Every week we have new films that try and captivate our attention to fill up theaters and rack up those box office numbers. Films are produced from all kinds of source material including original scripts, book or comic book adaptations, sequels and remakes. When casting for some of these films from time to time there is casting controversy when the role goes to someone who is a different race or background that doesn’t match the original content. But should the ethnicity of the actor matter in any role?

An interesting study has come up shared via The Hollywood Reporter about the representation of Latinx characters in films. According to a study that is in association with the National Association of Latino Independent Producers and Wise Entertainment, USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative have released a report that finds that in the past twelve years, in the top one hundred top grossing domestic features films, Latinx characters only make up 4.5 percent of all speaking roles. The report is titled, Latinos in Film: Erasure on Screen & Behind the Camera Across 1,200 Popular Movies.

If we dig a little deeper we find out that only three percent of the films studied by the report featured Latinx leads or co-leads. Seventeen or 49 percent of those were women, with five of those 17 roles played by a single actress, Cameron Diaz. Some other frequently hired Latinx actors are Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba and Eugenio Derbez. Another interesting finding was that of the 1,200 titles in the study, 568 of them did no feature a single Latinx character.

When the study identified Latinx roles in the films in the study, it also looked at how they were portrayed onscreen. Interestingly enough, 61.9 percent of the characters were shown engaged in illegal activity were part of an organized crime group or drug dealers. A sixth of all top billed Latinx talent and one eighth of all Latinx speaking characters were shown in poor or impoverished on screen. This lack on on screen representation continues behind the camera. Of the 3,616 produced by credits on the 1,200 feature films, only three percent were held by Latinx producers and only four percent of directors were Latinx.

This is important because in 2018, Hispanics made up 18 percent of the U.S. population and 24 percent of the annual box office’s frequent moviegoers according to the report. They make up the highest annual attendance per capita, watching films in movie theaters an average of 4 .7 percent last year. This means that there is a significant number of people going to the movies that are disproportionately underrepresented onscreen in studio features. This is a very interesting study that really doesn’t have a simple solution. Even with such low representation, I still believe that the right job should be given to the right person no matter their ethnicity.

Would you like to see more Latinx actors and actresses on feature films? Let us know in the comment section below!

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Source: The Hollywood Reporter