Hip-hop hit movie “Straight Outta Compton” failed to get a place in the best picture category, and the Twitter hashtag #Oscarssowhite, which sprung up a year ago, was quickly revived.
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“Fruitvale Station. The Butler”.
For a second year in a row, the nominees for the 2016 Academy Awards were largely a pool of straight, white people. “It was 12 Years a Slave”.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is the only non-white in the running for Best Director his film The Revenant.
“I was surprised you weren’t nominated for more than just Best Original Screenplay”, Williams said, while slipping in a swift “congratulations” to the rapper-turned-filmmaker.
Additionally, there were a number of highly praised individual performances from black and minority actors that were also ignored, ranging from Benicio Del Toro’s turn in Sicario to Michael B. Jordan in Creed and Will Smith in Concussion.
“To say nothing of them being award recipients, African Americans, especially, remain hopeful of breakthroughs year after year”.
The Academy had already come in for heavy criticism for a lack of diversity at last year’s Oscars at which all the acting slots went to white performers.
However, she told ABC affiliate, KABC-TV, “We are being louder and louder and we are going to continue this conversation and we’re going to do more than just talk”.
As a result, #OscarsSoWhite was born.
Besides the Sicario blanking, the nominations have several glaring omissions – most of which, sadly, fall into line with the Old White Male model of Hollywood.
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For Everett, zero nominations in at least the big categories should not be an option today. Her sentiments are altruistic and show good intentions, but little has changed to incorporate more diversity in films and awards shows like the Oscars. Todd Haynes was egregiously snubbed back in 2003 for the Douglas Sirk homage “Far From Heaven”, as his film was left out of the Best Picture and Director lineups, with only a screenplay nod for Haynes. “Its really up to the stars to align and for the universe to bless us, you know. That is one of the necessary components of making or getting that type of progress done”. But Tim Gray, awards editor for industry magazine Variety, said critics should perhaps look more towards the studios in denouncing the lack of diversity in Hollywood.
