Hollywood And The American Entertainment Industry

Since its inception, Hollywood and the American entertainment industry have had an unprecedented amount of influence over popular culture. America has set the standard in media, and its citizens look to Hollywood not only for entertainment, but also for societal norms. Ideally, the content being produced would place emphasis on developing complex characters from a multitude of backgrounds that diverse audiences can relate to, and include people with different perspectives to contribute to writing, directing, producing, and acting. But the reality is Hollywood has historically revolved around narratives written by and featuring white, straight men. This is not to say that there are not any sources of media that include more diverse†¦show more content†¦However, my main caregiver was my mother, and this meant being surrounded with Japanese culture at home. Growing up in between these different cultures and being an avid pop culture consumer has made me more in-tune to how peop le of color—specifically Japanese or Asian people—are portrayed in films and television and how my white peers interacted with it and reacted to it. Before understanding how depictions of people of color in film and television affect how audiences view race, what must first be considered is how people of color are being represented both on and off screen. In an article discussing diversity in cultural production, Dr. Maryann Erigha, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Memphis, presents three types of representation to examine: numerical representation, the number of people from a specific group that are working either on-screen or behind-the-scene jobs; quality of representation, what kinds of roles are groups filling; and centrality of representation, how central groups are to the industry’s main institutions (Erigha). The simplest way of examining the numerical representation for marginalized groups in Hollywood is to compare the amount of people from a specific group that are working in the industry to that same group’s representative percentage of the American population. A study conducted in 2014 by UCLA analyzed 172 films released in 2011 and 1061 TV shows aired in the 2011-12 season.Show MoreRelatedThe Impact of Hollywood in American Society1568 Words   |  6 PagesAlthough it started out as a novelty and a source of controversy, Hollywood has had an impact in American society significantly on political aspects in the 20th century as well as shaping our modern world. In 1894, two French Brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumiere introduced the portable motion picture camera and projector as a solution to the smaller projection of Thomas Edison’s original invention the kinetoscope. 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