Study Finds Hollywood Movies with Black Directors Have More Black Characters than White Counterparts

USC Annenberg study finds Hollywood Movies With black directors have more black characters than movies with white directors.

A study written by USC Annenberg's Dr. Stacy L. Smith and project administrator Marc Choueiti, concludes Hollywood movies directed by black Americans are more likely to have more black characters in speaking roles than movies not directed by blacks. Hello, didn't we already know this? Nonetheless, here's an excerpt from the press release:

The report, "Black Characters in Popular Film: Is the Key to Diversifying Cinematic Content Held in the Hand of the Black Director?" includes data from their ongoing, multi-year Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative.

"One fitting extrapolation of this small study is that the race of directors may really matter," Smith said. "And one key to diversifying content would be to diversify who is at the helm."

Smith, Choueiti and teams of undergraduate researchers annually view the top 100 grossing movies released theatrically in the United States and Canada. (More than 300 students have worked on the project since its 2006 inception.) Under Choueiti's supervision, the students train for six weeks and then meticulously code the movies across more than two dozen measures.

Smith and Choueiti regularly release snapshots culled from the research. Their report about gender was released last month. This secondary analysis, "Black Characters," examines in particular the presence - or lack thereof - of African-Americans and other ethnicities in the top 100 grossing films from 2007 and 2008.

During 2008, according to Smith and Choueiti's research, five African-American directors headed up a total of six of those top 100 productions. Nearly 63 percent of the characters with speaking lines in those six films are black. In the other top 94 films from the same year, less than 11 percent of the characters with speaking lines are black.

That's why I can never throw Tyler Perry under a bus, even though I take offense to his Madea character being overplayed at this juncture. He has used more black characters in his movies than Spike Lee, though their subject matter is slightly different.