Racial Lines

Overrepresentation of white actors in Hollywood film is a problematic and well documented problem of cultural inequality. Previous research on race, ethnicity, and film has typically investigated this phenomenon through case studies or numerical analysis. While the former provides insights on the quality of representation on a small scale and the latter on the distribution of bodies throughout the film industry, our study bridges these two efforts via the application of digital humanities methodology. To do this, we examine three iterations of representation in 780 Hollywood films spanning from 1970 to 2014. Ultimately, our research seeks to complicate the notion that increased visibility of non-white bodies ameliorates the problem of cultural inequality. Instead, we show how it may contribute to their own biases.