New research suggests white audiences tend to stay away from movies featuring minorities due to the assumption that the film “wasn’t made for me.”
By Tom Jacobs
In terms of box-office grosses, this is an extraordinary week for Hollywood: The No. 1 movie in America features a mixed-race cast. Granted, that movie is Fast Five, the fifth installment of the Fast and Furious action series. Boston Globe film critic Wesley Morris called these films “loud, ludicrous and visually incoherent,” but added that they are “the most progressive force in Hollywood today.” As Morris noted, nonwhite actors played major roles in only two of the 30 top-grossing films of 2010. Studio executives believe white audiences prefer to see white characters, while black audiences want to see black characters, so they increasingly make films for each demographic...[continued]
