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 orbox-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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