“Oscars Of Color”: a story, a rant, a proposal

Intro

Yes, internet, I’m aware. We’re already nearly-done with this discussion. But just, real quick.

I’m skeptical of online outrage. I started using AOL on my parents’s Macintosh whatever in 1992, and have, as a result, been subjected to nearly everything it has on-offer. I feel it’s part of my job as a good web citizen to dismiss conspiracies, so-called injustices, and every “6 Things You Need To Care About” slideshow.

So when this latest firestorm hit (a few prominent black directors and actors boycotting the Oscars because no blacks were nominated in 2016 or 2015, the subsequent “conversation”), I rolled my eyes. You know what’s going to happen:

• A white actor will pipe up, try to point out what would happen if a white actor said something similar
• That quote will be taken for a ride
• The white actor will backpedal
• The collective will file that away in the ever-bloating folder labeled “Don’t question this shit. Just say, ‘Yeah, that’s awful,’ and keep the yeah-buts to yourself. Otherwise you’re a relic or worse, and it’s your career.”

I looked up the history of minority Oscar nominees anyway, and my first impression was, Holy shit, there are actually a lot of black nominees. What is everybody bitching about?

While I compiled my spreadsheet (I love spreadsheets), I scrolled down memory lane.

Backstory

My brother Pete started an Oscars pool sometime in the mid-90's, and the whole family got in on it. My friends joined, friends of friends, each of us putting in five bucks. You got two choices for each category: two points if your first choice won, and one point if your second choice won. End of the night, scores got tallied up and the winner took it all. After a couple years, the scoring was refined; the major categories became weighted. And, because there was money involved, and I was a twelve year old, I tried to figure it out. The major acting categories were now, officially, more important; my brother Pete and I talked about them each year, building our theories along the way. By 2001 we had a few ground-rules:

• A foreigner/Old English workhorse always wins Supporting Actor.
• Supporting Actress always goes to a young actress they want to push along to stardom, a stage actress, or whichever black actress is nominated.
• Best Actress goes to a glamorous, moody leading lady. If it’s a “Tour de Force” role, she’s getting it.
• Best Actor is going to the weirdest guy. Sometimes it’s a physical deformation, sometimes it’s drugs, sometimes it’s Italy.

We hadn’t quite figured out the relationship between Best Director and Best Picture; I had vague ideas about Best Picture going to the most socially-important movie (the one you’d most naturally call a “film”), and Best Director going to the guy whose vision seemed the most potent and startling. For the acting categories I felt it was easier to plan for: I started to include ideas like “how long this actor’s been around,” and “which roles he has played in the past for which he ‘deserved’ the Oscar but didn’t win”, and “what choice would be a nice story.”

I started considering the Oscars a social tapestry, a thing carefully constructed to project the image of the Academy as equal parts progressive and seasoned, heartwarming yet provocative. Celebratory of the important, and somehow an arm of some vague, retroactive critical justice. I knew Denzel was going to win in 2002, not because he was great in “Training Day”, but because he was great in “The Hurricane” and lost that year, and perhaps more importantly, because he was unquantifiably-yet-undeniably more than “Winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Denzel Washington”. I was right, he won, and since then the shows felt formulaic to me; they were eventualities that could be predicted, and every year subject to whatever social momentum was building; the “conversation”, so to speak.

Now

I’m an internet vet, like a lot of thirty-somethings, so I act like I’ve been here before; I usually just let whatever noise wash over until everyone’s sick of it. But I feel like I know movies. I know them, and like them, well enough to debate who is actually better in a film, why Tom Cruise was robbed in “Magnolia”, and apparently, well enough to take interest this time, when excellence in film is used as a backdrop for what feels instinctively like petulant grandstanding and unchecked hypocrisy. My goal isn’t to dismiss the idea of “representation in film”, or to decide whether or not it’s racist to boycott the Oscars due to the color of a set of nominees’s skin (it is, by definition). I don’t want to “raise the question” of Oscar diversity through the years, or tell prominent black actors and directors to keep quiet, because other races. That’s been covered.

I quickly compiled the list below with the hope one or two of you will give it a glance and, despite the chants of the hive-at-large, consider ideas of short-sightedness, irony, hypocrisy, double standards and lip service while considering the latest “thing” the internet is consuming. Question whether it’s the level of fame of the person speaking or the validity and truth of their statements that ought to matter, whether it is the most-suffering or simply the loudest voices that are heard and, perhaps, which causes really deserve our invaluable hashtags.

I’ve omitted Best Director and Best Picture because the social media storm seems to be revolving around actors and acting nominations. Full disclosure: Ang Lee is a notable asian Director (two wins) and Producer (two nominations), as is Steve McQueen as a black Director (one nomination) and Producer (one win).

Without further ado, three broadly-defined lists of minority Oscar nominees, including Best Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress, since 1935 (from Wikipedia).

