Role Of Diversity In Entertainment Media

Diversity and Racial Representation in Entertainment Media The American entertainment industries, particularly film and television, have historically relied on their audiences to figure out what type of content is popularly enjoyed and viable enough to merit production. In conjunction with changes in broad appeal and sensibilities, entertainment media too has altered its product accordingly. With the emergence of the internet age of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the changes in how movies and television are created has become even more accelerated as popular culture, fueled by ephemeral fads, sets the tone for mass-consumed media. However, one facet of film and television production that hasn’t changed significantly (at least not by meaningful
However, it is precisely that lack of diversity that hinders and limits the voters as an aggregate to make the best decisions regarding what projects are (subjectively) the best. An illustration of why such diversity is needed is seen in the case of the British blogger and writer, Nikesh Shukla. After writing a short story, Shukla received a mixed critique from a literary blog reviewer who proclaimed to have enjoyed the story but criticized him for using South Asian characters, saying the story was ultimately an “amorphous mess of Indian names” but surprisingly filled with “universal experiences” so as to imply minorities only experience the world through an ethnic lens (Santhanam et. al, 2015). This sort of implicit bias is not based in malice, but rather lack of experience and understanding. The literary reviewer has undoubtedly grown up and lives with a clear expectation of his/her literary consumption; it is almost certainly the expectation that the characters, themes, and tropes of the literature are all relatable to him/her. When it is not, there is perhaps a lack of interest or even disappointment. Surely, it is possible some of the Oscar voters have the same or similar level of bias as Shukla’s reviewer and therefore gravitate towards content they feel more comfortable and familiar with. This preference for familiarity is likely a significant cause as to why not only do films and other content with disparate racial and ethnic components do poorly among a virtually homogenous audience such as the Oscar voters, but also why content creators tend to replace those racial and ethnic components with more recognizable and socially acceptable ones. A conspicuous instance of such replacement is the trend of casting white actors in roles usually written for non-white actors: