White actors stand out more on US movie posters, study finds

White actors appear more, and in more prominent positions, than those of other ethnicities on American movie posters, according to a study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications and released this Wednesday. It analyzes more than 45,000 posters of some 24,000 English-language films produced in the US between 1960 and 2021.

Although the percentage of white actors represented on posters has decreased from 90% in 1960 to 77% in 2020, their representation compared to that of black or Indian artists, for example, is also more favorable to Caucasians .

Up to 25% older than other ethnicities

The study, led by Israeli researcher Galit Fuhrmann Alpert of Ben-Gurion University and which used an algorithm developed based on images FairFacediscovered that, for example, the dimensions of the faces of white actors are usually up to 25% larger than those of performers of other ethnicities.

Furthermore, white faces are located in more central positions on the posters than the faces of people of other ethnicities.

And non-white actors are more likely to appear in posters that feature more than six actors or a non-Caucasian lead actor.

Differences between genders and races

The analysis of the casts of the more than 24,000 films studied also indicates that white actors are more represented in all the roles in the films, while black actors are restricted to less important roles.

For their part, Indian actors and those from the rest of Asia occupy the most secondary positions in the productions.

“This would indicate that non-white actors are more likely to have minor roles or in films with stories related to their ethnicity,” the authors noted.

The differences also extend to the genres of movie posters.

While white actors appear the most in films of all kinds, black actors are more likely to appear on crime film posters and for Asian actors the trend is action films. With EFE

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