Dissertation

Members of the Hollywood Race Relations Bureau picket Paramount Studios in January 1962 (photo from Jet magazine, January 25, 1962)

Integrating Mass Entertainment: Struggles for Fair Representation in American Film and Television

Struggles for fair representation in mass entertainment have been integral to the social movements and advocacy of marginalized groups in the United States since the earliest years of the twentieth century. My dissertation offers a history of this phenomenon, focusing on campaigns by African American, Jewish, feminist, and gay and lesbian activists and community leaders that targeted motion pictures and television, the century’s two dominant media of mass entertainment. Drawing upon organizational records, personal papers, government documents, and press accounts, it tells the stories of activists, performers, union members, religious leaders, social scientists, civil servants, and elected officials who took on the film and television industries, opposing undesirable stereotypes and caricatures, urging more and better depictions of people like them, and seeking expanded employment on screen and behind the camera. Together, these varied campaigns for fair representation in mass entertainment provide a new perspective on the strong ties that emerged over the twentieth century between the mass media, the federal government, and marginalized communities; on connections and divergences between different groups’ movements for change; and on the gains and losses of a representation-centered politics that, despite its ubiquity, remains quite controversial.