The 2016 Oscars have been steeped in controversy since the nominees were announced earlier this month. Though the Academy Awards have never been known for much of an emphasis on racial diversity, this year’s acting nominee pool was a glaring indictment of the Academy’s seemingly preferential treatment of white talent — 94 percent of the voters are white themselves — with only white actors receiving nominations in the four acting categories, despite critically acclaimed performances from actors of color like Michael B. Jordan and Will Smith.
The Oscar race this year is a hot mess. And like any trainwreck, there’s bound to be some rubbernecking. There are still plenty of unknowns: who will show up and who won’t, if winners will address the controversy in acceptance speeches, how viciously host Chris Rock will skewer Hollywood’s marginalization of women and minorities. Will curiosity attract viewers who might not typically tune in? And will that be enough to counteract a potential boycott?
The 2015 Oscar broadcast, which like 2016 will be was carried by ABC, hit a four-year ratings low. The nominee makeup last year was not much more diverse than it is this year, and it appeared to have curbed viewership among minority audiences. As AdAge reported: “Of the 37.3 million overall viewers who watched the broadcast, only 2.4 million, or 6 percent, were African American. That’s roughly half the turnout in years when the slate of nominees is more inclusive. Over the last 10 years, the Oscars have averaged 38.8 million total viewers, of which approximately 3.2 million, or 8 percent, were African American.”
Still, this year’s telecast will be hosted by a very funny, fearless person of color who is all but guaranteed to have a field day with Hollywood’s persistent under-recognition of minorities. That alone could attract some viewers who are otherwise fed up with the Academy’s celebration of whiteness. And the controversy is bringing an element of drama — and awkwardness — to an often stodgy and predictable celebration. Does Charlotte Rampling, who last week said that the #OscarsSoWhite movement was “racist against whites,” and followed up with an unconvincing statement that her words were “misinterpreted,” still have a chance at winning the Best Actress Oscar? And if she does, will she be booed? If the win goes to Brie Larson or Jennifer Lawrence, who has been outspoken about a gender disparity in Hollywood salaries, will they acknowledge the advantages afforded them by their skin color in the acceptance speech?
From Raqiyah Mays, at Ebony.
The video is obviously homemade, slightly wobbling as Jada Pinkett Smith, dressed casually in a red blouse and blue jeans, sits on a couch in a dimly lit room, calmly and intellectually breaking down why she won’t attend this year’s Oscars.
“Maybe it’s time that we recognize that if we love and respect and acknowledge ourselves in the way in which we are asking others to do, that is the place of true power,” she says. “The academy has the right to acknowledge whomever they choose, to invite whomever they choose, and now it’s our responsibility now to make the change. Maybe it’s time that we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities, into our programs, and we make programs for ourselves that acknowledge us in ways that we see fit, that are just as good as the so-called mainstream ones.”
The video, posted to Facebook and retweeted on Twitter with the words “We must stand in our power” was specifically timed for MLK Day. And now, Mrs. Smith’s words have become a rallying social media cry, echoing the trending hashtag #OscarsSoWhite that criticizes Hollywood’s lack of award-show diversity. Cosigned by a powerful, digital Black movement, at press time the video has over 7.6 million views and 200,000 likes.
Director Spike Lee publicly joins Jada in boycotting. Which comes as no surprise, since Lee has a long-time reputation for criticizing Hollywood. But over the past several years, Pinkett Smith has popped up in headlines promoting community work in campaigns from fighting sex trafficking, to stopping violence in her hometown of Baltimore, and donating funds to support last year’s 20th anniversary of the Million Man March. Now she’s become the biggest of Black Hollywood’s elite to speak out against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ repeated history of overlooking Black talent.
Many believe her husband Will Smith should have been nominated this year for his role in “Concussion,” along with Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan for “Creed,” Idris Elba in “Beasts of No Nation” and Jason Mitchell for “Straight Outta Compton” (which received a best screenplay nomination for its two white screenwriters, and according to director John Singleton, should have gotten more).
