Study Finds That One-Third Of Asian Pacific Islanders Depicted In Movies Are Played By The Rock

A new study of film portrayals of Asian Pacific Islanders on the big screen makes it clear there’s a lot of room for improvement.

According to NPR, “The Prevalence and Portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders across 1,300 Popular Films”, undertaken by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, “analyzed 1,300 top-grossing movies to track representation of API people on both sides of the camera and among company executives from 2007 to 2019.”

According to the study’s authors, just 44 films of those 1,300 films — a mere 3.4 per cent — featured an API lead or co-lead performer; just six films were led or co-led by an API woman.

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Even more eye-opening, when examining those 44 films, 14 of them — about 31 per cent — starred Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

“People often ask me whether representations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are improving,” said Nancy Wang Yuen, who co-led the study with Stacy L. Smith. “Unfortunately, when representation looks like tokenism, Hollywood is doing the bare minimum for inclusion.”

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Things aren’t much better on the other side of the camera. The report also demonstrated that of the 1,447 directors across those 1,300 films, just four per cent were API.

“Forty-seven of these API directing credits were held by men, and three by women,” the study states.

“Inclusion of the API community thus far has been little more than lip service,” added Smith. “Opening up opportunity behind the camera for the API community and in particular, API women, is essential to seeing more authentic, humanized portrayals on screen.”