A member of the Academy editorializes against the affirmative action changes in membership. His point: future minority nominees will be tainted with a stigma.
It is interesting that all the brouhaha is only about the actors nominated. Not screenwriters, editors, sound effects, costume design and all the rest. It seems that visibility and celebrity are the real crux of Oscarssowhite protest.
" It seems that visibility and celebrity are the real crux"
And that’s why it is not important and does not deserve all this attention. It’s about America’s obsession with celebrity culture. The Academy Awards are about as irrelevant as anything gets. REALLY who cares? The initial question was “does this matter?” The answer is no.
My feeling is that it is easier for for celebrities–white and black–to make remarks about this than to address the very real structural racism out there. The latter is hard work and requires more hard work to address complex and interrelated societal structures. Doesn’ fit well in a tweet.
it’s not that the lack of good, non-stereotyped roles for people of color–and women–doesn’t matter. (Someone above recommended Hollywood Shuffle. Loved it when it came out years ago.) It’s that there are far more significant problems. Mass encarceration and everything that cascades from that, for example.
“structural racism”? You must mean “affirmative action,” which is embedded in, and the visible manifestation of, the university “diversity” credo – certainly structural, that.
No, I don’t mean affirmative action.
I’m not sure why The Big Short would be a good example when it was based on actual people, not fictional characters.
It makes sense they were the same race as the actual people they were depicting. There were black people in the movie by the way.
I didn’t see Beast of No Nation yet, so I can’t comment on Elba’s performance. But I do think there is some snobbery in Hollywood that would keep them from nominating a Netflix movie.
All the movie/tv award shows are stupid. The actors get paid big bucks to do something they love. That should be enough. Forget the quotas instead lets get rid of all of them.
I would ask you "what do you mean, then, by ‘structural’? But, truthfully, this would be off-topic and no one wants to divert any threads into AA rants which have been hashed for over 10 years since inception on this forum. I think those specific threads now inhabit their own, hard-to-find dark corner of CC since they have proved to add no value. But, anyway, I would ask you to consider what you really mean by “structural,” as in institutions or practices willfully, consciously constructed to discrimate. Hollywood and Wall Street both follow the credo of making money, and do not make social judgments that would impair that objective.
Read The New Jim Crow.
There was a scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen’s character (Avi Singer) has flown out to LA to see the Diane Keaton character. She has moved out of NYC and his life and is dating a famous singer; she mentions that her new boyfriend is taking her to the Grammys. Avi replies:
And right about this time of year, that certainly seems to be true. There are so many awards shows it’s ridiculous.
I saw **Straight Outta Compton ** because my adult children had heard that it was good; besides the violence/cursing, which I’ve heard and seen in “white” movies, the storyline/acting/writing were really good!
IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE MOVIE, BYPASS THIS SUMMARY:
My summary of the movie was of one where the music industry takes advantage of poor artists who don’t know the “game”, as well as big monied thugs who use violence to blackmail/abuse unknowing, naive, young musicians.
The storyline was very sad and tragic and I didn’t find that the band was being “glorified” because we were watching the story. The producers demonstrated how people of color have minimal chances of making it. It also showed the the beginning risks of AIDS behaviors.
If this story had been portrayed by white actors, they all would have been nominated. (Paul Giamatti’s role was very good but was dwarfed by the young actors.)
I’m not African-American, but in this story, race ultimately didn’t matter. It does matter that this movie didn’t merit a nod.
Edit: I live in a rural part of my county, and the moviegoers in this theater were all white.
“I’m not African-American, but in this story, race ultimately didn’t matter. It does matter that this movie didn’t merit a nod.”
@“aunt bea” You hit the nail on the head. When a movie have mostly black actors it is seen as a black movie. But if you erase color this movie can be about any young naive musician trying to make it. Plenty of musicians of all colors have been taken advantage. And Aids is clearly not just AA issue.
