Barriers to Diversity in Film – A Research Review – Aug 07

and ethnicity, and in any case, monitoring only focuses on visible
minorities. Since the industry is resistant to change, the representation
of certain minority ethnic groups means these representations are
likely to compete with each other. For example, a black director was
forced to give up one of his television programmes in a series to
ensure good representation of ethnicity, whereas the white directors
were not. Broadcasters also cannot imagine a diverse audience when
they make programmes. The author of this study cites the example of
telling jokes, where:
“ A lot of comedy sends up the idea of political correctness, still
making jokes about race, disability or sexuality , but in a knowing ‘We
can all take it now’ way. Sometimes the justification is that the target
is actually the person uttering the racist or homophobic lines. …. No
one I interviewed was in favour of censorship, but there was a
widespread feeling that race or disability-related humour was still
often crude and unfunny as well as pointlessly hurtful. It was also
thought to add fuel to the sort of playground and workplace barbs that
many people from minorities still experience.”
(Campion 2005)
5.9 Summary
What we know…..
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