We can absolutely pool our resources, create our own programs, networks, and grow wealth together as a people so we no longer need the powers that be. …
But solidarity also comes in supporting movements to make change. When someone like Jada Pinkett Smith bravely speaks out and says what we all know is true, we should stand with her. “Begging for acknowledgement or even asking diminishes dignity and diminishes power and we are a dignified people. We are powerful and let’s not forget it,” she said. “So let the Academy do them, with all grace and love, and let’s do us differently.”
Anyone who agrees with this, especially the rest of Black Hollywood’s elite, should join Jada and publicly speak out. Not just once a year, in January, when Oscar time comes. Not because she asked people to join her and it’s a hot topic. But because it makes the point of the protest more powerful. Because sustained, united voices carry more strength.
Sure, this video may have been prompted just because Will Smith didn’t get nominated. Would Jada’s awakening have happened if her husband had been given a nod? Maybe not. But this isn’t a psychic reading or a resentful Janet Hubert video post. This piece focuses on facts. And Jada’s truth—no matter when she accepted it—is deeper than a heavy Hollywood trophy when she asks, “Have we now come to a new time and place where we recognize that we can no longer beg for the love, acknowledgement or respect of any group?”
Yes. The voting body of the Academy isn’t changing anytime soon. Until then, their actions will reflect the age-old “main”stream narrative: If it ain’t White, it ain’t right.
So in the meantime, we take a proactive approach. We fight, protest, call them out, reprogram more brains to wake up, create, and stand behind works for us, by us. When it comes to Hollywood, this means supporting events like Black film festivals and award shows, movies with Black casts and Black directors, stories written by Black writers. “Support” is a verb, an action that in this case means spending money.
We are the people who built America, a formerly enslaved people who now have a current estimated buying power of $1.1 trillion. We can absolutely pool our resources, create our own programs, networks, and grow wealth together as a people so we no longer need the powers that be. Solidarity is the starting key.
From A.O. Scott, in the New York Times.
The shocking — or maybe not so shocking — whiteness of this year’s field of nominees exposes not only the myopia of the nominating body but also the deep structural biases of the industry that feeds it. The Oscars have, since the century began, done a reasonably good job of recognizing black talent, belatedly making up for decades of neglect. “12 Years a Slave” won best picture. Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Halle Berry, Forest Whitaker and Mo’Nique all collected statuettes for acting, as Geoffrey Fletcher (“Precious”) and John Ridley (“12 Years a Slave”) did for screenwriting.
But somehow, these victories, in the larger context of Hollywood racial politics, can smack of tokenism rather than real change. Spike Lee’s lifetime achievement award feels like belated and inadequate compensation for a career’s worth of slights. At the movies, we may be in the age of “Chi-Raq” and “Straight Outta Compton,” but the Academy is still setting the table for “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
… I don’t want to let the Academy and its members off the hook. Or rather, I want to broaden the indictment beyond the specific complaints that they ignored Idris Elba, “Creed,” “Straight Outta Compton” and Will Smith’s excellent Nigerian accent in “Concussion.” It’s not as if the 6,000 Academy members exercised the singular intention to ignore those contenders. The nominations are a numbers game, and in each case you can offer a nonracial explanation for the oversight. Other movies and actors just had a few more votes. “Beasts of No Nation” came from Netflix, which is a scary interloper in the hidebound, turf-protective world of the studios. The violence may have put off some voters. “Creed” did not get much of a campaign from Warner Bros., which may have figured that the seventh movie in a 40-year-old franchise with a mixed track record wasn’t exactly Oscar bait. “Concussion” is terrible. “Straight Outta Compton” …
I think it’s when you get to that one that race sneaks back into the picture. The Academy, in its function as the culture industry’s upholder of the ideology of Quality, has for a long time been open to African-American talent and even eager to promote and reward it. But at the same time, it has been consistently blind, indifferent and hostile to African-American culture, or at least to certain popular manifestations of blackness at the moment of their greatest impact elsewhere. A Ray Charles biopic in 2005 is unlikely to cause any Academy member the slightest discomfort. An N.W.A biopic in 2015 is another story. …
American cinema — more than television or pop music or literature — still prefers to treat black people as symbols, problems and members of a “niche” audience.
