Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Hollywood: So Progressive. So Racist.
The Oscar nominations were announced yesterday morning and Hollywood — that bastion of hyper-liberalism — has once again proven itself to be super-duper-mega-ultra racist. I hear your saying “But didn’t 12 Years a Slave win Best Picture just two years ago, with Lupita Nyong’o winning Best Supporting Actress? Didn’t Octavia Spencer win that same award two years earlier? Haven’t the last four Best Director winners been a French-Lithuanian Jew, a Sino-Taiwanese, and two Mexicans? Wasn’t Selma nominated for Best Picture last year, and didn’t John Legend and Common win Oscars for Best Song last year?”
Irrelevant! That was the past! And besides, the actors weren’t nominated! As Progressivism (of the post-Great Society liberal variety, rather than the racist-as-all-get-out version of the early 20th century), has taught us there must be racial quotas in all things. The Academy Awards are no exception!
The lefty press has already ramped-up the knee-jerk high dudgeon:
- Vulture: “Actors of Color Were Entirely Shut Out of the Academy Award Nominations”
- Vox: “Oscars 2016: The nominees are blindingly white. Again.”
- Jezebel: “The 2016 Oscar Nominations Are Here: Still Very White, Still Very Boring”
- Variety: “Black Actors Shut Out of Oscar Race — Again”
- People: “Actors of Color Shut Out by Academy: Oscars Under Fire for Lack of Diversity Again”
- USA Today: “Oscars: Acting races are an all-white field”
Of course, this is essentially a repeat of what happened last year:
The choice of cover photo on that last piece (of Halle Berry and Denzel Washington holding their Oscars at the 65th Academy Awards) is insightful. Berry’s win for Best Actress in 2002 is seen by many — myself included — as one of the worst Oscar choices in recent memory (and it’s not for lack of options). The glamorous Berry was glaringly miscast in Monster’s Ball, and her performance has become a bit of a joke. She appears to have been chosen solely on the basis of wanting to give the Best Actress award to a black woman, perhaps to complement Washington’s win.
It’s startling that America’s paragon of leftist “open-mindedness” and “tolerance” is also — somehow –simultaneously deeply racist (whether in a 1860s or 1960s sort of way being open for debate). Of course, none of these articles call out Hollywood’s self-congratulatory nature, as stars pal around with the Obamas and talk about how backward the ordinary little people are. (And if one thinks it must be cinematographers and sound editors choosing all those bigoted, hate-filled ballots, think again: The largest voting bloc in the Academy is, by far, the actors’ bloc.)
So once again, Hollywood is simultaneously so progressive, yet so racist. I eagerly await Al Sharpton’s press conference. Oh, wait, I don’t have to: “Al Sharpton calls Hollywood ‘fraudulent’ after all-white Oscar nominations”
Published in Culture, Entertainment
Who around here doesn’t support cooption and deradicalization?
;-)
So, there are no black nominees because Sharpton hasn’t said jump lately?
Race is not the only category. Race, Class and Gender are all necessary candidates for Progressive Celebration. Lots of movies are anti-capitalist. Felicity Huffman is a perfectly fine actor. But she got 17 “Best Actress” awards or nominations for her 2006 role in Transamerica.
So it seems this year. they are racist and classist. No anti-capitalist movie! (Gender is well covered in The Danish Girl and Carol.)
No. I’m just saying that even if there were black nominees, it wouldn’t be good enough. Conceding anything being good enough would put Sharpton out of business. If Selma had won best picture, we’d be hearing about how a film about Malcolm X couldn’t win best picture. And if a film about Malcolm X won best picture, we’d hear about how a film about Mumia Abu Jamal couldn’t win best picture. And on and on forever.
Oh, I get what you were saying. Sorry, I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth.
I was suggesting that maybe the reason there are no black nominees is because the race activists have been slacking off on demanding them.
Such a transphobic movie, casting a cisgendered woman.
What’s the trans equivalent of blackface?
Nah. It’s ok. We’re cool.
Casting Caitlyn Jenner to play the life story of RuPaul. Or, maybe I’m just confused.
And still no Lifetime Achievement Award for Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. There’s a wrong that must be righted.
