From Wikipedia, the movie "Gone with the Wind" released in 1939, was a milestone in the film industry not only because of the high number of Academy Awards it reached. Hattie McDaniel's award for a supporting actress was the first African American person to win an Oscar. That's why we decided to explore the changes starting that year.

 

The number of people, and the proportion that they make up of the total number of people who took part in films in each year:

From the findings that emerged, there was a marked increase in the involvement of the African-American community during the years we investigated.

From the 1960s there has been a gradual increase from decade to decade in the amount of African-American people who took part in the movies. In the years before they can be predicted in the static state in terms of their numbers, there may not have been African Americans in key film roles and may be due to a lack of data in the database (since these years the filming and reviewing of the films was not done by digital means like the ones we have today).

​

Men-women ratio in industry:

Starting in the 1960s, there is a significant gap between the number of African American

men and the number of African American women, a gap that continues to this day.

The findings highlight this and are consistent with the Internet article:

"Black Men Make Strides in Hollywood, But Women Still Struggle" and other articles on the subject. It can also be seen that in the top ten only one woman appeared, Whoopi Goldberg, and ranked second in the cast, with 151 films she participated in and its popularity rating is 4,628 According to the data from tmdb.

​

Percentage of African-Americans in movies by genre from all the films they participated in:

We can infer from the findings that the genres in which the percentage of African Americans is the highest (out of all actors) are docu, and a musical. In addition, the genres in which their relative numbers are greatest are drama, comedy and action.

​

Mapping the birth zones and the amount of African Americans born in them:

There is a direct relationship between the concentrations of the African American population in the United States and the regions where the African-American actors, directors, and producers come from. The areas where most African-American actors and directors come are Los Angeles, Chicago and Brooklyn. The areas where most of the African-American producers come from are New York, Chicago, Washington.

​

The roles that actors tend to play and the number of actors who play the role:

The findings indicate that the role to which most African American actors are cast is an announcer (plot number), a detective and a certain type of agent. While these are positive roles and contexts, since most of the people involved are part of the middle class, from 1939 to 1969 it can be seen that the roles they played were mainly slave, misery, singer, dancer, waiter and servant. You can see that over the years, the perception of reality has changed, and their roles have changed from one typecast to another.

It is important to note that the sample does not represent all films because the profession of the character is not always documented in the plot.

​

From Wikipedia and the article:

"Race and Ideology: African-American Images in Television Advertising"

"The roles the African-American community were generally offered usually

fell into three themes; a tale of rags to riches, thug life, or segregation.

"Many researchers argue that media portrayals of minorities tend to reflect

whites' attitudes toward minorities and, therefore, reveal more about whites

themselves than about the varied and lived experiences of minorities".

Producing films in the way is what leads to a singular perspective and opinion

(in this case white peoples) to dominate mainstream media."