All year every year,I watch beautiful black actresses play stressed out slaves and domestic help on film,but on Oscar night,I see these same performers magically appear on the red carpet looking polished,refreshed,and more glamorous than the year before. As predictable as it is eerie,this contrast leads to the sad realisation that the same old Hollywood representation of black and brown people one of miserable side-characters is probably better than none at all. Weve come to accept that the Academy Awards,while they claim to be representative of the industrys offerings,are unsettlingly un-diverse.
But what is diversity? Where does it come from and what does it look like? In the case of the Academy Awards,its much easier to describe what diversity aint.
Charges of racism and sexism are easy to flippantly make,but such extremes are not necessary to consider the real problem: at the very least,the Academy is out of touch,and at worst,its members are unable to fully embrace non-traditional depictions of women and people of colour. This is certainly not what diversity looks like.
Take,for example,the Best Picture nominees,each excellent in its own right but most focusing on themes that are meant for some to revel in and for others to simply swallow. Argo,the category winner,tells the story of CIA operatives during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis,and Zero Dark Thirty is about the CIAs hunt for Osama bin Laden. Both are based on true stories,yet both also celebrate the moral fortitude of American imperialism in the Middle East. That these films are too sophisticated to end with a thumbs-up and a Go USA! message in red,white and blue across the screen does not diminish their appeal to the American middle-aged white male dominated demographic of the Academy.
Meanwhile,Lincoln earned Daniel Day-Lewis an unprecedented third Best Actor award for his portrayal of The Great Emancipator,but did so by framing abolition as a huge favour that black America waited to be given by whites instead of as a social movement in which blacks played a major part. Historical inaccuracy is difficult to avoid and common in Spielberg films that are meant more to inspire than to inform,but a film about equality for blacks that omits Frederick Douglass,and any supporting actor of colour for that matter,comes close to dealing in fantasy.
Even Django Unchained,whose gratuitous violence against racists masquerades as black revenge,revels in the horrors of slavery and in ugly images that pick at a historical scab thats fresher for some than for others. Dont be fooled; even with a predominantly black cast,Django Unchained was even less anti-slavery than Lincoln. The main character was not motivated by the unjust nature of slavery,but by love for his wife. So while it is fascinating to see a film that refuses to gloss over the brutality of racial bondage,Jamie Foxxs Django was no Nat Turner.
Even as it rewards unsettling themes,the Academy favours the white perpetuators of these themes while shutting out performers of colour. Is it coincidence that stories about Americans navigating scary foreign lands filled with brown people none of whom were main characters have been so highly praised? Was it just luck of the draw that Christoph Waltzs performance in Django as a good white guy earned him a Best Supporting Actor award,while the performances of the films black cast,most notably Samuel L. Jacksons amazing turn,were ignored? Its hard to say,but the trend is disturbing and it certainly misses the true definition of diversity.
The good news is that things are changing. The internet has opened up platforms for community support that could someday render studios far less essential,and therefore less authoritative,on the way in which films are financed and promoted. The short film Inocente even won a best documentary award,becoming the first Kickstarter.com funded project to win an Oscar after raising its $50,000 budget from nearly 300 backers. The Academy claims that it wants to become more diverse and we have no choice but to believe it but its little golden statues are no longer the only barometer for cultural legitimacy in America.
Ford is a Los Angeles-based pop culture writer
express@expressindia.com
