From the beginning of cinema, lots of improvements and changes occurred.

With a little
research I have found out that the first reflections of cinema can be tracked back to the late
1890’s. We can say that cultural diversity includes concepts like language, religion, race, sexual
orientation, gender, age and ethnicity. Since the early 20th century, a lot has changed around the
world culturally and politically varying from location to location. In the first decades of the 20th
century, race was still a huge diversity factor among society although slavery and other inhuman
practices have been abandoned. Some of those cultural norms and traditions are hard to change
mentally.
The visual arts always had the duty to reflect what was going on around us and at the time, the
reality was different ethnicities existed in certain roles within the communities thus reflected the
same roles via their parts in movies. For example, African American actors somehow always
portrayed housekeepers and help for rich white people. Women, colored people, LGBTI+
community and minority groups from different ethnicities were not accepted within the society
all the way through in most cases and so, were seen as not qualifies enough to represent.
As decades went by, cultural norms evolved with people and fortunately we ditched some of
those hideous traditions like casting colored women as housekeepers, representing what we
consider “different” less and in low profile and so on. After the mid 20th century, as
cinematography improved, diversity representation among movies has improved too. Film
makers started casting women more and more, and eventually this movement outgrew itself so
that when cultural movements for different human rights spilled over the 21st century, we started
watching actors and characters more like ourselves. Oprah once said it was an amazing feeling as
a little black girl to see someone just like her getting an Oscar, one really prestigious award for
cinema. She mentioned it inspired her as a child and she was proud to be inspiring other black
girls all over the world. This is the power of cinema, so as it portrays more and more of who we
really are, it inspires more.
As a person who lives in a country where most of its citizens are Muslims, it has always made
me uncomfortable that as a result of orientalism, in Western cinema Muslim people are usually
portrayed as dangerous, bigoted and uncultured. In movies nowadays, these prejudices started to
fade away. As conclusion I can say that from the beginning, cinema has evolved so much from
misrepresentation to a nearly achieved diversity among the viewers.