#OscarsSoWhite Week 2: Whitelash

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Here we are, two weeks after Oscar nominations have been announced, and it’s time for the whiplash. In the first week following the Oscar nominations, the OscarsSoWhite controversy allowed many people of color to express their outrage at being largely excluded from the ceremonies. Some wanted to boycott the ceremonies as a firm statement against the racial structure of Hollywood, while others said that would just reflect largely on the host, Chris Rock. Some said that that’s just the way the cookie crumbles, and sometimes you don’t get a fair shake, others dismissed the importance of the Oscars as a reflection of our culture. But, nearly everybody, regardless of what response they thought best, agreed on one point: the problem doesn’t start with the Academy, but with the studios who don’t make enough movies about people of color; the Academy isn’t the source of oppression, but just a huge signifier of the oppression that exists.

Last Friday, the Academy announced a series of rule changes to maintain a changing of the guard. The first change the Academy was going to double their female and minority membership by 2020. But, the second rule change is much more controversial. The Academy has a current lifetime membership policy for its 6,200 members. That’s changing. Each member, once invited, will be active for 10 years. If the member has not been active in the 10 years prior to the membership, that member will be demoted to emeritus status, which maintains all benefits to members, but does not retain voting rights. If a member has been nominated for an Academy Award, or has worked in the field for 30 years after they’ve been invited to the Academy, they will have earned a lifetime membership. In a world where people cycle out because of age, that’s a hard rule to keep.

Of course, there has been a backlash. A whitelash if you will. Week 2 of OscarsSoWhite has been largely defined by the backlash. One thing I want to note before we get into it, in the responses, there’s a serious trend of “I’m not a racist, how can you say voters are racist if I’m not racist?” Almost everybody in the backlash has taken the controversy so personally that they refuse to see the points being made. This refusal to acknowledge that there is a problem because one doesn’t see oneself as personally racist is a huge trend in every discussion of race, and the whole concept of checking your privilege is built around observing how you may not think you’re personally racist, but there’s a racist system at work and you might be contributing to it in some way shape or form, intentionally or not. There’s also a trend of “I’m liberal, so I can’t be racist,” which…hilarious. Anyways, let’s get on with it:

Charlotte Rampling

Oscar-nominated for the first time this year for her role in 45 Years, Charlotte Rampling took the OscarsSoWhite controversy as an attack on her and her nomination. On Thursday, the star of The Night Porter and Zardoz told a French radio station that the backlash about the Academy Awards was “racist to white people” and that “perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list.” Later, she apologized, saying her statement was misinterpreted. On Friday, Ms. Rampling “clarified” by saying, “I simply meant to say that in an ideal world every performance will be given equal opportunities for consideration.” She added, “I am highly encouraged by the changes announced today by the academy to diversify its membership.”

Just to re-emphasize: Charlotte Rampling’s statement has a long tradition. There’s a whole genre of “I’m deserving of my status, and I didn’t receive any help to get here because of my skin tone. To suggest that my white status helped me get to where I am is to suggest that I’m undeserving of this position.” It’s a standard denial of bias in any and all systems, even if there is on some levels.

Michael Caine

Michael Caine, 6-time nominee, first for 1966’s Alfie, and 2-time winner, went on BBC Radio 4 stating

There’s loads of black actors. I think, in the end, you can’t vote for an actor because he’s black. You can’t just say ‘I’m gonna vote for him. He’s not very good, but he’s black, so I’ll vote for him.’ You gotta give a good performance. And, I’m sure there were good perf…I’m mean…there were…and…I…I dunno if Idris got nominated. I thought he was wonderful, did he not get nominated? Look at me! I won the Best Actor European…the European Best Actor Award, and I got nominated for nothing.

After being goaded by the interviewer, he added “Be patient. It took me years to get an Oscar.” Again with the turning it into the personal, and comparing his experience to that of the African American experience.

Julie Delpy

Back in 2014, Julie Delpy was nominated for the second time for a screenwriting credit on Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight. At the time, she went rogue and channeled her inner Tammy Metzler to bash Hollywood for its lack of diversity, but then goes on to add that she’s not championing for diversity because she’s so sick of it all. To wit:

We have the Golden Globes. If you could see it, you wouldn’t believe that there’s anything good about it. The same goes for the Oscars. It’s 90 per cent white men over 70 who need money because they haven’t done anything in a long time. You just need to give them two or three presents and they’re in your pocket. It doesn’t mean anything to me, so I don’t really care if there are women in the selection process.