The List

winners asterisked*

Asian

2010 — Hailee Steinfeld (1/4 Filipino)
2006 — Rinko Kikuchi
2003 — Ben Kingsley (father of Indian descent), Ken Watanabe, Shohreh Aghadashloo
2001 — Ben Kingsley
1994 — Jennifer Tilly
1991 — Ben Kingsley
1985 — Meg Tilly
1984 — Haing S. Ngor*, Pat Morita
1982 — Ben Kingsley*
GAP OF SIXTEEN YEARS
1966 — Mako
1957 — Sessue Hayakawa, Miyoshi Umeki*
1956 — Yul Brynner*
1935 — Merle Oberon

17 nominations, 3 wins. Last winner in 1984.

Latin American and Hispanic-American

2013 — Lupita Nyong’o (Kenyan, Mexican-born)*
2011 — Demian Bichir, Berenice Bejo
2006 — Adriana Barraza
2004 — Catalina Sandino Moreno
2003 — Benicio del Toro
2002 — Salma Hayek
2000 — Benicio del Toro*
1998 — Fernanda Montenegro
1993 — Rosie Perez
1991 — Mercedes Ruehl*
1990 — Andy Garcia
1988 — Edward James Olmos
1987 — Norma Aleandro
GAP OF TWENTY-THREE YEARS
1964 — Anthony Quinn
1962 — Rita Moreno*
1961 — Rita Moreno*
1959 — Susan Kohler
1957 — Anthony Quinn
1956 — Anthony Quinn*
1954 — Katy Jurado
1952 — José Ferrer, Anthony Quinn*
1950 — José Ferrer*
1948 — José Ferrer
1947 — Thomas Gomez

26 nominations, 8 wins. Three Oscars since 1962.

Black

GAP OF TWO YEARS
2013 — Lupita Nyong’o* (Kenyan, Mexican-born), Barkhad Abdi, Chiwetel Ejiofor
2012 — Quvenzhané Wallis, Denzel Washington
2011 — Octavia Spencer*, Viola Davis
2010 — Mo’Nique*, Gabourey Sidibe, Morgan Freeman
2009 — Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis
2008 — Ruby Dee
2006 — Jennifer Hudson*, Eddie Murphy, Djimon Hounsou, Will Smith, Forrest Whitaker*
2005 — Terrence Howard
2004 — Sophie Okonedo, Jamie Foxx, Morgan Freeman*, Don Cheadle, Jamie Foxx*
2003 — Djimon Hounsou
2002 — Queen Latifah
2001 — Halle Berry*, Will Smith, Denzel Washington*
1999 — Michael Clarke Duncan, Denzel Washington
1996 — Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Cuba Gooding, Jr.*
1994 — Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman
1993 — Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne
1992 — Jaye Davidson, Denzel Washington
1990 — Whoopi Goldberg
1989 — Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman
1987 — Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman
1986 — Dexter Gordon
1985 — Oprah Winfrey*, Margaret Avery, Whoopi Goldberg
1984 — Adolph Caesar
1983 — Alfre Woodard
1982 — Louis Gossett, Jr.*
1981 — Howard Rollins
1974 — Diahann Carroll
1972 — Cicely Tyson, Diana Ross, Paul Winfield
1970 — James Earl Jones
1969 — Rupert Cross
1967 — Beah Richards, Carol Channing
1963 — Sidney Poitier*
1959 — Juanita Moore
1958 — Sidney Poitier
1954 — Dorothy Dandridge
1949 — Ethel Waters
1939 — Hattie McDaniel

66 nominations, 15 wins. Nine acting Oscars in the last 12 years.

Epilogue

A graph on The Economist suggests blacks weren’t the biggest victims of the nomination drought, and made me wonder why that’s the story. The question hit me. Not what it says about the Oscars that no black actors are nominated this year, but, “What does it say that, before 2015, so many black actors have been nominated and won in the last dozen years?”

Stay with me. I’m not arguing that the Academy has thrown the black community a bone, so they should be grateful. I’m arguing that the Academy has thrown the black community a bone. And that’s it. The asian acting community? No bone. Last bone in 1984. The Latin American and Hispanic-American acting communities? Pretty boneless. Three bones since ’62. White acting community: can’t move for bones. Bones everywhere. It’s a boneyard. And that’s been the focus. White actors get all the nominations, all the Oscars. But that’s not as troubling to me as the tunnel-vision of those rallying to the banner of the black acting community this year, and what feels like the singular, half-assed patronization of the entire minority acting community by awarding a bunch of Oscars to almost-exclusively black actors over the last dozen years. We’re all expecting plenty of black nominees next year as a response, aren’t we. But how many Asians? How many Latin and Hispanic-Americans?

It’s a dilemma for me. On one hand, there’s now a call for enforced distribution of nominations (and consequently, awards); we’ve been led to believe that’s not the Oscars. The Oscars are treated like a professional sport, where you get to the top if you’re good enough, and blessed, and lucky, and special enough, and the Best Actor wins Best Actor. But maybe it’s time for us to get real. Maybe it’s time the Oscars became the Olympics; every region, every country, every type of person gets a shot. Because the more I look at the lists, the more I see a problem, and not with that GAP OF TWO YEARS under the word “Black”. The anger, the social litigation, the lobbying; it gets a direct response. The problem is the nine acting Oscars in the last 12 years as a quick, lazy makeup call for all previous exclusions. It’s a bone.