No one has said that, that I’ve seen. It’s a matter of the whole slate of twenty acting nominees.
If the question is whether the nomination process is biased now, it is necessary to draw an arbitrary line to define “now”. It is arbitrary but selecting this century is as good or bad a choice as any.
Oscar-worthy performances would be the ideal denominator but that is so subjective that any value used there would be substituting one argument for another.
Making the implied assumption that quality of acting is equal across races and that the number of actors and roles are roughly the same percentage as blacks in the population are reasonable as long as you are aware of the assumptions.
Saying that black actors have been nominated for the acting awards and have won in roughly the same percentage as in the general population during this century is a valid claim.
In general, the studios are in the business of making and selling an entertainment product. With 60% of the population being white and 10% being black (I’m accepting the stats up-thread), it makes financial sense to try to appeal to the white audience. When does a sound financial decision become racist?
Some for this year’s Oscars.
Slavery was a sound financial decision back in the day, right?
When it is the one you just described.
Still, I’m not convinced that whites prefer white Oscar winners, or white performers. Whites have a long history of enjoying entertainment by blacks. Even if they didn’t, I don’t see how the Oscars would change things much - would white audiences say “a black guy won an oscar so I’m not going to the movies any more?”
Of course you can “Do the Right Thing” with your own money.
The point wasn’t the financial impact of black Oscar winners. It was the financial impact of studios making a decision to broaden the appeal of their product and therefore reducing quality roles for black actors.
Racism is a factor but I’m not convinced it lies with the Oscar nominating/voting process.
You want to know whose fault this is? Actors. It’s only the acting branch of the Academy that gets to select the acting nominees. Want to know why Idris Elba wasn’t nominated? It’s because enough of his fellow actors thought somebody else was better. Not because the studios don’t make enough parts for him. His fellow actors know how good he is. It’s just this year they thought other actors were better. So when George Clooney or Whoopi Goldberg complain about the lack of diversity I want to know who they picked. Because if their ballots were as white as the final nominee list they can STFU.
However, not everybody in the acting branch is actually acting today. Membership is for life; the median age is 62. People who’ve been out of the business for decades have the same voting rights as Clooney. Elba isn’t necessarily being judged by his peers.
I heard this line in a song from a movie called “Ping Pong Playa” which everyone should
watch as it’s pretty funny.
“I watch SpongeBob just to see a yellow face.”
And if they showed you their ballots, and if they weren’t entirely populated with white people, you’d return the favor?
Since I’m too tired to troll, I’ll just say that, if there were only white actors, the issue would just be about very good actors who never won, or those that won much belatedly.
Like in the good old days, you mean?
Up to now, actually. People got theirs very late include Plummer, Landau, Newman, Wayne, and Pacino. O’toole never got his. Right now, you have people getting along in years but still waiting for the award (Norton, Damon, Downey, Depp.)
I meant the “if all actors were white” part.
“Gone with the Wind” was like 1939? Good but too old for me.
Hilarious.
It is childish and idiotic to think that Academy Award talent is distributed in the same way that race (bold, aren’t I???) is.
IOW, WTF should X percent of black actors receive awards just because that is their percentage of the population?
They shouldn’t. In a field of 20 nominated actors (it is theoretically possible to have more than 20, I guess, if two people were to be tied for the fifth nomination, but the chance of that happening are slim) the odds that black actors will get exactly the proportional number of nominations - 2 out of 20 nominations, based on the talent pool - are almost zip. And of course it’s mathematically impossible to get a proportional number of wins on one year, since 0% is lower than 10 and 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent are all higher. There will be years when black actors get no nomination, and years when they are overrepresented, as was the case in 2006, when black actors got five nominations (Forest Whitaker, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Hudson) and two of the wins (Whitaker and Hudson.)
It doesn’t work that way, and in any event there’s no way to determine what the right nominations/winners are. You can look even at the existing nominees, compare them to other white actors, and argue quite convincingly they didn’t nominate the right people. I love Matt Damon and have always enjoyed his movies but “The Martian” is not even one of his own five best performances. And Mark Rylance, really? For saying “Would it help” three or four times?
