Controversies surrounding the old issue of racism have plagued Hollywood for some time now. This racism has occurred both off and on screen starting with the refusal to hire actors because of race and the lack of diversity at the Oscars to, most recently, the cyberbullying of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. Despite what has been done to bring light to these issues, many still feel that Hollywood has turned a blind eye.
The online harassment of Leslie Jones is the most recent instance of discrimination. Several social media platforms have been flooded with negative comments bashing the Ghostbusters reboot for multiple reasons, including its all-female cast, but Jones seemed to be the only actress individually targeted.
Internet trolls bombarded her with tweets that included racial slurs and began a campaign against her, causing Jones to leave twitter for some time despite supporters trying to combat the hate with tweets tagged #Love4Leslie.
“I didn’t do anything to deserve this. It’s just too much. It shouldn’t be like this,” Jones tweeted before quitting Twitter the following day.
In addition to the twitter attacks, photos of Leslie’s driver’s license and passport, as well as nude images from her iCloud account, were leaked onto her website JustLeslie.com in late August. The website was taken down and the hack is being investigated by the department of Homeland Security.
Jones returned to Twitter on September 3 and became active in a supportive campaign for 20-year-old Olympian Gabrielle Douglas who has also received racist hate.
Social media, however, is not the only platform for racism in Hollywood. The 2016 Oscars was also shrouded in controversy about the subject. Nominees for the 88th annual Academy Awards were entirely caucasian and dominated primarily by men, the second year in a row that this occurred.
In response to the situation, many black actors took to social media with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite to protest and some boycotted the event altogether.
Several prominent black people in Hollywood, including Jada Pinkett-Smith and her husband Will Smith, as well as director Spike Lee, refused to have anything to do with the event but expressed congratulations to the host of the night Chris Rock.
Rock stayed quiet about the situation until the night of the event where his set included skits that were punctuated with more serious forms of addressing the matter. He ended the show with the statement “black lives matter” in reference to the current black rights movement and walked out to Public Enemy’s rap anthem “Fight the Power” playing in the background.
While many feel Rock did a good job addressing the issue, they also feel that he left a lot out. Rock confronted the issue as one involving solely black and white actors while excluding other discriminated groups of minority actors.
There have been several instances where white actors played people of color—the recent cases of Johnny Depp as a Native American in The Lone Ranger and Emma Stone as a Chinese-Hawaiian in Aloha, and the infamous instance of Mickey Rooney as a Japanese in Breakfast at Tiffany’s— which people find offensive.
Hollywood’s reasoning behind these casting choices is that there are few people of color that are A-list actors.
“I can’t mount a film on this budget . . . and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such,” said director Ridley Scott in response to questions regarding why the cast for his movie Exodus: Gods and Kings, which focuses on the mass migration of Hebrews from Egypt, was primarily white.
While filmmakers claim that turning down these actors has nothing to do with race and only concerns the economic aspect of filmmaking to ensure box office success, a study by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies claims that audiences are drawn to more diverse casts.
Many feel that there is an issue of racism in Hollywood that needs to change and share the belief that the a melting pot of different races and cultures in the world should be reflected in all of its media, especially big budget Hollywood films.
