Oscars are usually noted for their pandering to please various powerful actors and directors in certain years, Slum Dog Millionaire, Life is Beautiful, and then you'll never hear anything from them for the rest of their lives in any American Award Shows. It's just some lip service to "uplift the oppressed" for a week, so Hollywood can suck each other off about how inclusive they are.
Y'know, I'd actually argue against Slumdog Millionaire being a simple pandering oscar, mainly because it brought lead actor Dev Patel into the mainstream and was a genuine breakout role for him and was a genuinely good story told well.
If you wanted a real pandering oscar, then you need to look at Captain Phillips which won a ton of oscars, but the somali actors hoping to break out off of the back of it were ground down and spat back out into the wider world.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...336e4b0a8a9b783abc1?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004 so ben afflecks brother allegedly sexual harassed someone and still won in Oscar
so since feminist frequency tweet isn't in the story (thought it was used in the twitter preview of it) here it is
In the realm which defends Jason "anal rape" Polack? hah. Good luck.
I can understand how the whole "validation through media" thing started. Perhaps it started out innocently enough. After all, coming out of Jim Crow and into the Civil Rights Era, the exclusions against "Persons of Color" (not merely blacks, but this was the most visible thing), and some voices out there were telling black children that it was hopeless, that they couldn't du nuffin or make it or get ahead because The Man/Whitey wanted to forever keep them down. So, someone got this great idea to tell children they could be anything, and placed emphasis on "representation" to inspire the children. Like, "See, if Nichelle Nichols or James Earl Jones can make it, so can you". In fact, Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) was about to quit old skool Star Trek when she met Dr. Martin Luther King. He told her she must not quit, because of the honor she was bringing to the role - it was something for black children to look up to. Something to motivate them to succeed and stay in school, get good jobs, maybe even lucrative acting jobs. Something to lift them out of poverty. Back then, not many realized that to encourage children to find validation outside themselves and base their self-esteem on things outside themselves or out of their control, is a very unhealthy psychological situation that leads to hugboxes where there didn't need to be. In addition, somehow the message got garbled, from "If x can do it so can you" into "Anytime a person of x does something, that means you have done it (without actually doing it) and you should be proud of yourself. (based on another person's actions or success)."
I'd argue not, actually. What we've seen is the
corruption of role models. We've lost the abilities and opportunities of gradual improvement every generation, which has led to that corruption.
The whole point of Nichelle Nicholas staying on was because she was a fucking unicorn that went on to make television history with the first interacial kiss on television. That's pretty damn huge back then and an enormous inspiration to many. The issue is people dividing things down by races, privileges etc. It's stonkingly racist in so, so many ways and thus entirely ironic with where its coming from, but the method isn't really that surprising.
This is where things get a bit tricky because...
Well.
Casting for roles is still racist guys, sorry to say.
Stepping away from the SJW screaming and hair pulling and fat snorting, British Screen legend Idris Elba made this point pretty damn clear quite recently in a surprisingly low key speech which I hope had a lot more influence where it mattered.
The point he made was that, when casting, he'd be handed the usual "black" roles of thug, drug dealer etc because they called for "Afro-Carribean" or "African" or "black" actors quite specifically in the casting documents.
But then for the protagonists and the other characters (that were more for whites) would not have a similar skin colour description and instead would have stupid shit like "sparkling eyes" or "cheerful smile". But Idris wouldn't be allowed to cast for those roles, or would be greatly discouraged.
Which considering we clearly have amazing UK Black talent actually annoys me.
But this is perhaps what makes Moonlight's win so awfully
awfully insidious from people who are paying lip service. "LOOK! blacks can win too!" purely because they're black and its cheap and easy for them to do giving away a statue worth a measly $400, they all get to pat themselves on the back and pretend they care because they made sure that "whitey" didn't get that cheap statue.
They then fuck back off to their gated community where the only people not white they meet are their hispanic gardeners and housekeepers.
