Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people

by Guest Sun Jan 24, 2016 10:25 am

The Academy voters need to put their hands on their hearts and ask themselves some serious questions, says Tim Robey
A row has been escalating this week over a virtually all-white set of Oscar nominees which has prompted directors Spike Lee, Michael Moore and the actor Will Smith among others to boycott next month’s ceremony in Los Angeles. It has also led to the Academy’s board of governors issuing a hasty pledge to double the number of female and minority members within its ranks by 2020.
None of this came out of the blue. One year ago, there was an almost identical flashpoint: in 2015, all 20 of the performers nominated were white.

Everything Hollywood has said about #OscarsSoWhite
For his role as Martin Luther King in Selma – a great, bruising film and one of last year’s Best Picture contenders – the British actor David Oyelowo received universal acclaim and a Golden Globe nod, but no Oscar nomination. Selma’s director, Ava DuVernay, who deserved to become the first black woman ever to make the Best Director shortlist, was also snubbed.
Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Selma-oyelowo-xlarge

Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Selma-oyelowo-xlarge

David Oyelowo in SelmaCredit: Atsushi Nishijima
At last year’s ceremony, there was a moderate outcry, plenty of pointed jokes, and a general feeling that Oscar voters needed to wake up in the future. It wasn’t at all OK to point to the three awards they had bestowed the year before on 12 Years a Slave (2013) – for Best Picture, its black screenwriter, John Ridley, and supporting actress Lupita Nyong’o. No one could seriously argue that those prizes gave Academy voters carte blanche, as it were, to ignore black themes, and artists, the following year. Not least because repetition has never been a problem for Oscar voters – indeed, the one non-white director to make the shortlist this year, for The Revenant, is last year’s winner, Birdman’s Mexican virtuoso Alejándro G. Iñarritu.

This year, the Academy’s voters barely had to look beyond their noses to see exceptionally deserving black nominees. Idris Elba, for example, is up for a Golden Globe and a Bafta for his career-topping work as an African warlord in the child-soldier drama Beasts of No Nation. You don’t even have to *like* Elba – I’m far from his biggest fan, as it happens – to recognise how special his performance is, and what a terrific fit it represents between actor and role. It’s the kind of part that tends to help a very popular and respected star to join the ranks of the Oscar-anointed. Somehow, though, the Londoner lost out. He wasn’t pipped to it by the Puerto Rican Benicio Del Toro in Sicario – Del Toro is another Bafta nominee missing from the Best Supporting Actor category – but by five white stars.
Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Beastsofnonation3-xlarge

Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Beastsofnonation3-xlarge

Idris Elba and Abraham Attah in 'Beasts of No Nation'Credit: Shawn Greene
One of these is Sylvester Stallone, who absolutely merits praise for his seventh performance as Rocky Balboa, in the sequel-cum-reboot, Creed. However, in a horribly unfortunate turn of events, Stallone’s nomination only adds to the cringeworthy situation: it’s the sole recognition voters have given to a film made by an extraordinarily talented black writer and director, Ryan Coogler, and starring an equally outstanding black lead actor, Michael B Jordan.

Rocky won Best Picture back in 1976 and was nominated for 10 awards in total, including four for acting. Reviewers have lined up to call Creed the best film in the series since then and it’s been a commercial hit beyond Warner Brothers’ wildest hopes. Yet all it gets from the Academy is a single, white, nomination. Did Warners campaign ardently enough for Coogler and Jordan to be cited? Perhaps not. But this only underlines the wider struggle that black artists still face to be recognised within the industry. Responses to this escalating controversy, such as Best Actress nominee Charlotte Rampling daftly declaring it “racist to white people”, have stoked the flames still higher.
Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Creed-xlarge-xlarge

Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Creed-xlarge-xlarge

A 2014 study found that the Academy’s members were 94 per cent Caucasian, 77 per cent male and had an average age of 63. However you look at it, the commitment the Academy’s black president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, made this week to “significantly changing our membership composition” is long overdue.
But it’s not just in the area of race that the Academy needs to step up its fight for relevance: to date, only four women have ever been nominated as Best Director, with Kathryn Bigelow the sole winner. The organisation’s myopic outlook has created an ever-widening gulf between the films audiences enjoy and those that voters will even consider for awards, a gulf that increasingly threatens the Academy’s very credibility. Oscar voters need to open their eyes, fast. They might well begin that process by asking themselves, hand on heart, if the best 40 performances in cinema over the last two years really were all given by white people.

