I’ve
been following the #OscarsSoWhite stuff quite a bit, and in the midst of what
I’ve read, there’s naturally been a wide range of expressed views. Some call for change, some urge moderation,
and some make me shake my head in disbelief (for Pete’s sake, Charlotte Rampling!) One popular topic has been
absolving the Academy of any racial bias by explaining precisely why certain hoped-for nominations didn’t
happen. If you look online, it doesn’t
take long before you can find someone willing to tell you exactly why this
year’s nominations are so homogenized and why the reasons are perfectly
innocent. When I look at them, however,
I still see imbalance. Some of the major
arguments, along with my rebuttals, are as follows.
Michael B. Jordan (and Ryan Coogler) didn’t
get nominated for Creed because the
Academy is kind of snobbish and isn’t about to recognize a Rocky movie – First, rightly or
wrongly, the original Rocky won both
best picture and best director in 1977.
Second, Sylvester Stallone’s nomination shows the Academy wasn’t averse
to recognizing the film.
Will Smith didn’t get nominated for Concussion because his film got shaky
reviews and didn’t perform well at the box office: 63% at Rotten Tomatoes and
$34 million domestic – Lukewarm reviews didn’t hold back Jennifer Lawrence for Joy (60%,) and neither did a poor box
office showing keep Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet from being nominated
for Steve Jobs ($17 million.) The
Danish Girl hasn’t had the critical or
box-office reception it had anticipated, but both Eddie Redmayne and Alicia
Vikander got nominated.
Come on, like the Academy was ever gonna
nominate Straight Outta Compton; it’s
about gangsta rap! – Again,
the film did get one nomination (best original screenplay, for its white
writers,) so it’s not like the Academy didn’t know about it or didn’t recognize
it as a great film. Also, from Coal Miner’s Daughter to Walk the Line to Amadeus, musical biopics are like crack to Academy voters. Is it fair to ignore an incredibly popular, well-reviewed
example of the genre because of the style of music it uses?
Idris Elba didn’t get nominated for Beasts of No Nation because it was
released on Netflix and the Academy doesn’t like new media - Okay, this one is
probably true (at least, it had better be,
since there’s no other earthly reason not to recognize Elba’s work here.) It’s a shame because 1) Netflix has proven
time and again that it has serious game when it comes to original programming, and
2) it makes the Academy look pretty fuddy-duddy compared to the Emmys, which
have been giving online shows love for years.
Of course, the TV industry also seems to do better at including people
of color, so maybe the movie business is just backward as a whole?
Are you saying the people who got nominated
didn’t deserve it? Is Matt Damon just
chopped liver? Who would you have kicked
out to give (insert non-nominated PoC’s name here) a slot? – Look, I get it. The Oscars are an insanely competitive world,
and only five people in any one category can snag a nomination. Tom Hanks didn’t get nominated for Bridge of Spies, after all, and neither
did Charlize Theron for Mad Max: Fury Road. In any given year, there will be people
giving Oscar-caliber performances who just don’t make the cut, and that’s
because, once you hit a certain echelon of acting, the delineations of quality
are so minute that it largely comes down to the luck of the draw. Sure, there are always going to be outliers
on either side – frontrunners and longshots – but for the most part, it’s a
matter of the gods being with you. But
that’s the thing: if it’s a game of
chance, the results should be random in the particulars but reasonably
statistical in generalities. In other
words, however large that pool of deserving performances may be – 30? 50?
100? – anyone within that pool should have at least close to an even
chance of being nominated in one of the four acting categories. So, in theory, if that group is 15% people of
color, then PoC should make up roughly 15% of the nominations. Right?
(I know, by the way, that 15% is a depressingly-low number, but I’m keeping
it intentionally low in reply to maybe-Black-actors-just-didn’t-have-any-award-worthy-performances-this-year
“argument.”) We know there are 20 nominated
actors every year. A single nomination
slot is only 5%. 5%! So, that means either
PoC gave less than 5% of this year’s
Oscar-caliber performances, or it doesn’t add up that 20 white actors “just so
happened” to be the ones to draw the winning cards for the second year in a row. Which seems more likely to you?
(Besides,
none of this explains why David Oyelowo didn’t get nominated for Selma last year!)
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