I love the Oscars. I am excited every year and always try to see as many of the movies as possible. It’s a recognized expression of our love for cinema and what cinema is capable of.
But let’s not forget that they are not perfect:
Best picture nominees are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire—not a single one of which centers primarily on a female character,* and only one of which centers primarily on a gay character (Milk) and only one of which centers primarily on people of color (Slumdog Millionaire).
There were no female producers on any of the five best picture nominees, and no women were nominated for Best Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Score, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Makeup, or Best Visual Effects. Only one woman was nominated in each screenplay category: Robin Swicord (with a male partner) in Best Adapted Screenplay for Benjamin Button and Courtney Hunt in Best Original Screenplay for Frozen River.
There is not a single woman of color nominated in the Best Actress category. Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson, both African-American actresses, were nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
There is not a single man of color nominated in either the Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor categories—though Robert Downey, Jr. was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Tropic Thunder in which he plays a white actor appearing in blackface.
There is not a single openly gay woman or man in any acting category, though the straight Sean Penn was nominated for playing an iconic gay man, Harvey Milk.
There are no men of color nominated for Best Director.
For being the Most Liberal Place on EarthTM, Hollywood sure is conservative.
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* Though Kate Winslet is nominated for Best Actress in The Reader, it should be noted that she was nominated for—and won—a Golden Globe in the supporting actress category for that film, and there’s a reason for that: She plays a key character in the life of the leading male character; even in its own promotional materials, the film suggests Winslet’s character is Someone Who Was Important in the Life of the Male Protagonist.
So, let’s take our love for cinema and make the world a better place. :) Let’s start with equal opportunity. Let’s remember that there’s still much work to do. And let’s think about the great movies we’ll get, when we can get access to the creative potential that currently is being overlooked because of our (conscious or sub-conscious) prejudices.
kalafudra's Stuff 
“There are no men of color nominated for Best Director.”
White is a color too dammit! :)
Well, actually, it’s not. But if we’re talking like this than black isn’t a colour either and we have another problem… :)
No comments on the lack of “strong female roles”, but:
“only one of which centers primarily on a gay character (Milk) and only one of which centers primarily on people of color (Slumdog Millionaire).”
seems to me a bit like nitpicking. It’s pretty much understood that even though we consider Hollywood the global film industry, it really isn’t; it’s still essentially American, maybe English, with a nod to a few foreign films from here and there. The PEOPLE involved might be from all over, but the themes and settings of the movies are pretty explicitly the west. Considering that, isn’t one film (out of only five) focusing on people of colour more or less, if not exactly, representative? Isn’t one out of five with a gay protagonist representative of pretty much any culture? Why should the industry or the critics give disproportionate representation to minorities?
I don’t know about the long term statistics about women/people of colour in Oscar nominated films- which should ideally be what you draw conclusions from- but I do know that it’s happened before fairly often, although I don’t watch/read about it religiously enough to recall right now.
Oh, and white is a colour and black isn’t, if you’re talking about light, but its the other way around if you’re talking about pigments. :)
“The PEOPLE involved might be from all over, but the themes and settings of the movies are pretty explicitly the west. Considering that, isn’t one film (out of only five) focusing on people of colour more or less, if not exactly, representative?”
USA – according to Wikipedia – has a white population of 74%, if you count Latinos as white. If not, it’s 66%. So, there could have been 2 movies, but yes, on the surface, this is representative.
The thing is, the Oscars have been going a while and that there’s even one movie featuring a character of colour is exceptional. Of course this should have been done long time – as you pointed out. So here we go:
Looking at Best Picture nominations from 1998-2008 we have the following statistics:
White: 49
Black: 1
Asian: 3
Mixed: 2 [in the sense of different ethnicities]
And this is not representative. Therefore I can understand that there’s criticism if there’s only one film focussing on a person of colour nominated. Although one could also take the other approach and say: YAY! There’s a film nominated, which doesn’t concentrate on white people!
