Honestly, I don't think even that happens. Maybe I am naive, but if I'm a director and I'm casting roles, do I really give a rats ass what race an actor is?
If it impacts the film's marketability - and it unfortunately does - then yes. This is one of those "systemic" problems.
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Clearly, this is why Mel Gibson never gets any roles!
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Straight Out of Compton was entertaining, but also clearly a skewed presentation of the facts and none of the actors performances really stood out. It was nominated for Best Writing in an Original Screen Play, which is fair.
It's arguable that Michael B. Jordan deserved a nomination, but he was not going to win. You could also argue that a dozen other actors deserved that 5th nomination spot.
People also need to remember that there are only 10 individual acting nominations for male and female each. Blacks make up about 10% of the USA's population. Statistically speaking, there aren't going to be black actors nominated ever year.
Creed is a catalyst for Michael B. Jordan. It wasn't an original story, but it was a story still told well. I think he'll be a fantastic american character actor.
if you don't get hired to do the work, you can't, if you are not getting access to the writing jobs, the directing, etc.
And this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PsYcNeT
Yeah I mean look at all the backlash from internet racists book purists for the casting of Roland Deschain.
I would be inclined to give the Academy the benefit of the doubt and assume they picked the people who did the best job. I don't know, I probably don't watch enough movies. Unfortunately for many reasons the process is skewed to preferring white people. Think of the all the sink from people saying storm troopers aren't black, James Bond isn't black etc. No doubt that type of talk scares people who write the cheques. It reminds me when blockbusters would have the token black character that gets killed off (Jurassic Park). Thankfully that has gotten better. And it wasn't that long ago there was a token gay character that was a caricature of a gay person (every romantic comedy in the past 15 years). Now gay characters are just regular characters who happen to be gay (Jessica Jones).
When did the last Asian or Hispanic person win an Oscar or get nominated? Why don't they have their own twitter protests?
The last three Best Director Oscars have been won by Hispanic and Asian directors. Last year, Alejandro González Iñárritu won for Birdman. The year before, Alfonso Cuarón won for Gravity. The year before that, Ang Lee won for Life of Pi.
Iñárritu has a good chance of repeating this year for The Revenant.
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The last three Best Director Oscars have been won by Hispanic and Asian directors. Last year, Alejandro González Iñárritu won for Birdman. The year before, Alfonso Cuarón won for Gravity. The year before that, Ang Lee won for Life of Pi.
Iñárritu has a good chance of repeating this year for The Revenant.
And many black directors have won or been nominated also but I feel like this "controversy" is over the visible aspect of the Oscars like screen roles versus back-end process.
It seems rare to have any prominent hispanic or asian leading roles in big films.
And many black directors have won or been nominated also but I feel like this "controversy" is over the visible aspect of the Oscars like screen roles versus back-end process.
And again, that's the result of a broader issue of underrepresentation in the film industry - not with the Oscars themselves.
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actorsSeems like a bit of sour grapes to me. Every year plenty of great acting performances and films get snubbed. This year a couple of films featuring black actors get snubbed. I can see the point of view and maybe some of the older voters say didn't watch Straight Out of Compton but at the end of the day it's just an award show and while you can assume some racism may be involved, nobody can prove it which means it's not absolute fact that racism is the reason those films/ got left off. I mean it doesn't matter that Theodore won the Hart trophy in 2002 we all know Jarome Iginla was the best player in the NHL that season. Hmm now I think about it maybe we are on to something with black people getting slighted.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 01-19-2016 at 12:52 PM.
The last three Best Director Oscars have been won by Hispanic and Asian directors. Last year, Alejandro González Iñárritu won for Birdman. The year before, Alfonso Cuarón won for Gravity. The year before that, Ang Lee won for Life of Pi.
Iñárritu has a good chance of repeating this year for The Revenant.
And I think this is part of the issue: All of those directors (and they're all excellent directors) got their start in their own country, outside Hollywood, where there is a film industry specifically designed to help people like them grow as artists, and get exposure.
If the African American community was it's own country (not at all suggesting it should be! Just a hypothetical), it would probably produce more directors, writers, actors, and technical or creative professionals who go on to be successful in Hollywood, than the African American community as part of the US.
Looking specifically at acting; this is a skill that needs to be professionally developed, but Hollywood is more interested in giving roles to names that will sell tickets. So particularly with black actors, hip-hop personalities with little acting experience are given significant roles, because they will sell tickets. It's no coincidence that some of the most respected black dramatic actors today are from Britain, (Elba, Ejiofor, and probably John Boyega in the near future) where they're getting a stage acting background, and then moving from there to the screen. Which isn't to say that there aren't good black actors in the US who started out on stage (Don Cheadle, for example); but certainly it's not a direction that they are likely to be steered towards, and then there's going to be a significant barrier in moving from stage to screen that doesn't exist in other countries. It's ridiculous to think that if you're African American, you've probably got a better chance of becoming an a-list actor by becoming a hip-hop artist than by studying acting. And yes, getting into screen acting at a young age, like Michael B. Jordan, is another route, but there's a very limited number of roles for very young black actors, so it's not a realistic career path the way it might be for young white kids.
