A new report into diversity in film has found little changed in 2015’s top titles, despite an increased focus on better minority representation.
The study, by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is a regular project that began in 2007 and breaks down the demographics in the 100 most popular films at the US box office.
Researchers found that out of 4,370 speaking or named characters in the year’s top films, 68.6% were male and 31.4% female. There was an 11% year-on-year increase in the number of leads or co-leads, however, with 32% of the films featuring one female.
Women were also found to be much more likely to be naked or in revealing clothing, with 30.2% scantily clad, compared with 7.7% of men. The picture for female directors also looked bleak: 92.5% of films were directed by men.
There was also little change found since the survey began in the proportion of non-caucasian characters, with 73.7% white, 12.2% black, 5.3% Latino and 3.9% Asian. No Asian leads or co-leads were found in the year’s top-performing 100 films, and only 10 of the 107 directors films were non-white.
LGBT characters were even less well represented, with only 32 of the 4,370 speaking or named characters in 2015’s top films identified as such; not a single LGBT-identified lead or co-lead character featured – a proportion of representation was even lower than the 2.4% of characters that were shown with a disability.