The same goes for LGBT movies. Again looking at Best Picture nominations from 1998-2008 [If I miss something, like a minor character is actually homosexual, I’m sorry. Doing this from memory only]:
Focusses on LGBT character: 3
Features LGBT character: 2
Has some gender issues, but actually everybody’s heterosexual: 1
Everybody’s heterosexual: 49
[I counted the Lord of the Rings as purely heterosexual, although everybody knows that Aragorn and Legolas are in love.]
Going with the theory that 2% are homosexual and NOT counting all the various other gender issues that may arise elsewhere in life, this is still not representative.
Okay, but I’m pretty sure that I’m preaching to the choir, am I not? :)
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Interesting, I learned that neither white nor black were colours in themselves. White is the presence of the whole spectrum, black is the absence of it. [Yeah, yeah, I know that black swallows while white reflects…] Therefore, neither is a colour. But you’re the science guy, right ;)
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Looking at Best Picture nominations from 1998-2008 we have the following statistics:
White: 49
Black: 1
Asian: 3
Mixed: 2 [in the sense of different ethnicities]
”
Ah, then I get your point, even though I’m not entirely sure how you arrived at these numbers. Wouldn’t a better(in the sense of easier to tell; this way of counting seems to me like it would exclude movies with people of colour in some “proportional-cant think of a better word- sense, which tends to skew the statistics, unless all the “white” movies had almost entirely white casts) measure be the representation in the best actor/actress category? That’s what I was thinking when I wrote the comment, anyway, Jamie Foxx and Denzel Washington and Halle Berry etc.
And er…3/55 or 5/55, whichever way you look at it, is still more than 2%, so I don’t get your point. :)
And lol@Aragorn and Legolas. Despite Orlando Bloom talking about all the homoerotic moments, one of Aragorn’s driving forces is his love for Arwen, so I’m pretty sure you couldn’t have fit that in.
About neither being colours, and the rest of that…
Look at it this way. If you’re in a dark room with absolutely no light anywhere, everything is black-literally, no light. If the entire visible frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum-what we call “light”- was present, you would see the “colour” you describe as white. So strictly speaking, because colours are most objectively described only in terms of light/frequency, that’s right.
On the other hand, if you’re considering pigments-think crayons- then the idea is that a bleached or pristine “surface” with no pigments added is “white”, because there’s nothing to selectively absorb and reflect light. If you add pigments of a certain colour, they will reflect that particular frequency while absorbing all others. Black is what you get when pigments of all colours-or a reasonable sample from across the spectrum, at least- are mixed together, because they now absorb all frequencies. Just keep drawing with all the crayons on a set in the same place. This is because light superposition(addition by any other name) is “additive”(this term being why we give it the other name) and pigment superposition is subtractive.
TMI? :)
I’m with Liss, though I’m not sure whether to blame the Academy that does the nominations, or the industry that doesn’t produce/promote/push a more diverse catalogue.
But nominating Robert Downey Jr for his “daring” role in Tropic Thunder is a moment of supreme zen-like perfection *snicker*
@ramblingperfectionist:
I was talking main characters, mostly. It is pretty likely that in all the white movies, there’s some black guy in the background somewhere or something.
But let’s also take a look at best actor/actress and supporting actor/actress (condensed in one, from 1998-2008):
White: 191
Black: 18 (that’s counting Will Keisha Castle-Hughes as black)
Latino/a: 8
Asian: 2
Middle-Eastern: 1
That’s 86% white actors. Also not representative.
As for the LGBT thing: Features a LGBT character and focusses on a LGBT character usually means that there’s one, two, maximum three LGBT characters in the whole movie and the rest is heterosexual. That’s why I said that it’s hardly representative. If each movie had one-three LGBT characters – no matter their “importance” in the movie, then we’d be talking representation.
And the Aragorn/Legolas thing: Have you ever read LotR fanfic? You can fit it in, believe me, you can. :)
As for the colour thing: Although I do think that I understand what you’ve written there, I don’t know what your conclusion was. But nevermind.
@deadra:
I guess we have to blame both. But more the industry. In the end, the academy is a product of this industry, isn’t it?
And you’re right. Robert Downey Jr’s nomination is very, very zen. :)