There’s really no way out of what has now become a really, really ugly public spat that will cast a pall over what is usually a light, fun celebration of cinema. Arguments like “but over the last 15 years or so, actually, black actors are proportionately represented among nominees and winners” sound a little sterile to people to honestly feel marginalized.
But what’re you going to do? It just happened.
[QUOTE=tim-n-va]
It was the financial impact of studios making a decision to broaden the appeal of their product and therefore reducing quality roles for black actors.
[/QUOTE]
IS this true? I mean, seriously, can someone show me evidence that studios are reducing quality role for black actors? If it is true, why didn’t they do this in 2006? Were they actually stupid in 2006 and didn’t realize black actors were hurting the bottom line? Since black actors weren’t getting many Oscar nods back in the day, was this something they knew up until the 80s or 90s, and then magically forgot for a 15-year span, and then just remembered? If this is true, let’s see the evidence.
There were lots of fine performances by black actors this year, which is the very reason we’re having the discussion now and why people can point to examples like Idris Elba, Will Smith, and Michael P. Jordan. It is notable that Stallone got him nomination in a movie that starred a black man, so obviously that stupid was happy to write and produce a whole movie revolving around a black man. Or Straight Outta Compton, which is about as African-American as subject matter can get. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which is the most marketable movie in almost forever, rather famously put a black actor front and centre. Hell, John Boyega was literally the first actor anyone ever saw in a scene from that movie. (He’s the first person you see in the first trailer.)
So, I mean, the roles are there. It’s just that this year they finished sixth or eighth or whatever on the nomination ballot.
They shouldn’t. In a field of 20 nominated actors (it is theoretically possible to have more than 20, I guess, if two people were to be tied for the fifth nomination, but the chance of that happening are slim) the odds that black actors will get exactly the proportional number of nominations - 2 out of 20 nominations, based on the talent pool - are almost zip. And of course it’s mathematically impossible to get a proportional number of wins on one year, since 0% is lower than 10 and 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent are all higher. There will be years when black actors get no nomination, and years when they are overrepresented, as was the case in 2006, when black actors got five nominations (Forest Whitaker, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Hudson) and two of the wins (Whitaker and Hudson.)
It doesn’t work that way, and in any event there’s no way to determine what the right nominations/winners are. You can look even at the existing nominees, compare them to other white actors, and argue quite convincingly they didn’t nominate the right people. I love Matt Damon and have always enjoyed his movies but “The Martian” is not even one of his own five best performances. And Mark Rylance, really? For saying “Would it help” three or four times?
There’s really no way out of what has now become a really, really ugly public spat that will cast a pall over what is usually a light, fun celebration of cinema. Arguments like “but over the last 15 years or so, actually, black actors are proportionately represented among nominees and winners” sound a little sterile to people to honestly feel marginalized.
But what’re you going to do? It just happened.
[QUOTE=tim-n-va]
It was the financial impact of studios making a decision to broaden the appeal of their product and therefore reducing quality roles for black actors.
[/QUOTE]
IS this true? I mean, seriously, can someone show me evidence that studios are reducing quality role for black actors? If it is true, why didn’t they do this in 2006? Were they actually stupid in 2006 and didn’t realize black actors were hurting the bottom line? Since black actors weren’t getting many Oscar nods back in the day, was this something they knew up until the 80s or 90s, and then magically forgot for a 15-year span, and then just remembered? If this is true, let’s see the evidence.
There were lots of fine performances by black actors this year, which is the very reason we’re having the discussion now and why people can point to examples like Idris Elba, Will Smith, and Michael P. Jordan. It is notable that Stallone got him nomination in a movie that starred a black man, so obviously that stupid was happy to write and produce a whole movie revolving around a black man. Or Straight Outta Compton, which is about as African-American as subject matter can get. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which is the most marketable movie in almost forever, rather famously put a black actor front and centre. Hell, John Boyega was literally the first actor anyone ever saw in a scene from that movie. (He’s the first person you see in the first trailer.)
So, I mean, the roles are there. It’s just that this year they finished sixth or eighth or whatever on the nomination ballot.