4. We're Still Pretty Racist
Go to your local cinema and look at the posters; how many of them feature people who aren't white? You'll be hard pressed to find one, with other races and ethnic minorities largely being relegated to token roles in mainstream cinema; the karate-obsessed Asian comic relief character, the black guy who is either a criminal or dies first in a horror movie, and the Arab terrorist. These are archetypes that are easily understood by audiences, hence their proliferation, and only a handful of black actors have broken through to become fully-fledged stars - the Samuel L. Jacksons and Denzel Washingtons, for instance Roles that clearly should go to ethnic minorities are "whitewashed" for fear that a caucasian audience won't be able to identify with them; take, for instance, the above Dragonball Evolution, whose protagonist Goku is replaced with a whiter-than-white American teenager. Studios are cynical enough to think that people won't go to see a film if they can't identify with the race of protagonist, and sadly, they seem to be right, or is it just a self-perpetuating stereotype that someone needs to break?