Four of the year’s 25 top-grossing movies(票房收入最高的電影)star a minority in a leading role. All but two had white directors. And the number of minority actors forecasters expect to get Oscar nominations(提名)can be counted on one hand.(有望獲得奧斯卡提名的少數(shù)族裔演員屈指可數(shù)。)

　　In the year since the Sony Pictures hack exposed racially insensitive emails and cast a spotlight on Hollywood’s diversity problem, movie studios have shown little progress in hiring more people of color for their casts and crews.

　　The industry is ignoring a gold mine. Every year for the past half-decade, the average white American has bought a ticket to fewer films than the average black, Hispanic or Asian moviegoer, industry data shows. Though 37 percent of the U.S. population, minorities bought 46 percent of the $1.2 billion in tickets sold in the United States last year.

　　Some of the year’s biggest surprises had diverse actors and small budgets but ended up dominating(控制)the silver screen. For five straight weeks ending in September, movies with predominately(占絕大多數(shù)地)black casts topped the box office(票房), including the Christian drama “War Room,” thriller “The Perfect Guy” and rap biography “Straight Outta Compton,” which has made $200 million on a $28 million budget to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time.

　　More recently, “Creed,” a “Rocky” spinoff starring Michael B. Jordan and directed by Ryan Coogler — both 20-something black men who led the 2013 critical darling “Fruitvale Station” — has triumphed with $72 million at the box office and one of the best opening weekends in the boxing franchise’s(連鎖加盟店)40-year history.

　　High-profile hires of actors such as Jordan in “Creed” and John Boyega in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” have remained the exception in a Hollywood that has shown only stuttering(結(jié)巴的;不持續(xù)的)progress over the past year in getting more-diverse talent into blockbuster(大片) roles. (《信念》中用喬丹當(dāng)演員，以及《星球大戰(zhàn)：力量蘇醒》用約翰.勃耶加，如此高調(diào)的行為在好萊塢僅僅是例外而已。過去的一年中，在使用非白人演員出任大片主角方面，好萊塢沒有取得什么大的進(jìn)展。)

　　But that lack of diversity, long a social issue, is increasingly becoming a business issue, and analysts say the success of movies such as “Creed” and “Compton” could make a big difference in persuading Hollywood’s dealmakers to better reflect the multicultural country it represents.

　　“Oftentimes it’s not emotional appeal, it’s the spreadsheet(電子表格;財務(wù)報表)that can make the change,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst with industry researcher Rentrak. “Show the empirical evidence. Look at the profitability of all these movies written, directed, produced by African Americans. That’s how you get the attention of Hollywood — or at least the people holding the purse strings.”

　　For all its grandeur(輝煌), Hollywood is a fiscally conservative industry, and studios and financiers have long proved hesitant to invest tens of millions of dollars into projects backed by filmmakers they do not know. (好萊塢盡管輝煌無比，但涉及到金錢方面卻很保守，長期以來，電影公司和投資人都不愿意將數(shù)千萬美金投入到一些他們不熟悉的制片人支持的項目。)

　　Very often, the people they know share their skin tone(膚色). In 2013, more than 92 percent of movie studios’ senior executives, 82 percent of film directors and 88 percent of film writers were white, UCLA researchers said.

　　“When I go to [film studio] offices, I see no black folks except for . . . the security guard,” director Spike Lee said while accepting an honorary Oscar last month at the Governors Awards. “It’s easier to be the president of the United States as a black person than to be the head of a studio.”

　　That monolithic(整體的;似鐵板的)whiteness has created a chicken-and-egg problem: Talented actors and filmmakers of color are routinely shut out because they were never given a chance in the first place.

　　Over the past year, “my sense is not a lot has changed,” said Darnell Hunt, director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. “The people who control the industry are still very reluctant to take a risk on untested talent — that is to say, people of color.”

　　Of the top 100 films last year, 73 percent of all characters were white, and only 17 of those movies starred nonwhite lead or supporting actors, University of Southern California researchers found.

　　Minority audiences, of course, did not flood only minority films: People of color bought more than 60 percent of the U.S. tickets to last year’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” a $245 million blockbuster whose cast was almost exclusively white.

　　The power of minorities’ spending, particularly in movies with more diverse stars and stories, has become impossible to ignore. “Furious 7,” which made more than $1 billion worldwide, pocketed 62 percent of its $350 million gross in the United States from minority moviegoers. Notably, “Compton,” which far outpaced financial projections, counted a box-office audience that was 75 percent nonwhite.

　　“If you try to be diverse for the sake of being diverse, it’s going to fail,” (如果你是為了多樣化而去多樣化，你一定會失敗)Jeff Shell, the chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment, the studio behind “Compton,” told Variety last month. “The real reason to do it is that it’s good business. Our audience is diverse.”

　　The debate over Hollywood diversity sharpened last winter after stolen private emails between Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal and movie producer Scott Rudin revealed the two joking that President Obama would like only films starring black actors: “I bet he likes Kevin Hart,” Rudin said. Both have since apologized, and Pascal lost her job.

　　The Academy Awards solidified(加劇) the slight(輕慢)earlier this year when, for only the second time since 1998, no actor of color was named among the Oscars’ 20 acting nominees. Viewers chastised(指責(zé))the Academy with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, and the Oakland Tribune headlined the news “And the Oscar for best Caucasian goes to . . .”