In fact, most people would probably have been with her if she just ended her statement one clause earlier. “It doesn’t mean anything to me” is such a perfect Tammy Metzler statement, but then she adds on that whole “I don’t care if there are women in the selection process.”

Last weekend, while doing an interview with The Wrap for the Todd Solondz sequel Weiner Dog (dammit, Solondz *weeps*), Julie Delpy went on the offensive again, putting the spotlight on herself, saying “It’s funny, women can’t talk. I sometimes wish I were African American because people don’t bash them afterward when they say something about a reality.” She added, “It’s hardest to be a woman. Feminists is something that people hate. I think there’s nothing worse than being a woman.”

This week, she apologized to Entertainment Weekly, stating:

It was never meant to diminish the injustice done to African American artists or to any other people that struggle for equal opportunities and rights, on the contrary. All I was trying to do is to address the issues of inequality of opportunity in the industry for women as well (as I am a woman). I never intended to underestimate anyone else’s struggle! We should stay alert and united and support each other to change this unfair reality and don’t let anyone sabotage our common efforts by distorting the truth.

Heather Matarazzo

(Kristin Stewart spoke out about how she gets good roles, and women just need to get out there and do more)

Stephen Furst

Best known for playing Flounder in Animal House or Vir Cotto in Babylon 5, Stephen Furst’s last job in Hollywood was producing Nick Cassavettes’ leukemia film, My Sister’s Keeper. In a letter to Variety, he hit a lot of the usual tropes:

In less than a week after (according to Associated Press) “a handful of actors” decided that they were going to boycott The Oscars, the Academy Board of Governors has concluded that I am racist, not to mention, irrelevant. In fact, I am very far from either.

[…]

I myself nominated Straight Outta Compton, Beasts of No Nation, Abraham Attah, Zoe Saldana, Jason Mitchell, and Tessa Thompson. There were so many fine performances and films that I could have nominated 10 in each category and still run out of space. With your new rules, you make it clear that by shaking up the membership, you expect a different result as more minorities join the Academy. But this isn’t Alabama in the 1960s. White members don’t only vote for white nominees, and I trust minority members will not favor only minority ones. Minority films and actors are regularly nominated, but not every year. Even Meryl Streep doesn’t get nominated every year.

The most interesting part about Stephen Furst’s letter is his comment on the source of the lack of diversity, “One of the main reasons for the lack of diversity in nominees this year is that many members vote without watching all the films.” He suggested, as a solution, “…the Academy can take steps in assuring that member see a certain percentage of films before they are allowed to vote. Those who don’t are the people that should have their vote taken away for that season.”

This is, possibly, the most helpful that the rule change letters get, and he’s not wrong. 300 movies were eligible for nominations this year. What doesn’t help is that this year was another year strong in stories told about white men from a white male perspective. You could watch 200 movies, and probably not see a minority actor or a woman in the lead (nevertheless a gay actor playing a gay role). But, even he acknowledges, the Academy can’t do anything about that.

Penelope Ann Miller

Star of Nate Turner’s Sundance-acclaimed Birth of a Nation made similar protests as Stephen Furst in The Hollwood Reporter.

I voted for a number of black performers, and I was sorry they weren’t nominated, but to imply that this is because all of us are racists is extremely offensive. I don’t want to be lumped into a category of being a racist because I’m certainly not and because I support and benefit from the talent of black people in this business. It was just an incredibly competitive year.

She added, “There were an incredible number of films in 2015 that were primarily about white people. Talk to the studios about changing that, not the Academy. There’s only so much we can do.”

In the same article, Jeremy Larner, Oscar winner for The Candidate, said that he couldn’t prove the Academy was racist but added, “I have voted for many people of color for awards.”

Stephen Verona

Stephen Verona is the director of Pipe Dreams, a never-released-to-DVD film about Gladys Knight going to Alaska with her husband and having sex in a pipe (oh, it’s a glorious film). He also discovered Henry Winkler and put Sylvester Stallone in The Lords of Flatbrush. He made his own little fuss:

I never, never hire anyone because of their race, religion or political beliefs. To be lumped in as “racist” by the likes of Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith is totally out of line. I believe talent is what should be honored — gifted individuals who help make movies great.

Try telling the NBA to hire more white, Latino, Chinese or Eskimo basketball players and see the backlash. And by the way, why doesn’t Spike Lee return his honorary Oscar if he’s so incensed? If people make better movies, they will be rewarded. That’s as simple as it can be.

