Monday, February 25, 2019

Are the Oscars now too black? Still too white? Not purple enough?

I managed to sit through the whole of the Oscars awards last night for the first time ever and, yes, it was long, but not unbearably so. It just goes to show that much-maligned role of "presenter" is actually totally redundant and unnecessary.
It was the usual mix of the good, the bad and the ugly (in the latter category, of course, come some of the worst offences against fashion delicacy). Many commentators seem to agree with me that Green Book did not really deserve Best Picture or probably most of the other awards it picked up - it's a competent but unexceptional film - and that Bohemian Rhapsody was also probably over-represented in the winners' club (although Rami Malek's speech was one of the better ones). It was nice to see Olivia Colman win Best Actress (and deliver a funny but heart-felt speech), even if either one of her two co-stars in The Favourite could just as easily have been nominated for main, rather than supporting, roles, and I was disappointed that the film did not win more awards (ditto with Roma).
The overwhelming impression from the evening, though, was the number of black, Hispanic and Asian faces among the presenters, nominees and winners, to the extent that I was actually expecting a social media backlash this morning. The #OscarsSoBlack hashtag has been trending since the nominations were announced back in January, and yes, as I suspected, there is also an #OscarsTooBlack hashtag. There are several tweets suggesting that the Academy has over-compensated this year, running scared from more #OscarsSoWhite allegations. But the #OscarsSoBlack hashtag seems to be shared with, even dominated by, people who are genuinely pleased about the Oscars' new-found inclusiveness and diversity. Some are still fuming that Black Panther did not win more awards, although that would really not have been justified in my opinion, much as I enjoyed the film.
This year's Oscars representation by non-whites certainly seems to be disproportionate to the ethnic make-up of the United States as a whole (77% white, 13% non-white) - and the Oscars is essentially an American phenomenon after all. Does that mean that black people are just better at this kind of thing (as they seem to be at basketball, sprinting, rap, etc)? Is this a one-off blip, or a period of adjustment? Is it a case of over-compensation for white liberal shame? I guess time will tell.

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