by Angela Batuure
I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of Hollywood awards ceremonies like the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, People’s Choice Awards, or
the Academy Awards. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve sat down to watch these shows (unless Beyoncé is performing, in which case the likelihood I will watch increases to 100%). This year however, with phenomenal (and racially diverse!) films such as 12 Years a Slave, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, and Fruitvale Station being eligible for nominations, I decided to be one of the 20 something million people who tune in to watch these events. I thought (perhaps naively) that maybe, just maybe, the 2014 awards shows would allow incremental improvements in the honestly outrageous lack of minority award winners.
Newcomer Lupita Nyong’o has proven to be a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood, winning both a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics Choice Award and the prestigious Academy Award for best supporting Actress. Lupita’s Oscar win adds her name to a list of only five other African American actresses who have won in that same category. Lupita’s awards were well deserved, but even with her wins, and the wins for 12 Years a Slave, the 2014 awards season followed the trend set by its predecessors: time after time, the number of people of color nominated for and winning awards is is astronomically low.
Since the Oscars started in 1929, fewer than 4% of the awards have been given to African Americans. Only three Oscars have ever been awarded to Latinos for acting roles (Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn and Benico del Toro). The majority of voters for Awards ceremonies like the Oscars are even less diverse than the winners list. In the highly secretive roster of 5,765 voting members of the Academy, 94% are Caucasian and 77% are male. Only 2% of the voters are black and less than 2 % are Hispanic. The median age of voters is 62 and only 14% of voters are younger than 50. Many of the white male voters don’t really see a problem with the lack of diversity on the voting panel. In an article in the LA Times, the former president of the Academy Awards, Frank Pierson commented that:
“I don’t see any reason why the academy should represent the entire American population. That’s what the People’s Choice Awards are for,” said Pierson, who still serves on the board of governors. “We represent the professional filmmakers, and if that doesn’t reflect the general population, so be it.”
Unfortunately, Pierson fails to realize that as arguably the most prestigious and sought after award for a person in the film industry, the Academy Awards sets the canon for film. The Oscars tell viewers what the most respected films, actors, actresses, screenwriters and directors in the industry are–and more often than not, these people are white. This sends a message to viewers that minorities are less talented than their white counterparts and it fails to give a comprehensive representation of the American demographic. For almost all actors, receiving a nomination for an Academy Award is a huge career push. Many stars such as Jennifer Lawrence became household names simply because of Oscar nominations. Non-white actors who may be talented but fail to receive these crucial nominations are not privy to the career boost that their white counterparts receive.
It seems almost unfair that the board with the power to determine cinematic excellence in our culture comes from a group of people who are not wholly representative of our culture. What then makes a film with a racially diverse cast “excellent” in the eyes of the Academy?
Beyond the Oscars, the four movies with non-white male leads–12 Years a Slave, The Butler, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and Fruitvale Station–are all based on true stories. 12 Years tells the tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was captured and enslaved and wrote an autobiography by the same name; Mandela is self-explanatory; Fruitvale Station (which was snubbed at the major awards shows despite an avalanche of praise) centers on the 2009 death of Oscar Grant III, an unarmed, handcuffed black man who was shot dead by a police officer in Oakland; The Butler draws its meat from the life of Eugene Allen, a black butler who worked for the White House for over three decades.
All four of these movies require having black lead actors and actresses. While all four movies are excellent and the stories of the people they are about are necessary and important, to move forward, Hollywood needs to start writing and casting characters of color differently. In effect, all the black actors and actresses must compete against other black actors and actresses for roles that are often explicitly about race. In Hollywood where roles for people of color are scarce, actors and actresses of color are in competition for work with one another more often than they are with their white counterparts. Hollywood fosters a community where black actors and actresses can legitimately argue that there is only so much room at the top. An influx of black actors and actresses trying to break into the film industry limits the roles available for current actors and actresses. Until writers and casting directors create more diverse roles, the competition for minority actors and actresses is, in actuality, a zero sum game.
While big roles for minorities in Hollywood are hard to come by, quality roles are even harder to find. More often than not, the roles available for minorities are roles that fail to challenge the actor or actress but also perpetuate stereotypes. Black characters are more often than not play the roles of maids, butlers, prison inmates and drug dealers. Hardly ever do we see a black person playing the role of a politician, astronaut or a Wall Street banker. Hollywood writers must understand that minority actors and actresses are more than just the butlers, slaves, and criminals that they are forced to portray on television–and maybe, just maybe, in the next awards ceremony we will see minorities in roles written for talented actors and actresses, not just pigeonholed into playing a character based more so on their race than their talent.