Mark Reina

A gay Latino man who apparently is in the Public Relations arm of the Academy but hasn’t worked with Hollywood in 10 years wrote a letter to The Hollywood Reporter stating, “I am a gay man and my father is a Latino immigrant. Please explain to me how denying me my right to vote makes the Academy membership and the Oscar nominees more diverse?” But, the meat of his argument is:

Are you saying I am racist or have racist tendencies and need to be excluded from voting? Are you saying if I worked another 10 years I would vote differently? Are you saying that I have not made my voting choices on quality but rather on the color of the artists’ skin? Are you saying that I have voted (consciously or unconsciously) to exclude women, members of the LGBT community and other minorities? I find it insulting and ignorant.

John Van Vliet

A member of the Visual Effects branch says that the problem may only lay with the actors branch of the Academy.

If you seriously do think there is a racial bias issue within the actors branch, then perhaps it would be more appropriate to take that up with the actors instead of the membership in general? Discrimination is of course bad and if there are racist actors behaving badly, they should certainly be taken out to the woodshed and spanked. But if they truly only nominated the best performances in their opinion, then you should stand behind them for their guts to do the right thing in spite of howls from the public.

Nancy Beiman

Nancy is a female member of the animation academy who said that she was first inducted because there weren’t enough women in her branch. She also takes offense to the timing of the rule, stating

No one at the Academy offered to change the voting rules when Geena Davis pointed out in a study of female representation in film jobs in 2012 that only 7 percent of the “creatives” (non-acting) working in the film industry are female. But they changed the rules in one day for every category when one actor and one director claimed that the Oscar nomination process was racist.

Of course, that fails to note that Geena Davis was commenting, not on the nominations, but on Hollywood as a whole (see also: Julie Delpy in 2014). But, Beiman echoed Stephen Furst’s comments that the nomination process was flawed and needed to be revamped.

Rutanya Alda

An actress known for The Deer Hunter, she comments:

Actors are the least racist people I have ever known in my life. Yet, because of these few disgruntled voices, we are made out as racists in some kind of conspiracy to not nominate people of color. If this were not so insane, it would be comical. A simple glance back at previous years’ nominees and winners proves this to be true.

She then goes on to tell stories of some unnamed Asian female friend whom she believes will get into the Academy solely on her Asian status, concluding

The Academy is supposed to be a place of stature and accomplishment, not a university of affirmative action. This is the most difficult business in the world and no one is “entitled” to success in this industry. It takes a lot of work and a tremendous amount of tenacity to survive in this industry, and it’s about the years of learning and contribution, merit and struggle. Acceptance into the Academy used to reflect that.

 

Milton Justice

A gay white producer in the notorious Documentary branch (a lifetime member for his participation in the Oscar-winning doc, Down and Out in America), decided to be the harshest about it:

What bothers me most is how insulting this is to black people. I’m also shocked at the presumption of the president of the Academy to meet with David Oyelowo to explain to him “what went wrong” because he wasn’t nominated last year for his portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. I’m sorry, but are we missing the 800-pound gorilla in the room? Maybe there weren’t enough actors in the actors branch who thought he was good enough to be nominated. I’m not in the actors branch, but I certainly didn’t think he was very good in the part. In fact, when I got home, I pulled up the “I Have a Dream” speech on YouTube to show one of my young students how charismatic Dr. King was, since it certainly didn’t come through in the film.

He then added, “Eighteen percent of the American population considers itself black. And yet Barack Obama was elected president, beating out a Vietnam War hero.”

Rod Lurie

From the Director’s branch, Rod Lurie commends the actions, but puts in his flaws with the nomination process. He commented:

The other day I ran into several of my fellow Academy members at Art’s Deli. All men, all 70 or older, all white. Each but one said they didn’t even bother watching F. Gary Gray’s terrific Straight Outta Compton.  The one who had seen it dismissed it with a wave of the hand. “Too loud for me,” he said in full-on Larry David mode. “I didn’t make it all the way through.”

In his letter, he puts forth a system of committees and juries with foremen to counteract both the ageism and racial issues of the nomination process (he says that nobody can see all of the nominees), but he also adds that they’ll take down the campaigning by studios. He comments, “Right now the Oscar race is too much like a political contest, and that’s wrong. This is art, not Iowa.” Just like Washington, there’s too much money in the system…

Additional Read

Uproxx has a great piece on how the Blackout of 1996 reflects on this year’s blackout, and where they differ, also adding that there is a lot of elements for hope despite all the signs from above that a lot of people can’t see anything but what’s in front of their own face.