The Hollywood Jim Crow
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The story of racial hierarchy in the American film industry The #OscarsSoWhite campaign, and the content of the leaked Sony emails which revealed, among many other things, that a powerful Hollywood insider didn’t believe that Denzel Washington could “open” a western genre film, provide glaring evidence that the opportunities for people of color in Hollywood are limited. In The Hollywood Jim Crow , Maryann Erigha tells the story of inequality, looking at the practices and biases that limit the production and circulation of movies directed by racial minorities. She examines over 1,300 contemporary films, specifically focusing on directors, to show the key elements at work in maintaining “the Hollywood Jim Crow.” Unlike the Jim Crow era where ideas about innate racial inferiority and superiority were the grounds for segregation, Hollywood’s version tries to use economic and cultural explanations to justify the underrepresentation and stigmatization of Black filmmakers. Erigha exposes the key elements at work in maintaining Hollywood’s racial hierarchy, namely the relationship between genre and race, the ghettoization of Black directors to black films, and how Blackness is perceived by the Hollywood producers and studios who decide what gets made and who gets to make it. Erigha questions the notion that increased representation of African Americans behind the camera is the sole answer to the racial inequality gap. Instead, she suggests focusing on the obstacles to integration for African American film directors. Hollywood movies have an expansive reach and exert tremendous power in the national and global production, distribution, and exhibition of popular culture. The Hollywood Jim Crow fully dissects the racial inequality embedded in this industry, looking at alternative ways for African Americans to find success in Hollywood and suggesting how they can band together to forge their own career paths.
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THE HOLLYWOOD JIM CROW
The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry
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This story of unequal racial outcomes in Hollywood is told through statistical records, communications between Hollywood insiders, and perceptions of working directors. The book (1) draws on comprehensive industry data on the directors, distributors, genres, production budgets, and box-office receipts of more than a thousand contemporary movies, (2) examines trends in directors’ employment on different movies, (3) demonstrates how opportunities, resources, and outcomes in Hollywood are structured by race, and (4) shows how racial inequality is made in the production, distribution, financing, and marketing of movies and in the hiring of labor. Systematic attention to the organizing logics of the film industry reveals a racial division of labor; this book is the first to provide a detailed and systematic analysis of racial divisions of labor in work among Hollywood directors. Furthermore, the twenty-first-century period permits a timely discussion of the state of racial disparities in Hollywood during a post-civil-rights era that has been marked by growing postracial and colorblind discourses. Hollywood’s racial politics illustrate how race continues to matter despite public discourses that suggest otherwise.
Specifically, the book compares the career paths of Black directors to other racialized groups in twenty-first-century Hollywood. Out of all U.S. racial minority groups, African Americans have the most representation as Hollywood directors. Therefore, the book focuses on one marginalized racial group in Hollywood, Black directors, in relation to racialized others. Investigating the level of African Americans’ inclusion in the film industry particularly necessitates an examination of their access to the facets of production from which they were formerly excluded—the movies and the positions at studios that are most central to film-industry operations. Accessing high-status positions provides financial remuneration that is important to understanding and alleviating racial income gaps—of course, notwithstanding the obvious and pervasive racial exclusion involved in who is permitted to manage large financial investments, own banks, and print and distribute currency.18 The state of Black inclusion in the contemporary film industry is best evaluated by assessing involvement in areas that are financially lucrative, are central to industry operations, and wield the greatest ideological power.
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