Fast & Furious revved to the max
These car- loving movies adopted ethnically diverse casts early
That unmistakable smell of burnt rubber and Axe body spray in the air can mean only one thing — it’s time for another Fast & Furious movie.
Although the latest movie promises more high- speed, hyperbolic action scenes featuring tank top-wearing muscleheads of both sexes, one successful element of the franchise’s history has been routinely overlooked: the Fast & Furious movies are the most ethnically diverse blockbusters of our day.
Starting with series headliner Vin Diesel — who says he’s of “ambiguous ethnicity” and was raised in a racially mixed household — and continuing with the prominence of Dwayne ( The Rock) Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Sung Kang and Chris ( Ludacris) Bridges, the series’ casts have prominently featured actors who may share well- toned physiques but otherwise represent a wider spectrum of skin tones than Hollywood usually permits.
Furious 7 follows suit by augmenting its established cast of white, black and Hispanic actors with such newcomers as Bollywood hunk Ali Fazal, Thai martial- arts star Tony Jaa and Nathalie Emmanuel, a Game of Thrones regular of mixed Caribbean heritage.
This also extends to the talent behind the camera. After 2 Fast 2 Furious — directed by black filmmaker John Singleton — the subsequent Furious movies were all the handiwork of directors of Asian descent, with Justin Lin ( Nos. 3- 6) ceding duties here to the Malaysianborn Australian James Wan.
One might hope this represents a wider shift in Hollywood’s attitudes toward race and representation, but it’s hard to tell whether the Furious trend counts as a forerunner or outlier. While black performers enjoy greater prominence on North American screens, things haven’t changed so much given how often they’re relegated to sidekick roles for white superheroes ( see Samuel L. Jackson in the Marvel movies) or disguised and exoticized as greenskinned aliens ( see Zoe Saldana in Guardians of the Galaxy).
Or consider the eruption of the blogosphere on learning that John Boyega, a British actor of Nigerian heritage, won a central role in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Maybe Hollywood would be closer to racial equality had George Lucas realized his ambition of casting a black Han Solo.
A major study of ethnic representation in Hollywood cinema isn’t encouraging, either. Researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California examined onscreen portrayals in 600 popular films released between 2007 and 2013. Of the 3,932 characters examined in the top 100 movies of 2013, 74.1 per cent are white. And although 2013 was touted as a watershed year for African-American stories on screen — with the critical and commercial success of 12 Years a Slave, Lee Daniels’ The Butler and 42 — the study saw no meaningful change “in the frequency of any racial/ ethnic group on screen” between 2007 and 2013.
Other trends suggest the rest of Hollywood had better catch up to the Furious franchise when it comes to reflecting the audience both in North America and in the international markets that now generate as much as 70 per cent of the box office.
Increasingly distracted by other entertainment options, the young white males Hollywood has long considered its most loyal customers are being overtaken by women and Hispanics.