Analysis and Conclusion
My overall objective for this project was to examine representation and explore the pervasiveness of exclusivity at the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or competition. This project involved examining data on several facets of identity of three groups of artists representing films in competition for the Palme d’Or: cast leads, character leads, and the directors from 2016 through 2021. In doing this, as with Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein’s (2020) data feminism work, I am using data in a way that is based on and supported by intersectional feminist ideas, in order to analyze the power structures that exists both inside and outside of the film industry.
In summary, I found that there are clear examples of inequality in representation based on gender, race, sexual-orientation, and disability within the system of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or competition. Unequal representation can be observed repeatedly among the artist nominees and in most instances is even more apparent for the award winners.
Gender inequality, and Caroline Criado-Perez (2019)’s concept of the default male is apparent in the Palme d’Or competition for directors, cast leads, and character leads alike, with the film stories being predominantly told by or performed by men, in particular among the Palme d’Or winning directors. For example, there is a minority of female artists across all three groups, just one nonbinary artist, and only a single woman director in the dataset who has won the Palme d’Or. Furthermore, up to this point of the competition, only two directors who have won the award have been women, all the rest of the winners have been men.
Racial disparity shows up clearly in the results for both the Palme d’Or nominees and the winning directors. In all three artist groups, white artists were in the majority, then there were smaller numbers of person of colour artists, and even smaller numbers of black artists. While there are two person of colour directors among the winners, there are no black directors. In fact, 2019 was the first time in the history of the competition, that a black woman was nominated for a Palme d’Or.
There is a lack diversity in sexual orientation apparent at the Palme d’Or competition. Straight cast leads, character leads, and directors are in the majority while LGBTQ+ individuals are visible in much smaller numbers in all three groups.
Disability is also significantly underrepresented among cast leads, character leads, and directors of Palme d’Or nominated films and was completely unrepresented by the winning directors as all of them were abled.
Among the three artist groups of Palme d’Or winning directors, cast leads and character leads for each of the facets of identity of gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability there is a nearly complete majority of male, white, straight, and abled artists.
My analysis here echoes the results of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative's (2020) reporting on inequality in films in the United States between 2007 and 2019, particularly for film characters. For example, this report showed that for the top grossing films of 2019, a majority of characters with speaking roles or who were named, were male (66%) and a minority were female (34%), they were mostly white (65%) compared to those who were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups (34.3%), and only a small minority were either LGBTQ (1.4%) or had a disability (2.3%).
In interpreting the findings of this research, I took into consideration concepts that originated from the work of black feminist and sociological scholars, including the framework of intersectionality introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and the matrix of domination by Patricia Hill Collins. These concepts or tools are helpful for identifying inequalities occuring within the Palme d’Or competition and award system. They also give rise to questions and possible areas for further research on the experiences of intersectional oppression that people face in the film industry. Identifying the systemic barriers that result in disparity of representation among the films in competition for the Palme d'Or is an important step towards adressing them. Implementing changes that counteract the various forms of oppression and marginalization in the international film industry could mean films are made with greater multi-faceted representation that diversifies what excellence in film making looks like; and that films portray richer, more accurate, and relateable stories than has been achieved so far in the history of the Palme d’Or competition at the Festival de Cannes.