Patterns of Bias in Hollywood Movies

Many groups within our multi-cultural society have complained over the years about negative and stereotypical portrayals of their own group members in motion pictures produced or released through the Hollywood-based motion picture studios. Yet, as an expert on the U.S. film industry points out, such complaints have had little impact on these consistent patterns of bias in movies.

Thus, this book takes a broader look at the nature of such negative and stereotypical movie portrayals and tracks such movie portrayals over a longer period of time. The result is that the patterns of bias in movies and the source of the problem become more clear. The problem appears to be that most of the people who have 'green-light' authority in the Hollywood-based U.S. film industry—for either the production and/or distribution of a motion picture—share a common ethnic/religious/cultural background. Thus, the stories of all other ethnic, religious and/or cultural groups in the U.S. (whose members seldom achieve positions of power in Hollywood) are being filtered through the cultural sensibilities of a single group.

John Cones shows that this lack of diversity at the top in Hollywood results in long-standing patterns of bias in motion picture content, and suggests that one obvious solution would lie in increasing diversity at the highest levels in the U.S. film industry.