It's not exactly a secret or even a surprise that Dwayne Johnson is the highest-paid actor in the world, partially thanks to him being cast in just south of everything. But one aspect of this particular status that many people fail to take into account is how this skews the number of API (Asian and Pacific Islander) working in Hollywood. It turns out that Johnson takes up a rather overwhelming percentage of all the AAPI roles in movies, and that's a problem.
A recent study focusing on API actors and characters in mainstream movies compiled the numbers, and it found that Black Adam star Johnson alone accounts for 14 of the 44 top movies featuring API leads between 2007 and 2019. That's roughly a third of them, and it magnifies the already glaring issue regarding the extremely low number of API actors and actresses, much less full-on leads, featured in mainstream films.
This isn't even considering another heavily unbalanced statistic. That same list, which includes 22 API leads and co-leads, features only 4 actresses, namely Constance Wu, Hailee Steinfeld, Auliʻi Cravalho, and Chloe Bennet. Sure, many will see these actresses in headlines semi-regularly for stories such as Bennet's current role in The CW's pilot Powerpuff. But by and large, movies still skew away from them and other API talents as leads in general.
That's unsettling enough, but even if a given film features API actors, a surprising number of their characters will still have a pretty rough go of things. According to the study, over 25% of API characters in films from 2019 ended up dying violently, while a shocking 41.8% were treated badly either in general or through racist/sexist slurs. So, not only do API actors have to fight extra hard just to be seen in films, but even after they get to that point, they often still have to suffer through a degrading experience.
In a world where anti-Asian violence has been on the rise for some time now, trends like this in entertainment are even more discouraging. The study covers a good amount of other statistics regarding API actors in Hollywood, and they all give way to the same trends. Even the most incremental improvements in representation are often met with resistance, not just from angry exclusionary people in general, but also because there is less of a tendency to actually follow through with the increase in diversity going forward.
So keep these sorts of things in mind as theaters keep opening up and movies start to become the social experiences they used to be again. API representation is important (as are all kinds of representation, but this conversation is specifically about API people), and one way to help support that idea is to simply show up for those films. It's a sad reality, but money definitely talks. Make movies with API leads successful and Hollywood will hopefully have no choice but to listen.
If anyone is interested in making an effort to combat anti-Asian hate and violence, check out the resources on this site.
Source: The Prevalence and Portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders across 1,300 Popular Films