　　The Golden Globe nominations, unveiled last week, featured a number of nods for minority TV actors but few candidates of color in film. Of the 35 nominees for best director, actor, actress and supporting actor, only three were minorities: director Alejandro González Iñárritu and actors Will Smith and Idris Elba. None of the 10 nominees for best picture were led by minority stars.

　　The frustrations over Hollywood’s lack of diversity could grow by the time of the next Oscars, hosted in February by comedian Chris Rock, who last year wrote an essay calling Hollywood “a white industry.” When Rock first hosted the show, in 2005, he joked that the Oscars’ four black nominees made it “kind of like the Def Oscar Jam.”

　　The academy has yet to announce its nominees, but predictions from Oscar handicappers have surfaced only a few minority hopefuls: Elba in “Beasts of No Nation” and Samuel L. Jackson in “The Hateful Eight” for best supporting actor; Smith for best actor in“Concussion”; and Iñárritu for best director for “The Revenant.” Also, “Compton” is a long shot for best picture.

　　No women of color are in the running to win any of the 10 lead- or supporting-actress Oscar nods this year, a discouraging sign coming shortly after Viola Davis became the first African American woman to win an Emmy as lead actress in a drama, for her role in Shonda Rhimes’s “How to Get Away With Murder.”

　　“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity,” Davis said in September during her acceptance speech. “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”

　　The academy said recently it will launch a five-year plan, called A2020, intended to encourage film executives to hire a more diverse talent base. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in September that, although the academy “has no power over Hollywood [and] nothing to do with hiring,” she hoped the plan can get studios and agencies to “widen their normal stream of thought.”

　　Filmmakers, in turn, have pointed the finger at their financiers. Director Ridley Scott, criticized for casting white actors, including Christian Bale as Moses, in “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” said last year the move was needed to secure the money for his $140 million epic: “I can’t mount a film of this budget . . . and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. . . . I’m just not going to get it financed.”

　　Studios and film crews that did fill roles with actors of color faced resistance this year from angry fans, including over Boyega in his role as a stormtrooper in the new “Star Wars” and Jordan for his “Fantastic Four” role playing a superhero who is white in the original comic-book version.

　　When big films this year focused on minority characters, many instead filled their spots with white actors. In “Aloha,” for instance, Emma Stone was cast to play a Chinese Hawaiian woman.

　　After “Gods of Egypt,” a fantasy tale set in the ancient Middle East, was cast with mostly white actors in Egyptian roles, director Alex Proyas apologized, saying that “the process of casting a movie has many complicated variables(變量), but it is clear that our casting choices should have been more diverse.”

　　“Selma” director Ava DuVernay said the “Gods of Egypt” apology was an “unusual occurrence worth noting” for a casting problem “that happens all the time.” She also said it made her value the minority castings in “Star Wars” and “Creed” even more, tweeting, “We all deserve icons(偶像) in our own image.” (我們大家都有權(quán)擁有與自己形象一致的偶像。)

　　Vocabulary

　　Top-grossing movies 票房最高的電影

　　Nomination 提名

　　Dominate 統(tǒng)治;控制

　　Predominately 占統(tǒng)治地位地;絕大多數(shù)地

　　Box office 票房

　　Franchise 連鎖

　　Stuttering 結(jié)巴的;不持續(xù)的

　　Spreadsheet 電子表格;財務(wù)報表

　　Grandeur 輝煌

　　Skin tone 膚色

　　Monolithic 整體的;巨大的

　　Solidify 加劇;加固

　　Slight 輕慢;稍微的

　　Chastise 指責(zé);批判

　　Variable 變量

　　Icon 偶像

　　雅思真題重現(xiàn)：

　　It also suggests in which of these three waves the ancestors of various groups of modern native Americans first reached the continent. (劍7T3P2)

　　參考譯文：這同樣表明了在三次浪潮中的哪一次，各種現(xiàn)代本地美國人的祖先首先到達(dá)這塊大陸。

　　Toothed species in general employ more of the frequency spectrum, and produce a wider variety of sounds, than baleen species (though the sperm whale apparently produces a monotonous series of high-energy clicks and little else).(劍4T1P2)

　　參考譯文：齒鯨們可以更多地利用頻譜，發(fā)出多種聲音。當(dāng)然，抹香鯨只會發(fā)出一系列單調(diào)激烈的咔嗒聲。

　　Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer - lexical as well as social and commercial.(劍5T1P1)

　　參考譯文：除了規(guī)范混亂的實(shí)際需求，字典的熱賣與英語人群中中產(chǎn)階層崛起有著密不可分的聯(lián)系，他們渴望通過定義和限制來征服豐富多彩的世界——不只是詞匯這一領(lǐng)域，還有社會和商業(yè)。

　　However, it should be remembered that not everybody is motivated by jobs that are high in independence, variety and responsibility.(劍6T3P2)

　　參考譯文：但是，值得提起的是，高獨(dú)立性、變化性以及責(zé)任感的工作并不能激勵每一個人。

　　There is a wide range of photosynthetic responses of plants to variations in light intensity. (劍5T4P3)

　　參考譯文：對光強(qiáng)度的變化，植物可對其作出多種光合作用的反應(yīng)。

　　An important project, led by the biological anthropologist Robert Williams, focused on the variants (called Gm allotypes) of one particular protein - immunoglobin G - found in the fluid portion of human blood.(劍7T3P2)

　　參考譯文：由生物人類學(xué)家羅伯特•威廉姆斯領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的一項重要工程把研究點(diǎn)聚焦在了免疫球蛋白G變體(又叫做免疫球蛋白同種異型Gm )上——在人類血液流體中可以找到這種變本。