How "liberal Hollywood" helps perpetuate the myth of "real Americans"

Los Angeles Times

"Hollywood does more to perpetuate the myth of 'real Americans' than any politician, or any other cultural force in the world," says Mary McNamara. "Go to the movies, turn on whatever screen you use to watch the art form formally known as television, and what do you see? A wide array of stories revolving around a fairly narrow group of people, mostly white, mostly male...Even with the often-frightening tsunami of content provided by a proliferation of new platforms, black people, Asian people, Latino people, LGBTQ people and women all remain remarkably underrepresented when it comes to the stories we tell on our various screens." McNamara points to the fact that Latinos make up 18.3% of the population. But Latinos don't even come close to leading one out of every five TV shows. "If 'liberal Hollywood' really wants to help end the racial and cultural divisions encapsulated in the phrase 'real Americans,' making a movie or series or two with non-white leads isn’t going to cut it," says McNamara. "We need lots of them, and we can’t freak out about it when some flounder or fail. Most movies and television shows flounder and fail. But no one says, 'Well, I guess there’s no audience for white leads any more.' No, they just make a whole bunch more, hoping a few will stick. So we have to stop thinking of Black Panther or The Terror: Infamy as grand experiments, the success or failure of which will determine how audiences will respond to nonwhite casts or stories. And I don’t want to hear that those stories 'just aren’t out there.' The trend toward novel-adaptation alone opens all sorts of doors. And in this city (Los Angeles), as I am writing this, all sorts of people are writing all sorts of scripts."