Startling Videos Show Just How Few Lines Hollywood Gives People Of Color

Alarming Videos Prove Hollywood Is A Long Way From Being Truly Diverse

For as long as Hollywood has existed, it has underrepresented people of color. Actor and sometime video editor Dylan Marron has found a way to show us just how bad it really is for performers of color, by splicing together the scant few lines they were given.

"I think I feel so strongly about this because I was a kid who was queer and brown, and I didn’t feel like I saw my reflection in the art and entertainment that I was watching," Marron told Pop Mythology in 2013. "The message that I got was: It can't be done, there is no place for you, nobody looks like you, nobody talks like you, nobody walks like you, so don't try."

In 2013, Marron was given the role of Carlos in the hit podcast "Welcome to Night Vale," a character involved in a relationship with the podcast's male lead. Readily accepted by listeners, Marron used his experience to share his opinion that much of the entertainment industry operates under the misguided assumption that audience demographics call for a great deluge of white, heterosexual characters.

"[Y]ou might have these executives in their big leather chairs, smoking their cigars and talking on their cordless phones, saying, 'No, we can’t have this kind of person in this movie because people don’t want to see that.' But they don’t know what people want to see because the demographics of people are changing every day," Marron told Pop Mythology.

There are only five videos in Marron's new, spliced-up series so far, but they make a powerful point. We see just how few lines are delegated to people of color who play secretaries, housekeepers, security guards, bus drivers and hostesses, even among movies released in the past five years. No video is longer than one minute, generous introduction included.

And now, some white guys:

10) James Cameron - $670 million

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