The funny thing is that one of the movies not nominated was produced by Ice Cube, who regularly referred to white people as ‘devils’ in his music.
Straight Outta Compton received only one nomination for its screenplay. The two people (hired by Ice Cube ?) who wrote it did not look to me like they’d spent much time growing up in the ‘hood, but maybe I’m making an unfortunate generalization.
You … ain’t … kidding …
Yeah, no N and it doesn’t appear that they are W much A.
If O.J. is found guilty or Obama loses the White House.
You, sir, are clearly a raging homophobe!
There are two: The BET Awards and the NAACP Image Awards.
Actually, non-blacks can be nominated for NAACP Image Awards for acting. Examples: Sandra Bullock was nominated for The Blind Side, Zhang Ziyi was nominated for Memoirs of a Geisha, and, for some reason that defies logic, Justin Timberlake was nominated for The Social Network. Has a non-black ever won an NAACP Image Award for acting? What do you think?
One has nothing to do with the other. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a private, non-profit institution whose membership is by invitation only. The DGA and SAG/AFTRA are independent unions that have nothing to do with the Oscars.
On a side tangent, I suspect SAG started their televised awards show twenty years ago largely to generate revenue through selling television rights – and possibly as a value-added benefit for their membership since the overwhelming majority of the SAG rank-and-file get little-to-no tangible benefits for their hefty union dues.
The easiest way to get AMPAS membership is to be nominated for an Oscar, and the acting categories have more turnover than, say, sound editing or special effects, where many of the same people are nominated year after year. And AMPAS knows that having lots of glamorous stars on the red carpet is why advertising spots during the Oscars the second-most expensive of the year (after the Super Bowl), so it is in their interests to have more actors in AMPAS than animators or make-up artists.
This thread inspired me to read the excellent Wikipedia article on Straight Outta Compton, which provided a few insights on its exclusion. After all, everyone knows Hollywood films must be historically accurate.
MC Ren was eloquent and somewhat perturbed over his place in the film, raising questions about historical accuracy: “When you have b*****s work on a hip hop film that don’t know s*** about hip hop this is what happens. How the h*** u leave me out after all.”
Dr. Dre’s ex-companion, Michel’le voiced similar concerns regarding accuracy : “Why would Dre put me in it? I mean ’cause if they start from where they start from I was just a quiet girlfriend who got beat up and told to shut up.”
Yeah, there was a lot of talk about the (no pun intended) whitewashing of the NWA guys’ really brutal treatment of women in Straight Outta Compton. And frankly, I’m of two minds about it: I don’t think it’s right to completely erase all of the bad things these men did, but I also understand that the purpose of that film was to show the origin of a group that did truly change music and culture. And Dr. Dre and Ice Cube are, to be fair, role models – Dre has produced many dozens of tracks that have sold tens of millions of copies around the world and is part of a company that made him a billionaire before being sold to Apple, and Ice Cube is a successful film and television actor and producer. At the end of the day, Ray, Walk the Line, What’s Love Got to Do With It?, The Buddy Holly Story, 8 Mile, Notorious, Sid and Nancy – they all took narrative liberties. Why expect Straight Outta Compton to be any different?
Hey, at least it’s more accurate than Amadeus…
Sure–it defies logic to say a Hollywood biopic won’t have distortions and hagiography. However, mentioning “What’s Love Got to Do With It” reminds me that some elements don’t have to be papered over. I’m constantly reminded that I have to live with my past (or rather my “culture’s” past). Why should Dre and Cube be any different? One wonders, ironically, that, if they’d gone there, whether the result might have given the film the honesty and emotional impact to get a nomination.
Would this include the Heisman Trophy and all the MVP awards from sports?
When the movie is produced by one of the people being portrayed in the movie, the ethical questions about creative licence are little more complicated.
It’s not just a biopic. It’s an autobiopic.
Another musical biopic case study: Walk the Line was produced by the one child Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash had together. That film faced criticism from the daughters of Johnny Cash’s first wife, Vivian, that it portrayed their mother (played by Ginnifer Goodwin) in an extremely unflattering manner, especially as compared to the producer’s own mother.