this is totally unscientific but i love percentages (basic ones; i am awful at percentages in general when we are talking algebraically - information absolutely irrelevant to this post):
- 84 total best actor academy awards given (including ties and repeat winners)
- 84 total best actress academy awards given (including ties and repeat winners)
- 75 total best supporting actor academy awards given
- 75 total best supporting actress academy awards given
- giving us a total 318 awards
- of which, if there are 5 total black best actor/actress award winners
- 4 latino best actor/actress award winners
- and 4 asian best actor/actress award winners
- that gives us a total of 13 best actor/actress award winners of color (barring any that i have not been informed about, which is v. possible)
- giving us, ladies and gentlemen and trolls
- a proportion of
- (drum roll, please)
- 4.088%!
WHOA. Okay, so first I’d like to clarify that I agree with the basic premise that racism is a problem in the film industry. I mean, people were objecting to the new Red Tails movie because there were no white main characters. Obviously, there is a major problem here.
However:
Are you trying to say that unless 1/4 of the awards are given to African Americans, 1/4 to Asians, etc. the system is fucked up?* Because I’d be willing to bet that at least 70% of the US identifies as white. And that’s as of today, 2012. Historically speaking, there are far more Latinos and probably more Asians today than there were when these awards were first being given.**
I’m sorry if this seems unduly pissed; I think this issue is too important to justify with misleading statistics that can be easily disregarded.
*For the sake of argument, let’s disregard the existence of Native Americans, people of Middle Eastern decent, and so on.
**However, it should be noted that when these awards were created there was no way in hell that they would have gone to a minority.
***Sorry for having a ridiculous number of footnotes.
Hi.
To be honest, your first point sounds like it’s halfway down the road towards the same argument people use against affirmative action - that just because these groups aren’t being rewarded at the same levels or proportions doesn’t mean that the system is being unfair, but rather that the individuals within these groups either aren’t trying hard enough, aren’t gaming the system enough to exploit it enough to succeed, or simply aren’t getting out there enough to be considered contenders. Which, sure. But to say that the system isn’t responsible is disingenuous because the system is exactly what ensures that all of the abovementioned points happen. When you have casting calls for films that do not list a race within the character description, as opposed to a casting call that is something like
T-BONE, 20s and black, grew up on the street, and is straight out of prison with a thirst for vengeance*
then it’s essentially using the fact that there’s no race listed to list a race. Because it’s the norm, it’s the default, and it’s invisible.
What I was trying to say with that post - however flippantly and inarticulately - is that there is an issue in representation. And not only in terms of actors, but also in terms of stories. In the history of the Academy doing these awards, which is 80+ years or so, there were only thirteen worthy performances by actors of color?
And okay, assuming that’s true (which is possible since most films cast people of color in essentially the same handful of stereotypes again and again), then why is it that they can’t also play lead in the same dozen awful summer blockbusters that get made every year? And I mean more than just the token A-list star: your Will Smiths, Morgan Freemans, Jackie Chans, Zhang Ziyis, Salma Hayeks, Antonio Banderases, etc. etc. (That is not an all-inclusive list, obviously.)
There’s honestly no one who is not white that can rival Ryan Reynolds at his own game and get paid that much money?
I may be meandering off the point here, since we’re talking about the Academy Awards - a fixture in Hollywood that’s meant to celebrate some kind of legitimate Art, of a kind of Making It as an actor that celebrates the craft and not just your power to draw people into theaters by the power of your face or something.
There are a dearth of stories for actors of color (partly because there is a dearth of people-of-color working behind the camera and writing the scripts, but that’s something for another day). And best actor/best actress in both leading and supporting roles is a big deal(, I suppose); those are the awards (with, I suppose, Best Picture) that most people pay attention to. And if you ask most people on the street to name actors of color, I bet you you’re going to get the same four names from an awfully large proportion of people.
These awards are about visibility. You would think that as 30% of the population, we would be rather visible, and we would see that reflected in the art that we produce. Art, at its best, in my estimation, is a reflection of the culture and the society that it emerges out of, and for a country that seems so insistent on shouting to the rooftops about its inclusiveness, its melting-pot mentality, its “out-of-many, one”-ness, well, I’m not really that. If art reflects culture reflects - ultimately - the people, then what are we seeing here? A whole lot of stories that are geared towards one experience.
And even when there are films, even when there are actors to support in films that make it to the Academy Awards, there are more Driving Miss Daisys and The Helps and The Blind Sides than there are anything else. Even when it comes to stories with people of color, it never really seems to be about the person of color except as agent for a white character’s journey. Dances with Wolves won Best Picture, and there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a white savior story.
I wasn’t saying that people of color should have won all of the awards back in 1929, when all of this started. But 80 years or so later, there’s been no progression from those statistics of way-back-when. Not really. If the Oscars represent celebrating the pinnacle of achievement in creative filmmaking or whatever, the cinematographic arts, then why is it that people of color within the industry are seldom honored, both behind and in front of the camera?
The larger point of that post was about representation. The point was to call out why it is that actors of color aren’t nominated more, or don’t win more. It’s about inclusiveness. If art is a reflection of a culture and what it values and the stories that it chooses above others, then the question is why those stories? If we are celebrating stories, then why are we celebrating Dances with Wolves and The Blind Side? These are stories that have people of color in them, but they’re not about people of color and they’re not about their experiences.
And in continuing to privilege these same narratives over and over again, what it really says to me is that the stories, the contributions, and the perspectives of people of color, as active characters within a narrative, as people in front of the camera, as people behind the camera, are not worth acknowledging.
(*This is a pretty game example in scripts. Maybe not in casting sides, which I’m less familiar with, but in my work as a script reading intern, I’ve seen more than my fair share of these descriptions in a ton of screenplays)
so there’s been some conversations about racism in fandom on my dash lately and @bananaleaves commentary here is what i want so many ppl to understand. it’s pretty amazing how much ppl will justify racism and other -isms in media (and of course irl). there’s always some justification about how there just can’t be poc leads or racist stereotypes aren’t actually offensive…
