Hollywood needs help erasing prejudice

“How is it possible that The Help is your first leading role?” This was the question posed to Viola Davis at Newsweek’s 2012 Oscar Roundtable two weeks ago, following her Oscar nomination for Best Actress for that very role.

“It’s the politics of it all,” she replied. “There just aren’t a lot of roles. I mean, I’m a forty six year-old black woman who really doesn’t look like Halle Berry and Halle Berry’s having a hard time.” Here, Charlize Theron interrupts her to tell her she’s “hot as s***” but Charlize, who after all has made her living by being white, thin, and beautiful, misses the point completely.

“I appreciate that,” Davis continues, “there’s just not a lot of roles for women who look like me. African-Americans represent 12.5 per cent of the population and that is not the demographic we are targeting in the movie and television industry.”

Is she right? Can it really be true that in 2012, black actresses remain under-represented in Hollywood?

Thinking back over the many films that have been released in recent years, I can only agree with Davis. “It starts and stops. You’ll have one year where you have Precious and then you’ll have two years of nothing – and then The Help, of course.”

The storylines of movies that centre on black women generally centre on their struggle, their oppression, and their eventual victory over prejudice with the help of sympathetic white characters. Films about black women are about them being black women. I haven’t seen a film about a black woman falling in love, or about a black mother struggling with a family drama. We don’t have a black super hero and we didn’t have Tiana, the first black Disney princess, until 2009.

Black men have very much found their stereotypical niche in Hollywood. The ‘powerful black man’ trope has created roles for Samuel L. Jackson, Denzel Washington, Idris Elba and Jamie Foxx, and while the roles may be one dimensional, they are roles.

With a demographic that George Clooney has described as “13 to 30 year old white men,” women have faced unnecessary sidelining from the movie industry in recent years, and Davis claims that “black women really face it. We are always overly sanctified in movies, overly nurturing, overly sympathetic, and to find that place where you’re messy is very difficult – even difficult to negotiate it with a director on set.”

Davis’ comments compounded the idea that black women are not given the opportunity to portray searing, muddled, human emotion like other actresses: “When you’re coming from a place of being a trained actor and you understand human behaviour and you understand it’s your job to create a human being… it’s very hard to create that because there’s so many facets of your personality that they want to stifle because of this (strokes her skin).”

Viola Davis’ comments are brave new steps towards shedding light on the inherent prejudice within the entertainment industry, and I predict they will inspire further discussion. It is extremely essential that the behaviour of producers and financiers be exposed.

From the point of view of a film viewer still learning about the industry, it was shocking to watch this issue discussed at the Oscar Roundtables as though it was timeless, widely known, and as though there was no hope of change. There are so few roles for black actresses that they are forced to take roles that compromise their integrity in order for their careers to progress.

It has been argued that the success of the aforementioned black male actors can be attributed to this compromise. Davis described the backlash she received from the African-American community for taking her Oscar-nominated role in Doubt, describing it as a “character that not a lot of black people embraced because they didn’t like her.”

My hope is that Davis’ words will be taken up by the global media, and the inherent racism that is still prevalent in Hollywood will be addressed and publicised. Writers and producers need to create black characters that are humans, not just stock figures. Collective action should be taken by the wealthier, more successful black actors (i.e. the men) to reject racially demeaning roles so the situation can be improved for those less fortunate.

Finally, moviegoers such as you and I need to become more conscious of what we see on the screen. It’s time we took note of how white actresses are allowed to explore and experiment with the full spectrum of human emotion, while black actresses such as Davis and The Help costar Octavia Spencer are asked only to be sassy, curvy, and maternal.