz and Horn 2011). Chinese netizens were outraged. In the end, the filmmakers digitally changed Chinese flags and military symbols to North Korea in the postproduction. This episode illustrated the expanding “soft power” of the Chinese market for the American film industry and its accompanying businesses, such as Disney theme parks and film-related products (Kokas 2017). Also, it shows how the global market influences Hollywood’s course of action related to American films.

The Erasure and Marginalization of Black Films in Global Markets

Before the 2009 film Couples Retreat was released in the UK, a controversy erupted over the movie posters. Unlike the original U.S. poster featuring eight actors who play four couples, the UK version had only three couples—all white actors minus the African American couple played by Faizon Love and Kali Hawk, which offended many people. A Universal Studios’ spokesperson said that the erasure was “to simplify the poster to actors who are most recognizable in international markets,” but many questioned if excluding black actors/characters was productive to marketing the film (Goslett 2009).

Related to this issue of the exclusion of black actors/characters in international marketing, we return to 12 Years a Slave. For the film’s posters, the Italian distributor BIM Distribuzion placed white actors—Brad Pitt (the film’s coproducer who made a so-called white savior cameo appearance) and Michael Fassbender (the film’s antagonist)—as the focus of the posters. The actors’ photos were also considerably larger than the film’s star Chiwetel Ejiofor. This incident sparked another international controversy. By questioning Michael Fassbender’s “star” status in Italy, some argued that this choice was about the film’s marketing treatment of black actors (Child 2013). Later, the Italian distributor issued an apology, and the posters were replaced with the original U.S. posters, but it once again raised a question: Is it justifiable to exclude black actors from global marketing, which in turn stifles the promotion of their name values on the global stage.

In Hollywood, a film’s budget is determined based on the estimated amount of the return, and black films or black filmmakers receive lower budgets than their white counterparts based on an assumption of limited appeal both in domestic and international markets (Alexander 2000; Rhines 1996). Table 7 shows the number of BF and BAL directors by race and budget groups. Especially for black films, it shows that 43 black directors (63 percent) made films with less than 20 million dollar budgets, while 31 white directors (86 percent) did so with more than 20 million dollar budgets. Only 2 black directors worked with more than 50 million dollar budgets for Little Man (2006) and Red Tails (2012), but 15 white directors did so for many high-profile dramas such as Dreamgirls (2006) and Django Unchained (2012) and big budget comedies like The Nutty Professor series and Dr. Dolittle series.

Table 7.

Number of BF and BAL Directors by Race and Budget Group.

Dir. Race	Budget Group	BF	BAL	Total
BD
	∼19	43	1	44
	20–49	23	9	32
	50∼	2	8	10
WD
	∼19	5	20	25
	20–49	16	38	54
	50∼	15	59	74
OD
	∼19		1	1
	20–49		1	1
	50∼		2	2
Total		104	139	243

Note: BD = black directors; BF = black actors in the majority of cast; BAL = with black leads; OD = other racial minority directors; WD = white directors. Budget Group is expressed in US$m.

Even with low budgets and limited marketing, black films have proven to generate higher profits than other mainstream films (McKenzie 2010). Tables 5 and 6 show some of the highest-grossing films’ total gross—budget ratio (D/A) and they range from 3.45 for Spider-Man 3 (2007) to 11.74 for Avatar (2009).¹⁰ When we examined the total gross–budget ratio for black films, the top 20 films included 18 films directed by black directors with high ratios (see Table 8). This is despite the fact that many of these films have very low international gross. Hollywood executives argue that the weak performance in the international market is why they cannot set higher production budgets for black films, whereas black filmmakers and their supporters contend that black films which generally make more money with low budgets have more potential and deserve more financial support from Hollywood.

Table 8.

20 Highest Total Gross—Budget Ratio BF films.

Year	Rank	Title	Director	Budget (A)	Domestic Gross (B)	International Gross (C)	Total Gross (D)	D/A
2013	86	Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain	Leslie Small & Tim Story	2.50	32.24	0.07	32.32	12.93
2013	62	12 Years a Slave	Steve McQueen	20.00	56.67	131.06	187.73	9.39
2005	57	Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman	Darren Grant	5.50	50.63	0.02	50.65	9.21
1995	59	Friday	F. Gary Gray	3.50	27.47	0.75	28.22	8.06
2012	33	Think Like a Man	Tim Story	12.00	91.55	4.52	96.07	8.01
2002	36	Barbershop	Tim Story	12.00	75.78	1.28	77.06	6.42
2009	66	Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire	Lee Daniels	10.00	47.57	16.08	63.65	6.36
2004	71	You Got Served	Chris Stokes	8.00	40.36	8.27	48.63	6.08
2013	28	Lee Daniels’ The Butler	Lee Daniels	30.00	116.63	59.97	176.60	5.89
1997	51	Soul Food	George Tillman	7.50	43.49	0.19	43.68	5.82
2000	15	Big Momma’s House	Raja Gosnell^a	30.00	117.56	56.40	173.96	5.80
2011	84	Jumping the Broom	Salim Akil	6.60	37.30	0.42	37.71	5.71
2007	41	Stomp the Yard	Sylvain White	14.00	61.36	14.15	75.51	5.39
1998	72	The Players Club	Ice Cube	4.50	23.03	0.21	23.24	5.16
1995	25	Waiting to Exhale	Forest Whitaker	16.00	67.05	14.40	81.45	5.09
2001	82	The Brothers	Gary Hardwick	6.00	27.46	0.50	27.96	4.66
1996	43	Set It Off	F. Gary Gray	9.00	36.46	5.13	41.59	4.62
1996	8	The Nutty Professor	Tom Shadyac^a	54.00	128.77	115.50	244.27	4.52
1996	45	A Thin Line Between Love and Hate	Martin Lawrence	8.00	34.77	0.83	35.60	4.45
2013	50	The Best Man Holiday	Malcolm D. Lee	17.00	70.53	1.10	71.63	4.21

Note: Budget (A), Domestic Gross (B), International Gross (C), and Total Gross (D) are expressed in US$m.

^aWhite directors.

In South Africa, Think Like a Man (2013) made $1.2 million, slightly more than Tom Cruise-starring Jack Reacher, which made $1.1 million (Obenson 2013). Table 8 shows that 12 Years a Slave, Precious, and The Butler, which got extra publicity through the awards shows did very well in international markets. This suggests that with the right amount of marketing, black films can do better internationally, which is proven by the recent extraordinary global success of Black Panther (2018). Currently, distributors spend up to $40 million for marketing medium-sized films made with about $20 million production budgets (McClintock 2014). Transformers 4 spent $100 million domestically and an additional $100 million internationally to advertise the movie, which makes the enormous number of total grosses appear far from the net profit. If Hollywood could show this kind of confidence in racial–ethnic minority films and filmmakers, allowing them to build their name values, audiences would have a higher likelihood of watching a variety of cinematic representations.

Discussion and Conclusion

This article has examined how Hollywood’s global economic interests make it difficult for U.S. racial–ethnic minority actors and filmmakers to star in and helm mainstream films from critical perspectives. Based on our findings, we argue that Hollywood’s formula to maximize profits is sometimes in direct conflict with the interests of racial–ethnic minorities in the United States. To appeal to broader audiences, Hollywood executives avoid films centering on a specific racial–ethnic minority story line, fearing that it will exclude the white audience. Industry gatekeepers instead prefer racial–ethnic minorities to lead action/crime films and comedies. Also, producers and directors hire foreign-born talent to lead action films and comedies to attract international audiences. Unfortunately, this strategy is also the very formula that creates stereotypes associated with Asians and Latinos (e.g., gang members, prone to violence, sexualized women, forever foreigner)

Hollywood oftentimes recruits foreign-born talent—both directors and actors. However, when foreign-born directors make films, they may not understand the representational needs of U.S. racial–ethnic minorities. Hollywood has long invested in creating black films because of African American moviegoers’ consumption power—they make up 13 percent of the general population but 25 percent of box office ticket sales (George 1994; Rhines 1996). However, it has often been white directors who helmed big-budget black films, controlling or exploiting the images and narratives to also appeal to white audiences who still make up a large portion of ticket sales. When Hollywood gatekeepers bypass the black filmmaking community to hire foreign-born black talent, they manage to maintain their control of image production, much like white-directed black films.

