Barbie and Oppenheimer and data

Why are 95% of the principal creative contributors white?

I’m about to take a swing at both Barbie and Oppenheimer. You have been warned. There will be no spoilers, but there will be a hefty dose of dissatisfaction. And buckle up because this is a data-driven ride.

I saw Barbie and I didn’t love it. It was clever and funny but the movie sabotaged its own feminist message. I shouldn’t be surprised — after all, it’s a major commercial film. We shouldn’t look to those as sources of radical thought. As for Oppenheimer, I didn’t see it and I don’t plan to. As a brilliant political scientist said on Twitter,

The trailer for Oppenheimer was strange because building a weapon that was so destructive just isn’t heroic but you can tell that some folks want that to be the takeaway. I know it’s complicated but hear me out. No it’s not.

Hard agree. I am also skipping Oppenheimer because I have been told that no women speak during the first 20 minutes of the movie, and that there is massive erasure of Japanese people and the destruction they experienced.

Speaking of marginalized gender and racial/ethnic groups, I woke up this morning curious about demographics of principal creative contributors to the film.

Why representation matters

Creative expression is not merely a hobby for some and a career for others. Research has shown that it actually improves our health, makes us feel good, teaches us new things, makes our lives better, and even helps our economy. Having diverse voices in artistic fields is incredibly important. First, everyone deserves equal access to these fields. Second, we all need to see artistic creations that reflect our own lives and experiences. When everyone can create and appreciate art that speaks to them, the benefits of art become even greater.

Behind and in front of the camera

Hollywood has always struggled with diversity and inclusion. Marginalized groups often get overlooked. One study from the University of Southern California found that in 2019’s top films, only 34% of speaking roles went to women and a full 66% went to white characters. Many films excluded racially minoritized characters entirely.

The problem extends behind the camera as well. There were 12 times more men than women directors. However, films directed by women were twice as likely to feature women in lead roles. Similarly, 80% of 2019’s top film directors were white, but Black directors’ films had four times as many Black characters. Thus, the individuals who make the film significantly influence what we see on screen.

Diversity lacking in Hollywood

While Barbie’s diverse cast has received praise, the spotlight should also be on the main creative contributors, broadly construed. Movies are made through the collaborative effort of many creative contributors ranging from set designers to actors to cinematographers, composers, and more. It’s these creative contributors who shape the ideas and messages of the movie. Each movie in IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) identifies ten principals who are the most significant contributors to the project.

No one who pays any amount of attention will be surprised that diversity is lacking in Hollywood. While most research has focused on the on-screen talent, previous work of mine looked at demographics of the principal creative contributors to the top-100 grossing films of 2019 and 2020. (We also looked at contemporary art, fashion, and popular music.) Here is one of the primary results — you can focus on the bar labeled Film and on the rightmost bar representing U.S. population data (American Community Survey).

In film, every racial group except for white people is underrepresented as compared to the American population. The story is similar for gender, with women underrepresented by almost a factor of two.

Let’s now get to the main attraction of this post: what about Barbie and Oppenheimer?

Barbie and Oppenheimer demographics

I snagged IMDB’s free online data sets, extracted the principal contributors for Barbie and Oppenheimer, and did some quick internet sleuthing to guess each one’s gender and race. There’s a lot to be said about the very serious pitfalls of guessing people’s identities. See my previous work for some thoughts. And yeah, there’s more than just gender and race — think disability status, LGBTQ+ identity, gender expression, and so on. We’ll get into those in future posts.

For now, here’s a summary of what I found. For Barbie, 60% of the principals are women, and in Oppenheimer, just 20%. This averages out to 40% women for these two movies, which underrepresents women by more than 10 percentage points compared to the general U.S. population. On the race front, Barbie’s principals are 90% white, 10% Black, while Oppenheimer’s principals are all white. In total, only 5% of these movies’ key creative contributors are from marginalized racial groups, while these groups make up 41% of the U.S. population (talking about folks who aren’t non-Hispanic white here). That’s underrepresentation by a hefty 36 percentage points.

In closing

The pool of creative minds behind popular movies still lacks diverse representation. Hollywood seems to be stuck in an echo chamber, with the same faces telling the same stories, leaving those on the outside struggling to get a word in edgewise. This isn’t just an abstract issue. Given Hollywood’s immense cultural influence, the diversity-or lack thereof-of creative contributors profoundly shapes how we perceive the world. The absence of varied perspectives can lead to a significant loss, even harm, when we don’t see ourselves reflected in the stories we watch. While I don’t claim to have a quick solution, I believe that raising awareness is a critical first step. Let’s hope we start seeing more diversity both on the screen and behind the scenes. After all, isn’t it high time the movie industry mirrored the real world?

Your neighbor,

Chad