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The 2016 Academy Awards acting nominees
If you haven’t noticed the steam rising from the Twitter icon on your iPhone, then you may not be aware that once again, the Oscars have been declared #SoWhite. Typically, when this ever-so-shocking event occurs, the narrative dovetails into two discussions:
Why do black people want acknowledgment from “these” awards, and why don’t artists show up at black award shows?
Answer: Because total recognition in your field is better than niche recognition.
No convoluted Hotepian logic trumps the truth.
How exactly can we shift the makeup of the various creative-arts academies from “#SoWhite” to “#AWellMixedPaletteThatReflectsTheRacialAndCulturalDiversityOfAmerica”?
Answer: This is a tougher nut to crack. Statistically, we don’t have the numbers or influence. There are simply not enough of us in the world of filmmaking telling our stories.
There are more than 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and most of them aren’t high-profile actors and directors. There are professional writers, editors, makeup artists, cinematographers, set designers, lighting technicians and more. These people vote. These people contribute. And nowhere near enough of them are black. The technical side of filmmaking is probably whiter than a chicken breast seasoned with only table salt.
We can’t all play the outfield like Ken Griffey Jr. Some of us should try to be catchers or third basemen, because there’s nothing wrong with strong thighs. It would be awesome if some of those young women duping society via YouTube makeup tutorials got the support and encouragement to work in film. Likewise, if someone pushed your cousin Terry to stop lining his closet with egg cartons and find other work in sound production besides recording his mixtape.
In addition to those who need support from the fringes, there are plenty of young black filmmakers coming out of the major film academies at UCLA, USC, NYU and AFI who need both human and financial support and opportunities to tell their stories at a feature-length level. Making films ain’t easy, and it ain’t cheap.
While people are upset about the snubs for Creed, Concussion, Straight Outta Compton and Beasts of No Nation, the types of stories that these films represent reveal the issue with what is deemed a bankable black narrative.
We have one franchise film, one Will Smith-forcing-his-hero-narrative-down-our-throats-again film, a hip-hop biopic and, of course, an African-child-as-soldier film. Seriously, if you peruse the past 30 years of Oscar nominees, the only nonslave, non-civil-rights black drama nominated is Beasts of the Southern Wild.
No regular-ass drama-filled s–t.
And when I say “s–t,” I mean non-massa-, non-kingpin-, non-warlord-related s–t.
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