It mainly applies to Hollywood because it exists in a much more cosmopolitan country. There's over 50 million Latinos, 38 million black people, and 14 million Asians in the US alone. That's a lot of people noticing they're not featured in movies very often, especially as main characters.
As you're aware, Bollywood has a huge bias against actors with dark skin. It's not without its own faults.
I can't really comment on Nigeria or Japan's film industries because I honestly know next to nothing about them.
In which case Latin Americans should feel a lot more peripheral than African Americans, no? An issue I have with this topic is that it's not really focused on equal discussion, but a lot of time is being dedicated to the black/white dynamic. People keep talking about Human Torch being black now, or what would people say if you wanted to make Shaft white.
There's a focus on two races in America, and ironically the people clamoring for more of one race's inclusion are erasing the relevance of other non-white races quite casually.
At the risk of being flamed, my other problem with people having issues with "white Hollywood" is that they're essentially saying "Hey, you know those greedy whites in Hollywood, they need to make more movies for [Insert non-white/male/Christian demographic here]!". Instead, shouldn't people be saying: "Hey, we need more Hispanic/African-American/Asian/LGBT/Muslim/Buddhist/Etc directors/script-writers/cinematographers/producers/Etc in Hollywood". I find it a little odd when the same people that some folks want removed from movies fall under the demographics of the people who they want to make those movies. Just seems a bit counter-intuitive to me.
As a small caveat, I find it kind of sad that going through this topic almost every post is related to a white/black dynamic, which is ironic considering there are more Hispanics in America than African Americans. So who does Hollywood actually not care about?
Latin American countries have a problem with "lighter" skinned Latinos as well. How many novelas do you see fronted by darker skinned Latino/as? They usually only play servants or secondary cast.
I'm not sure pointing out other countries bias in how they portray themselves does anything more than show that societies do this for a very ugly reason. Hollywood included.
I'm just broadening the topic a little. Erasure in general is bad. I merely pointed out that "Hollywood" isn't racist, all of film making is.
Well those countries film industries primarily make movies for their domestic audience which is a mostly homogeneous.
Hollywood makes movies for a global audience. These days in particular they make movies that they hope to make a profit overseas.
That's a fair point, but their main demographic, depending on the movie is going to be the Western market quite frequently. I'm also wondering what people want more specifically. Do they want aggregate representation in film to go up, or is it that they want more representation in blockbusters? I mean a film like Nightcrawler was made for under $10m, and there are enough non-white film makers and talented actors to put high quality films together, is that something people would like? Or is it more a case of every main character in the next Transformers should be non-white and that would satisfy people? I'm just trying to flesh out what exactly people would see as an improvement.