A lot of it comes down to who is greenlighting movies - which ones even get made? Why are so many stories that “wouldn’t make sense” with diverse casts being chosen to be filmed over stories that would make sense with diverse casts?
As it so often is perceived in the world of fiction, stories about white men are considered “universal” that everyone is supposed to be able to relate to whereas stories featuring just about anyone else are viewed as “x stories” in a specialty category. This does not reflect the country we live in, let alone the world.
strange how strong the racism in Hollywood is, since Hollywood is very liberal.
This thread made me recall the excellent Denzel Washington movie “Flight.” I thought his performance was super. The character he played could have been of any race, but it did need an actor of a certain personal authority and charisma. It could have been a Harrison Ford role, 20 years ago, for example. On the other hand, Washington’s particular attraction not only physically–and of course he is a very handsome man–but in the personality he projects is very much that of a black man. Although his race was not an issue in the movie, I felt that it lent the movie greater texture. (Particularly his relationship with the older, more experienced flight attendant, who was also black. You felt some comradeship going back to days when maybe they found themselves the “onlies” there, although it was unstated.)
It is unfortunate that so few black–and Asian–actors are recognized as being able to carry that kind of a film. I’m sure there are many more who do not get the opportunity to develop their careers to that point.
Do people think it is better on tv nowadays than in movies? I’m a huge fan of Shondaland, and one of the reasons is the real diversity of her casting. Something that struck me about the commotion is that no one seemed to be concerned about the lack of Latin and Asian actors and roles.
Just heard on radio that there is now a new anti-Oscar movement. Oscarsostraight. Apparently because no gay actors have been nominated.
In addition to the genres being suspect for being associated with AAs, there’s also a bit of a generational gap of the “Get off my lawn” variety among those who voice issues with movies like “Straight Out of Compton” that’s not terribly different from similar conflicts between more established musical genres and ones popular among that era’s youth such as:
Outcry in the '20s and '30s of parents and older generations against the youth of the era listening to Blues/Jazz/Big-Band.
Outcry in the '50s until the 80’s of parents/older generations against the youth listening to rock music.
There was also a racial dimension to both of those older “Get off my lawn” reactions listed above as Blues/Jazz/Big-Band along with rock music have roots in older AA originated musical genres which added to their “suspiciousness” among those with such reactions.
And the trend has continued now between the older generations…including Boomers and older cohorts of my generation(Gen X) heaping scorn upon hip-hop/rap for the same reasons while failing to appreciate the irony of their generation encountering similar reactions from their parents/older generations over their preferred music during their own teen/twentysomething years.
In short, there’s an element of “old fogeyism” which has been practiced by older generations against younger generations and their aesthetic/musical preferences since the dawn of time…
LA Times published today an op-ed on the “diversity” Oscar controversy. Essentially, it lays bare the fact observation that urgency over “diversity” is simply a ruse for the non-talented to elbow aside the talented and feast at a table to which they have no right, in terms of merit, for an invitation:
"Since its creation, the academy’s focus has been excellence in motion pictures. The new focus, apparently, is diversity, and I’m sure I’m not alone in finding this re-conception misguided. In the past, black, Latino and Asian industry professionals could rest assured that they were admitted to the academy or awarded an Oscar for one reason only: the brilliance of their work. Now they and outsiders will wonder if they were tapped to fill some arbitrary quota.
These measures seriously risk devaluing the importance of membership, the Oscar itself, and the academy’s reputation as a benchmark for moviemakers."
Perhaps, @soccerguy315, it might cause you to reexamine the belief–which seems to be Received Truth in some quarters–that “Hollywood” is so very “liberal.” And while you’re at it, you might want to look at the so-called “liberal mainstream media.”
I think that what you will find is that both are coldly commercial enterprises that do not hesitate to reinforce whatever stereotype sells, and do not strive to broaden or deepen the focus of the nation.
“Is it time to set diversity quotas for Academy Awards?”