The problem isn't that Hollywood doesn't care about black culture. Well it doesn't, but it doesn't care about asian cultures, or latin culture, or even white culture, for that matter. It cares about making money. It's also very risk adverse, which means it is extremely slow to change from successful formulas. It will give important behind-the-camera jobs based on past experience (or occasionally, to people with the right connections), so to a large extent it lets other countries take the risk and expense and effort of developing directors and cinematographers, then hires them to Hollywood once they've proven their capabilities in their home market. (Cinematography is really where this is most evident. Only a handful of american cinematographers have been nominated for an Oscar in recent years.)
Whatever success African Americans have had in film lately in terms of writing and directing roles (Ava DuVernay, for example), has almost nothing to do with Hollywood and a lot to do with the Sundance Institute, which is the closest comparable in the US to a national filmmaking industry as it exists in other countries.
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actorsSeems like a bit of sour grapes to me. Every year plenty of great acting performances and films get snubbed. This year a couple of films featuring black actors get snubbed. I can see the point of view and maybe some of the older voters say didn't watch Straight Out of Compton but at the end of the day it's just an award show and while you can assume some racism may be involved, nobody can prove it which means it's not absolute fact that racism is the reason those films/ got left off. I mean it doesn't matter that Theodore won the Hart trophy in 2002 we all know Jarome Iginla was the best player in the NHL that season. Hmm now I think about it maybe we are on to something with black people getting slighted.
I literally, to this day, didn't make that connection. Jarome was always just Jarome to me. I just thought it was East bias and vote tampering by the writers.
I wonder if some of the voters were in fact racist? I was so naive.
So is this 'the Oscars are racist' or just that there are fewer black actors and so they, as an obviously smaller group, win fewer Oscars?
Is it disproportionate? Like egregiously so? I honestly dont know. This is the first I've heard of it and they've been awarding Oscars for what seems like forever.
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And I think this is part of the issue: All of those directors (and they're all excellent directors) got their start in their own country, outside Hollywood, where there is a film industry specifically designed to help people like them grow as artists, and get exposure.
If the African American community was it's own country (not at all suggesting it should be! Just a hypothetical), it would probably produce more directors, writers, actors, and technical or creative professionals who go on to be successful in Hollywood, than the African American community as part of the US.
Looking specifically at acting; this is a skill that needs to be professionally developed, but Hollywood is more interested in giving roles to names that will sell tickets. So particularly with black actors, hip-hop personalities with little acting experience are given significant roles, because they will sell tickets. It's no coincidence that some of the most respected black dramatic actors today are from Britain, (Elba, Ejiofor, and probably John Boyega in the near future) where they're getting a stage acting background, and then moving from there to the screen. Which isn't to say that there aren't good black actors in the US who started out on stage (Don Cheadle, for example); but certainly it's not a direction that they are likely to be steered towards, and then there's going to be a significant barrier in moving from stage to screen that doesn't exist in other countries. It's ridiculous to think that if you're African American, you've probably got a better chance of becoming an a-list actor by becoming a hip-hop artist than by studying acting. And yes, getting into screen acting at a young age, like Michael B. Jordan, is another route, but there's a very limited number of roles for very young black actors, so it's not a realistic career path the way it might be for young white kids.
The problem isn't that Hollywood doesn't care about black culture. Well it doesn't, but it doesn't care about asian cultures, or latin culture, or even white culture, for that matter. It cares about making money. It's also very risk adverse, which means it is extremely slow to change from successful formulas. It will give important behind-the-camera jobs based on past experience (or occasionally, to people with the right connections), so to a large extent it lets other countries take the risk and expense and effort of developing directors and cinematographers, then hires them to Hollywood once they've proven their capabilities in their home market. (Cinematography is really where this is most evident. Only a handful of american cinematographers have been nominated for an Oscar in recent years.)
Whatever success African Americans have had in film lately in terms of writing and directing roles (Ava DuVernay, for example), has almost nothing to do with Hollywood and a lot to do with the Sundance Institute, which is the closest comparable in the US to a national filmmaking industry as it exists in other countries.
Yes, but Michael B. Jordan addressed this exact type of comment, in a recent interview (I can't remember the article right now). Why is the role for a young black actor - not just a young actor!! It's the distinction that nobody seems to see!
So is this 'the Oscars are racist' or just that there are fewer black actors and so they, as an obviously smaller group, win fewer Oscars?
Is it disproportionate? Like egregiously so? I honestly dont know. This is the first I've heard of it and they've been awarding Oscars for what seems like forever.
I think it is the latter but not everyone would agree. I'm not going to rehash everything I've typed previously but both Octothorp and I touched on some of the main points that support this not being racist.
The problem is that the main "this is racist" proponents are self interested. Jada is mad her husband didn't get nominated and Spike Lee is...well Spike Lee. Everything is always about Spike and he's angry that he's not a good enough filmmaker to win an Oscar.
People also need to remember that there are only 10 individual acting nominations for male and female each. Blacks make up about 10% of the USA's population. Statistically speaking, there aren't going to be black actors nominated ever year.
Whats the black actor population? That ratio is likely quite different, and is the only relevant one.
Hollywood is notorious for whitewashing, so it shouldn't be surprised that minorities are underrepresented at major award show circlejerks. The problem isn't that Creed or Straight Outta Compton failed to garner nominations (the former especially was not worthy of any), the problem is that the aforementioned whitewashing restricts the odds of minorites even appearing in Oscar bait worthy roles in the first place.
