Colorlines: A new report says that the number of television directors of color reached an all-time high during the 2016-2017 season.
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) charts this growth in the “DGA 2016-2017 Episodic TV Diversity Report,” which it released yesterday (November 14). The annual report analyzes director demographics from all episodes produced during a given season. The latest version references 4,482 episodes—421 more than the previous report—to reach its conclusions.
3 comments:
I guess it is good news that it is on the upswing, but it still looks to me like there is a long ways to go. It seems to me that an equally important issue is the lack of female directors in TV. Females make up 50% of the population for sure and this should be reflected here, yet caucasian females made up less than minority males on that pie chart, which means they are being grossly underrepresented. I know it might not mean a lot coming from a white man, but it just makes me mad. And come on Netflix! you should be doing better than that. 5% is just embarrassing. I do not know how they could get away with that... I do not know what it will take for equality amongst races and genders to reach this level of the entertainment business, but I hope it is fast approaching, because statistics like this are just disheartening.
One of the biggest weaknesses of the entertainment industry is the lack of diversity. While there are some tv shows and movies that are extremely inclusive, there is still a lack of overall representation. I think it’s great that the Director’s Guild of America saw an influx of directors of color, however, I do believe that this should have happened a long while ago. In addition, the DGA found that the increase of directors of color only happened on a few tv networks. Not only that but women are still not directing as many television shows as men. There is a huge imbalance when it comes to race and gender in the entertainment industry. I completely agree with the DGA President. Why haven’t we done more to fix the disparities within our industry? The industry needs change.
I recently have been apart of a discussion in my class about all of the different issues with the lack of diversity and representation in the entertainment industry in my interpretation and argument class. It's weird to see all of the growth in terms of stories and messages and the growth of messages of diversity in the past couple of years. From minorities going from typecast roles and movies about race falling into certain genres and ideas before they were even conducted. But the diversity in terms of the industry behind the camera and those of directors and producers is still struggling as they are not the ones that the audiences necessarily see. They aren't directly visible to the consumer in which case they don't care enough to make a effort to force change in the industry.
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