From Marc Bernardin, at The Hollywood Reporter.
The fact that, for the second year in a row, there are no actors of color nominated for Oscars in the acting categories has triggered a tanker-full of Internet think pieces because that’s what the Internet does. There have been calls for a boycott. There have been suggestions that Chris Rock should recuse himself from hosting the ceremony Feb. 28, although he doesn’t plan to do so. And it has led to changes at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences designed to diversify its membership, which is 93 percent white and 76 percent male.
But those responses address the symptoms and not the disease — it’s like prescribing skin cream for red blotches instead of dealing with the underlying condition. The real root cause behind the all-white acting nominations is that no one is making black Oscar bait.
There currently are two types of movies that get diverse casts: popcorn movies and homework movies. The international marketplace has shown that such popcorn movies as the “Fast & Furious” series, and even “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” — big, shiny genre movies with United Colors of Benetton call sheets — perform well, even exceedingly well. But those films are not necessarily designed to win Oscars in any categories beyond visual effects and some of the crafts. They are designed to make a billion dollars. And that’s fine.
Then there are the homework movies — movies intended to teach America about some fundamental part of the African-American experience: “Selma,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Malcolm X,” “The Help.” Movies that attempt to wrestle a massive issue to the ground and make it understandable to a mass (read: white) audience while still revealing the inner life of its protagonists. And those are good. Those are important. But they can’t be all there is.
More often than not, the black films that are in Oscar contention are about people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X or Solomon Northup. People who, by the measure of any yardstick, are exemplary. As they used to say, in less enlightened times, “credits to their race.” If you are African-American, you literally have to change the world before there’s ever going to be a film based on your life. And if you’re a filmmaker trying to push a film that’s about a fictional African-American who just, you know, has a story to tell, forget it. …
Where is the black “Revenant”? Or the Latino “The Kids Are All Right”? Or the Asian “Black Swan”? Why don’t those movies get made? Or, when they do get made, why aren’t they embraced by their financiers and distributors — and the Hollywood Illuminati that determines which films get awards buzz and which films don’t?
From Mary McNamara, at the Los Angeles Times.
A growing chorus wants to know why anyone really cares. With all the troubles in the world, do we really need to worry that a bunch of relatively rich and privileged filmmakers are mad that their movies didn’t get an Oscar nomination?
So what if the nominees for the Academy Awards continue to be overwhelmingly male and white; professional basketball is overwhelmingly male and black. What does it matter?
Well, it matters because film is art, and art matters.
The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the images we choose to create and share reveal who we are — our hopes, our fears, our secrets, strengths and shortcomings.
When we praise and reward certain stories or images, whether by big box office or gold statuary, we reveal what we as a society value, the kinds of people we find interesting, the characteristics we revere and revile. We show the paths we hope to choose or avoid and the lessons we have learned, or not learned, from history.
One could argue that there are plenty of films, and even more television series, offering a wider range of stories and characters than those nominated for Oscars, so who cares what the still-homogeneous body of voters, with its even narrower professional breakdowns, thinks? …
So why does the controversy and outrage over this year’s Oscar nominations matter? Because it’s time — it’s beyond time — that we stopped limiting ourselves to the same sorts of stories, the same sorts of characters and then reinforcing those limitations year after year after year.
Is it the academy’s “fault” that so many excellent films featured all-white casts or revolved around men? Well no, and yes. The academy is made up of the people who make the films, and they know awards shows have several functions: to reward excellence, but also to show the many forms excellence can occupy.
“The aim of art,” said philosopher and famous white guy Aristotle, “is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
The problem with the overwhelming male-whiteness of this year’s Oscars is not white males and their stories, it’s the millions of other people and stories that should be part of the powerful force of American cinema and continually are not.
Tyranny comes in many forms, and offering people only one tiny window through which to view the world is one of them.
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