It is a counterintuitive reality that nonblack racial–ethnic minority directors usually make films led by white actors, while white directors make racial–ethnic minority films. This pattern steers Asian and Latino directors to reproduce white dominance on screen, while white directors perpetuate stereotypical images of racial–ethnic minorities. We are by no means placing the onus of blame on individual filmmakers’ professional or artistic choices. Rather, we attempt to demonstrate Hollywood’s structural context that has failed to present balanced and meaningful representations of Latino or Asian American experiences, not just as token characters, but with familial and communal stories. A lack of these kinds of representations in the list of popular films or in consideration for accolades suggests that Hollywood is not moving toward becoming truly inclusive. It is not just an individual director’s or actor’s job to create meaningful changes. The current situation is shaped by multiple agents with different, competing interests in the moviemaking businesses of production, distribution, and exhibition, as well as various moviegoing audiences.

Compared to nonblack racial–ethnic minority filmmakers, the African American film community is much more established with a longer history and a stronger foundation. At the center of the black independent film movement were nonprofit organizations, such as the Black Filmmaker Foundation (est. 1978), to fund independent filmmakers and distribute innovative films (Rhines 1996). In the late 1990s and 2000s, more established black figures in Hollywood helped new filmmakers and founded their own production companies (e.g., Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo, Tyler Perry Company, Ice Cube’s Cube Vision), providing opportunities to black filmmakers. In essence, facing Hollywood studios’ reluctance and unwillingness to invest in black films, black producers and filmmakers had to create a community segregated from mainstream Hollywood.

Since 2014, the last year of our research period, American moviegoers and critics have seen several exciting developments. Many high-profile black films have been released and received award recognition. Black women actors led Hidden Figures (2016) and A Wrinkle in Time (2018, dir. Ava DuVernay). Get Out (2017) was released as a critics’ and fan favorite and its writer-director, Jordan Peele, became the first black winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Moonlight (2016), directed by African American Barry Jenkins, received the highest honor of the Best Picture Oscar. Black Panther (2018, dir. Ryan Coogler) became a global sensation, grossing over 1.3 billion dollars worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing film by a black director. As we are finalizing this article, Sorry to Bother You (2018, dir. Boots Riley) and BlackKklansman (2018, dir. Spike Lee) were released with critical acclaim.

Most of all, Black Panther has been an unprecedented cultural phenomenon as well as box-office success. Watching Black Panther became a social movement, with many celebrities responding to the #BlackPantherChallenge by buying tickets and organizing viewings in cities such as Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta (Wurzburger 2018; Lamarre 2018). Organizations such as racial–ethnic minority affinity groups in corporations and Black Greek Letter Organizations bought out theaters and arranged for private screenings of the film in black communities. Many black moviegoers saw Black Panther multiple times in theaters, dressed in Dashikis, posed doing the Wakanda Forever gesture in front of the movie poster, and posted their pictures widely on social media.

While this is an exciting turn of events, we want to be cautious before deciding that the tide has turned for black films. First, our findings show that the number of BFs did not show any significant increase in the period of 20 years. In fact, the number of black films declined in the 2000s after reaching a peak in 2000 to 2002 (with seven films each year). So the question remains: How many BFs will make the list of 100 top-grossing films in the next 10 years? Will that number hold steady or increase? We can ask the same questions about films centered on the lives of Asian and Latino characters.

Second, public interest and political consciousness in recent years with the #OscarSoWhite movement, the La La Land and Moonlight debacle, and continued calls for diversity and inclusion in Hollywood paved the way for the enormous success of Black Panther.¹¹ Without those critical voices, watching Black Panther would not have been a social movement but simply another moviegoing experience. Yet, Black Panther was produced by Marvel Studios and is the 18th film in Marvel’s cinematic universe. This means that there is a solid fan base for Marvel movies, which made the movie a safe bet. Here, one should ask: Why the 18th? Why in 2018? Why not 10 Marvel movies ago? One can assume that with the recent social and political agitation, Marvel saw an opportunity to reap financial profits from a moviegoing public that was hungry for empowering black representations.