Ten minority nominations that should have been
Best Actress:
Karidja Touré – Girlhood
Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Girlhood%202_edit-xlarge

Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Girlhood%202_edit-xlarge

Itching to escape the Paris banlieues in Céline Sciamma’s tough-yet-exuberant drama, Touré’s troubled teenage lead was a sullen knockout, bursting out of her shell.
Best Supporting Actor:
Idris Elba – Beasts of No Nation
Seemingly everyone but the Academy has recognised Elba’s Commandant as a deadly, top-flight performance, a kind of Shere Khan of African political strife
Oscar Isaac – Ex Machina
The Guatemalan American Issac must have been a near-miss last year for both Inside Llewyn Davis and A Most Violent Year. In Ex Machina, as a bearded robotics genius, he gave us a fireworks display of arrogant intelligence.
Best Director:
Ryan Coogler – Creed
Just 29, and on his second feature, Coogler has leapt to the front ranks of American filmmakers with muscle and flair, wowing everyone with the single-take fight at the film’s centre.
Best Actor:
Michael B. Jordan – Creed
In terms of sheer sweat, hard graft and emotional investment in a role, there was no one to top Jordan this year, giving us a damaged underdog who comes out swinging.
Jason Mitchell – Straight Outta Compton
The uneven NWA biopic only scored a nod for its white screenwriters, but the pick of the cast was the virtually unknown Mitchell, as tragic founder member and incorrigible playa Eazy-E.
Abraham Attah – Beasts of No Nation
Elba wasn’t the only Beasts star to turn heads: the 14-year-old Attah, plucked from Ghana’s slums, made a captivating, critically adored debut as its orphaned hero.
John Boyega – Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Poe-and-finn-ew-xlarge

Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Poe-and-finn-ew-xlarge

Credit: Entertainment Weekly
How funny, and touching, and entirely adorable, was Boyega’s Finn? His comic timing was perfect. He made us care. He has star power down to his fingertips.
Best Supporting Actress:
Tessa Thompson – Creed
Thompson (Dear White People) is a rising star and Creed has sent her soaring, because she fights off every cliché of “the girlfriend role” and proves a fiery adversary in herself.
Viola Davis – Blackhat
Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Blackhat1-xlarge

Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people Blackhat1-xlarge

Viola Davis in Michael Mann's cyber-thriller film 'Blackhat'
Stamping her fierce authority on Michael Mann’s neglected cyberthriller, Davis gave it heaps of extra value, fatigue, and savvy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/movie-news/oscars-academy-race-row-boycott/

by Guest Sun Jan 24, 2016 10:29 am

Inside the Academy - the people who decide on the Oscars

Ethnicity
2014
93%White7%Non-white
Data: LA Times
Gender
2014
77%Male23%Female
Data: LA Times
Age
2012
85%50 and over15%Under 50
Data: LA Times
Career background
6,124 VOTING MEMBERS
1,150Actors485Producers457Executives428Sound3,604Other
Data: AMPAS branch tally 2014
Invitations to join
2011–2015
2011
133
2012
133
2013
271
2014
276
2015
322
Data: AMPAS

by eddie Sun Jan 24, 2016 3:25 pm

The film Creed, should've had more nominations.
I'd have though the black guy in it wouldve been up for a nomination.
I haven't seen it yet (intend to) but people reckon he was brilliant.
Apologies, the actor's name escapes me

by Guest Sun Jan 24, 2016 4:01 pm

I have not seen Creed yet, but I have seen "Beasts of no Nation" which is something again I recommend. Really was surprised Ida did not get nominated

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Oscars race row: were the best 40 performances of the last two years really all by white people

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