For the second time in as many years the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite is trending on Twitter.
The reason is that, for the second time in two years, no actor of colour has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Samuel L. Jackson, Will Smith, Idris Elba and Michael B. Jordan are just a few of the high profile actors who were overlooked in this year’s nominations, despite each being eligible and each having put in stellar performances of late.
“How is it possible for the second consecutive year all the 20 contenders under the actor category are white? And let’s not even get into the other branches,” he wrote.
“Forty white actors in two years and no flava [sic] at all. We can’t act?! WTF!
“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it’s right.”
Actor Roy Wood expressed surprise that even in films that almost exclusively feature performances by people of colour, such as ‘Straight Outta Compton’, white people still received the majority of nominations.
Bafflingly, Sylvester Stallone managed to nab a Best Supporting Actor nod for his reprisal of Rocky Balboa in ‘Creed’, but the film’s lead Michael B. Jordan got nothing.
Top Comments
Jada Pinkett Smith is not endearing herself to anyone. She's basically chucking a tanty because her husband wasn't nominated. I love awards season. I host parties. So I take my research pretty seriously. And frankly, Will Smith was lucky to be up for the Golden Globe. No one was mentioning him in the Oscar race. Straight Outta Compton was mentioned as a very outside chance. But neither of them were locks.
Look, Academy Awards should be based on the best of the best. this is not "everyone wins a prize"..
couldn't agree with you more!
I've made a lengthy comment below, but one thing more I would say is that I have become a bit of an expert on Oscar films, as for approx the last 5-10 years I go to all of the films that have been nominated in the major categories, i.e. Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress.
Whilst there have been a couple of years that nearly every single film has been outstanding, however that is rare, I've been surprised at how many years I and my friends ( a group of us do this) have found only one or two of the movies were really that great (though I would say the majority are usually watchable). Then subsequently I have seen other movies that were passed over for nomination and found those to be far, far superior.
For instance the year that Kate Winslet was nominated for The Reader, she was also in Revolutionary Road, I thought the latter was one of the best movies I have ever seen, however it is clearly a feminist movie, and the Oscar has "themes" that it doesn't like to get away from, "race" is a theme it likes, "holocaust" is also a theme it likes, and so is "gay/trans". This is why this year The Danish Girl was nominated, but not Suffragette. "sexism/feminism" is not a theme that the Osars likes too much. But the other thing is it can't deal with subtlety, for instance "Suffragette" would have had a better chance of being nominated than "Revolutionary road" (assuming they were in the same year) because it is clear that Suffragette is a film about feminism, however Revolutionary Road is a movie that you really need to think about, it doesn't hit you over the head with the theme, and also it isn't just one theme, the feminism is just one part of it, it's too subtle for the Oscars to understand. (By the way though I admit that Revolutionary Road had a horrible promo, mainly because it was a hard movie to sum up in a promo, but because of the promo I didn't want to see it at all originally but caught it by chance).
Another movie I thought was excellent was "Margin Call" but it too was only nominated in one category, it was all about the causes of the GFC, but the ensemble nature of it is not usually too popular with the Oscars (though there are a few exceptions to that such as Robert Altman films and Crash). The oscars tends to like, one clear simple theme, and one major protagonist. Naturally movies like that can be brilliant, I am not knocking them, for instance Suffragette has one simple, clear theme and personally I thought was brilliant, and should have been nominated, but alas it's "sexism" theme is not one that the Oscars would go for.
Also Oscar doesn't want a "black" movie that's not about "black issues", because surely black people only problem should be "black issues" so you aren't going to see a movie where a black person has to deal with say euthanasia for example, but you will see plenty of civil rights movies.
So as for "diversity" well it's not just diversity in colour that the Oscars doesn't like, it's any movie that doesn't hit you over the head with what it's about. By the way I am not one of these serious arthouse lovers, so no I'm not being a film snob here, I also enjoy watching a silly movie for sheer entertainment value, and many arthouse films I loathe, but yes sometimes I feel that the Oscars operate on a level that is "can a five year old understand the theme?" Or "the five year old will not understand why a black person is in the movie if they are not a slave/civil rights worker."
There have been other movies too that I couldn't believe missed out on a nomination but I can't quite think of what they are now.
Yes! Revolutionary Road, the promos made me avoid it but catching 20minutes of it on TV made me switch over- because I liked it that much I wanted to see it properly, all the way thru without ads.
Hollywood can't cope with intricate. Hollywood doesn't want complex. Hollywood, most of the time, produces glossy tech-y versions of the old morality play. On top of that, Hollywood is so concerned with promoting their sponsors and pushing certain messages, appeasing those who provide shiny warplanes and army gear, for the war hero and 'poor us/white mans burden" war tragedy films.. I think they're too busy with that to lift their own condescending appraisal of audiences' film savvy.
It's business, and business likes to be loved by the powerful.