Gilded Oscar PALES under pressure

 

 The colour of Oscar this year was the lack of colour. Reel-life might be as white as the blizzard in “The Revenant”, but just blocks from the Dolby Theatre, where the Academy Awards were handed out on Monday morning Thai time, several dozen people of colour staged a protest prominent enough to tarnish the celebrity event of the year. 

For the second year in a row there was a total absence of black Oscar nominees. The small but potent protest was the culmination of a controversy that had erupted more than a month earlier when the list of award nominees was announced. Several Hollywood stars, including white actors, joined the chorus of righteous disdain, and the Academy responded quickly with a pledge to revamp the membership to reflect the true diversity of American society. But can the noise of the protesters really bring about greater diversity in the ranks of nominated actors, directors and other cinema artists?

The fundamental question is whether the Academy should be blamed for ignoring the contributions of actors of colour. Everyone acknowledges that Hollywood in its entirety has been white all along, notwithstanding the occasional Oscar triumphs of minority figures such as Sidney Poitier and Halle Berry. Almost 75 per cent of major roles go to white actors and the rest are shared among African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and smaller minorities. Probability alone robs non-white actors of the chance to be nominated for an Oscar or any other award.

In the Academy’s 87-year history, just 32 Oscars have gone to black people. Denzel Washington remains the only one to have won twice. Berry is the only black woman ever named best actress, although nine others have been nominated for memorable performances. 

These meagre victories come as no surprise when the vast majority of Academy members with voting privi

 leges are white – 94 per cent of them in 2012, when 2 per cent of the members were black and another 2 per cent Latino. 

Again hosting this year’s Oscars telecast, actor-comedian Chris Rock, who is black, deserved all the praise he earned for continuously reminding the Academy there was controversy in the air. “The white people’s choice awards”, he dubbed the event right at the top of his opening monologue. Having been urged to withdraw from the show to demonstrate solidarity with the black community, Rock turned the protest around too. “This whole ‘no black nominees’ thing has happened at least 71 other times,” he pointed out, further underscoring the Academy’s long-term blindness to people of colour. 

He also noted – darkly, as it were – that black people paid little heed to such facile matters as movie awards during the 1950s and ’60s. “They were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who wins best cinematographer!” The jokes, shared widely online, can at best ease the pain briefly for those being ignored at best and repressed at worst. 

White people constitute 62.1 per cent of the American population and yet command well in excess of 90 per cent of the leading film roles – and 100 per cent of the Oscar statuettes. The casting agents offer the rest of American actors – the 37.9 per cent shunted aside like demographic marginalia – roles as parts of the scenery, or if they’re really lucky, the part of the hero’s amusing best friend.

The chastised Academy’s promises of a revamped membership roll and reformed voting procedures have been greeted with deep cynicism. For true change to come about, for diversity to be accurately portrayed onscreen, white America must look in the mirror and see, recognise and celebrate the mosaic of colours that form an important part of their melting-pot country’s prestige