|
Thirty-four percent of the nearly 2,000 people polled online
said they believed Hollywood has a general problem with
minorities and 32 percent said the film industry's capital shies
away from making Oscar-caliber movies that appeal to minorities.
Nearly two-thirds of black respondents, or 62 percent, said
Hollywood had a problem with minorities, compared to 48 percent
from all minority groups.
How women are treated fared only slightly better overall, with
32 percent of respondents saying Hollywood has a problem with
women and 29 percent believing it fell short in making
Oscar-caliber movies for the female audience.
But women were only slightly more negative than men when asked
about women's standing in the film industry. Twenty-eight
percent of men and 30 percent of women thought Hollywood
underdelivered on Oscar-quality movies for women.
The findings come a month after nominations revealed no actors
of color in the four acting races and no women in the best
director and screenwriter categories for Sunday's Academy Awards
- in what was deemed by experts "the whitest Oscars" in years.
The most controversial exclusions centered around "Selma," the
Martin Luther King Jr. biopic that secured best picture and best
song nominations but failed to earn nods for its female African
American director Ava DuVernay and lead actor David Oyelowo.
Gregory Sampson, a 51-year-old African American respondent from
Maryland, said he thought Hollywood had a lot of work to do to
be more inclusive of minorities and women and blamed it on a
"good old boy network."
"You have your big stars like Denzel Washington or Samuel L.
Jackson, who appeal to everyone, but a lot of those guys don't
get the recognition they should get," Sampson said.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has some 6,100
members, who are selected for the quality of their work and
recommendations by existing members. A 2012 investigation by the
Los Angeles Times showed membership was 94 percent white and 77
percent male with a median age of 62.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,988 Americans online from Feb
13-18 and has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.5
percentage points.
(Editing by Eric Kelsey and Cynthia Osterman)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
