Three years ago I made a video series called Every Single Word where I edited down popular movies to only the words spoken by people of color. In honor of #BlackPanther I'm gonna re-share some of them here.
This is the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy. You can watch it in less than a minute.
This is Her, a movie set in a not-too-future Los Angeles.
This is Maleficent.
This is Into The Woods.
The entire Harry Potter series runs 1,207 minutes. POC speak for 5 minutes and 40 seconds. That's 0.47% which is represented by 12 characters (and 13 actors), two of whom are CGI. On average, each character speaks for 28.33 seconds.
None of these stories are about race, yet they have cast white people by default. They each deal with fantastical elements yet seem to have found it “unrealistic” to cast POC in anything but the periphery.
For too long universally accessible stories have used white avatars to tell them. While there are clearly exceptions, they are just that: exceptions.
So if you see people celebrating #BlackPanther and don’t understand why, just remember that cinema has long been telling universally accessible stories that represent everyone with bodies that only represent some.
If you want to know more about why I made this project, here's a profile by @SorayaMcDonald that sums it up best. washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-…