One silver lining in this view is that Marvel hired Ryan Coogler whose filmography includes Fruitvale Station (2013) and Creed (2015), which were praised for realizing black perspectives in creative ways. Distinguished from typical superhero films, Ryan Coogler manages to interlace the disenfranchisement of African Americans, resistance against colonialism, and Afro-futuristic imagery into Black Panther. But then, one has to wonder: Can this level of quality filmmaking be sustained in Marvel Studios? Can we expect this from Hollywood studios?

Despite a series of successful black films and the unprecedented box office performance of Black Panther both in domestic and international markets, what we report in this article remains ongoing issues. In 2017, Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman director who won the Academy Award for Best Directing with The Hurt Locker (2008), released Detroit about a 1967 riot in the city. Initially, critics lauded the film for its timely dramatization of racism and police violence against African Americans.¹² However, soon, the film written and directed by white filmmakers was condemned as being “irresponsible” (Theoharis, Phillips, and Burgin 2017) and “a moral failure” (Brody 2017) for its objectification of killing black bodies and erasing the perspectives of the black community’s activism and resistance.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018), a romantic dramedy directed by Jon M. Chu, was celebrated for being the first major studio film featuring Asian/Americans as a majority of the cast in 25 years since the release of Joy Luck Club (1993). This recognition is consistent with our findings that showed no films set in Asian American families or communities in two decades. Crazy Rich Asians also supports our arguments in other ways. That is, the film was made with all the right ingredients to be a safe bet, particularly in the international market. The film was distributed by Warner Bros., but one of its main funders was a U.S.-based Asian company. The protagonist is Chinese American, but the film is set in Singapore and often glamorously shows the city’s skyline. The film features a heterogenous, global cast including Malaysian Michelle Yeoh, Asian American Awkwafina, Korean American Ken Jeong, Filipino American Nico Santos, Chinese American Lisa Lu, Asian British Gemma Chan, Japanese British Sonoya Mizuno, Taiwanese Australian Chris Pang, Malaysian Australian Ronny Chieng, and the like. Kevin Kwan, the author of the original novel, insisted that the film would be true to the source, as an all-Asian cast film, and the perspective of the protagonist, who is a second-generation immigrant, is firmly in the center of the film. Yet, the end product was a global Asian film that could pull a decent international gross, rather than an Asian American film. Without this potential, one has to wonder whether this film would have been able to see the light of the day.

In fall 2018, casting Cynthia Erivo, a black British actor, to play Harriet Tubman, one of the most significant black women in U.S. history, ignited an online debate. Regarding this controversy, British black actor Kelechi Okafor published a very thoughtful op-ed about witnessing Hollywood’s preferential treatment of British black actors over African American actors coupled with slim opportunities for black actors in the British film industry, which pushes them to Hollywood (Okafor 2018). We agree with her stance that, instead of denouncing black British actors, we must actively challenge the industry’s practice of undervaluing black actors and directors. In addition to critiquing the mainstream industry, more efforts should be made to build bridges between British black and African American filmmakers.

Hollywood’s global expansion, in a similar vein of neoliberal political economy, continues to marginalize racial–ethnic minorities in the United States and undermine their representational authority. However, compared to 20 years ago, more racial–ethnic minority filmmakers are actively working in Hollywood, and they exert more control and influence over their work and the industry. These younger directors’ cinematic and aesthetic calibers exhibit exciting potential. Nonetheless, the mainstream film industry is not yet ready to make a sustained commitment to invest in their domestic box-office success and promote them on the global stage. Hopefully, the persistent demand of the audience can turn the tide around in near future.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Matthew Hughey for reading our earlier article and encouraging us to write an article on this global–local nexus. We are also grateful to the reviewers for their constructive feedback. We thank Kimberly Johnson for helping build the database in the initial stage and thank Kat Durant, Charlene Holkenbrink-Monk, and Amanda Hendrix for their research assistance.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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