Two-time Oscar victor George Clooney told Variety: “If you think back 10 years ago, the Academy was doing a better job”. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated. The 54-year-old actor divulged to Variety why he thinks the film industry is “moving in the wrong direction”.
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Nyong’o had more to say on the matter, titling the post after a quote by an African American writer: “Not everything that is faced can be changed”. “Although there were multiple performances and films that existed this year(and were overlooked), we still need more”.
This doesn’t invalidate anything Clooney is saying; his statement is an important one that we should all take to heart.
Clooney raises a good point, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been said in the aftermath of the Academy’s choices for Oscar contention this year.
“This institution doesn’t reflect its president and it doesn’t reflect this room” he said, regarding the Academy and Boone, who is African-American.
He added that while African Americans have every reason to be angry that they are not being represented proportionately, the situation for Hispanics is “even worse”. My agent and I, we’d get scripts and we were always asked to read the “black male” character. “We used to be better at it”, George concluded.
The Academy has some 6,000 members, all of whom work in the film industry and are elected by their peers for life.
Oyelowo was at the King Legacy Awards the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles presenting Academy president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, an award named after civil rights icon Rosa Parks.
The day after the nominations were announced Chris Rock, the host for the 28 February award show himself called them the “White BET Awards”.
In 2005, Don Cheadle, Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman were all nominated for acting Oscars.
Last year, the Academy also came in for heavy criticism over the lack of diversity among the Oscar winners.
Last year, the Oscars received a significant amount of backlash after an alleged “lack of diversity” among its nominees.
The president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), Cheryl Boone Isaacs, has pledged already to act, and has released the following statement over Twitter…
“The reason the rest of the world looks at us like we have no clue is because in 2016 it’s a complete embarrassment to say that the heights of cinematic achievement have only been reached by white people”. “And now a woman over 40 has a very hard time being a lead in a movie”, he continues.
It’s been a great year for movies – but, unfortunately, the same can’t be said for film recognition.
The director of critically acclaimed “Straight Outta Compton”, a biopic about the rap group N.W.A, was also snubbed.
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Lee’s call for a boycott on Monday followed nominations last week which featured no people of color in the 20 lead and supporting actor and actress nominations.
