Hashtag Oscars So White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchal

On one hand, I want to just dismiss the Oscars because there is a sense in which they don’t matter. They typically reward conventional, reassuring filmmaking that makes us all feel better about the way things are, that lets us feel smug and superior and doesn’t in any way challenge the status quo. Which is not to say that sometimes they don’t end up rewarding truly great performances or achievements; sometimes they do. They just also ignore a tremendous amount of great work that is politically vital and challenging. 

There is a larger sense in which the Oscars do matter, though, and in which we cannot simply dismiss them. For so many people around the world, they help set the standard for cinematic excellence. They influence our perceptions of what great filmmaking is and should aspire to be.

Since the announcement of this year’s overwhelmingly white Oscar nominations, some have responded to arguments of bias or racism in the Academy by pointing out that in recent years, black actors have been nominated and won Oscars for their performances, and that films featuring black actors and that deal with racism (like 12 Years a Slave) have taken the top honor. But a film like 12 Years a Slave, while importantly confronting America’s legacy of racism, is not going to challenge the contemporary status quo or make anyone uncomfortable about the America we live in now. Just about everyone unquestioningly agrees that slavery is a profoundly shameful part of our country’s history. What many don’t want to confront is the way that our country’s legacy of racism is alive today.

Check out this clip from the 62nd Academy Awards, honoring the films of 1989.  It starts out with Arnold Schwarzenegger praising the Academy as a global community, pointing out that the films nominated for Best Picture were directed by an international assortment of people (white men, all of them). Then Kim Basinger comes out to introduce one of that evening’s Best Picture nominees, Dead Poets Society, but before she does, she goes off-script.

“We’ve got five great films here, and they’re great for one reason: because they tell the truth. But there is one film missing from this list that deserves to be on it because ironically it might tell the biggest truth of all, and that’s Do the Right Thing.

She’s not wrong, and the reasons why Do the Right Thing and Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X were not nominated are clear: they aren’t comforting or reassuring about race. They confront the ways in which systemic racism is still a powerful force in American life. They show us people actively struggling against those systems and people trying to assert that their lives matter within systems that assert that they don’t. 

None of this is because of conscious resistance on the part of Academy members; rather, it’s a result of their own biases about what constitutes greatness and what kinds of stories have value. So to say that this black actor or that film featuring black actors won an Oscar doesn’t really get at the ways in which the Oscars are “so white.” What it seems to me that the Oscars are largely unwilling to do is recognize black performances and black films that challenge the status quo, those performances and films that shine a light on racism as it exists in this country today, or even those performances and films that simply assert that black lives matter for their own sake. As A.O. Scott says in this discussion of race and the year’s Oscar nominations at the New York Times:

“Creed” belongs in their company, but I think some of its particular virtues flew under the Academy’s radar, much as the glories of “Beyond the Lights” (2014) did. In addition to being a fight movie, “Creed” is a quiet, sweet love story about two people who happen to be young, gifted and black. It’s also suffused with hip-hop and Philadelphia street culture, but in a way that feels entirely organic. It’s not a film that is pointedly “about” race or class or any particular social problem. It’s not sending a message or teaching a lesson. It’s about the lives, feelings and aspirations of its characters. Which, if those characters are not white, is apparently not enough. American cinema — more than television or pop music or literature — still prefers to treat black people as symbols, problems and members of a “niche” audience.

I don’t believe that the Academy’s problems are limited to ones of race, though all of these issues intersect. I’m fascinated by the fact that Carol is not nominated for Best Picture. Whether one admires the film or not, I think there is little question that on the surface it appears to be precisely the sort of film the Academy usually goes for. “Oscar bait.” It’s a handsomely produced period piece with a knockout performance from one of the most respected actors of our era. The reason Carol wasn’t nominated is because of the degree to which it marginalizes male experience narratively and structurally and illuminates male entitlement. This is actually somewhat radical, and I believe it would have made many Academy voters uncomfortable. The women’s inner lives and their connection to each other don’t matter because of the effect they have on men. They matter for their own sakes, for themselves and each other.

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When people say that the Academy Awards reflect and reinforce structural inequalities in our culture, pointing out that, well, Kathryn Bigelow won an Oscar for directing The Hurt Locker or, well, Crash (the reprehensible Crash) won Best Picture doesn’t refute the fact that there is a problem. The problem lies in the types of stories the Academy is willing (or unwilling) to recognize as valuable, and the uncomfortable truths the Academy is willing (or unwilling) to put in the spotlight.