rePRESENTation: Casting in the Present Day

With most movie genres, women and men have unequal representation. A study from the University of Southern California found that of the 5,839 characters in the 129 top-grossing films released between 2006 and 2011, fewer than 30 percent were girls or women. This study was done by Stacy Smith, who is reliable in her knowledge and findings, due to her job actually being to research depictions of gender and race in film and TV. But, here is the REAL interesting information: the horror genre is the only exception to this trend of unequal representation.




Why is it like this? Well, when horror movies first began, they mainly focused on victimizing women- which would mean that they would obviously have to cast more female characters. Even though the main plot of horror movies has moved away from that and more towards films more focused on things like social issues, and generalized fears of the population. What this means for our film is that if we made the entire film, we would be able to have pretty much equal representation between the genders, due to there not being many gender stereotypes in the genre itself.

Racial representation is a whole other ball field. In the early 1900s, there weren't many African Americans in film. The main movies that African Americans starred in were "black horror films", which were horror movies that feature African American characters and/or infuse African American culture, which were developed by African Americans. However, in the1970s the variety of opportunities open to African American actors, directors, writers, and producers continued to expand from when African Americans were basically exploited in films. Although there are still controversial images, there is much greater representation.

One of the most popular horror movies that has both equal gender and racial representation is "Get Out". This movie is about a couple's weekend getaway, where the boyfriend meets the girlfriend's parents and they encounter some... um... paranormal activity. This movie not only has equal gender representation, but it also has an African American as one of the main cast members. This movie shows how the movie industry has changed in representation over the past hundred years or so, but also addresses stereotypes within the movie. Considering the time period our movie would be coming out in, we would most likely utilize these types of aspect in our movie.

Source Links:

https://qz.com/1016753/horror-is-the-only-film-genre-where-women-appear-and-speak-as-often-as-men/

http://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/africanamericansinfilm

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/550106/pdf