ICA Members Shine at First Public Lecture
On 29 March, ICA members and industry professionals gathered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to participate in the inaugural ICA public lecture in conjunction with USC Annenberg.
Moderated by Stacy Smith (USC), the event, The Hollywood Shuffle: Exploring Race and Ethnicity Behind and in Front of the Camera, took a close look at emerging research and first hand accounts by prominent members in the entertainment industry.
Joining Smith on stage was Russell Robinson (U of California, Berkeley), Darnell Hunt (U of California, Los Angeles), Tim Story, director of Barbershop and Fantastic Four, and Ava DuVernay, winner of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival’s best director award for her film Middle of Nowhere.
Robinson, the Distinguished Haas Chair in LGBT Equity professor at Berkeley Law, presented his law review "Casting and Caste-ing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms," where he claims if the casting practices were visible in another profession, it would clearly violate the law. Hunt, the director of the J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, presented his research "Writing Wrongs: Industry Diversity (or the Lack Thereof)," which draws from his work with the Writers Guild of America (WGA) where women writers in the last 20 years have been underrepresented by a ratio of 3 to 1 and minority writers have fallen further behind. Based on this research and Smith’s tracking of the top grossing films from 2002-2012, where 95.6% of these films were directed by men, Story and DuVernay joined the panel for a discussion where they gave first hand accounts on the lack of diversity in film and the barriers minorities face in breaking through into the industry.
The panel, and the diverse audience of members, students, writers, agents, and cinematographers, shared harrowing accounts of discrimination in Hollywood that reinforced the clear research presented by Smith, Robinson, and Hunt. Followed by a small reception in a sculpture garden, participants continued the conversation among incredible works of art. It was a great event for a great cause.
Part of ICA’s mission is to make sure that the great research our members produce gets into the hands of decision makers and stakeholders, particularly in the culture industries like Hollywood. This lecture was the first in an ongoing series where ICA will take the theme of the upcoming conference and apply it to global issues on local levels. With plans for lectures in London and Washington, DC, we are looking for members to come to us with ideas where their research can have a direct effect when presented to the public.
If you have ideas for a possible public lecture, contact JP Gutierrez at jpgutierrez@icahdq.org. We are looking for research that challenges the status quo, whether it be policy in government, culture industries or corporate social responsibility.