With the Oscar Awards steadily approaching, industry rags try to switch over from Politically Correct Outrage As Advertising to celebrating the nominations of the awards. Monday’s luncheon (with the photo) signaled the changeover: it was time to start up the Oscar promotional machine. It was time to tell the elephant to go away, and for the promotion to kick in. Official coverage of the Oscar ceremony have switched from diversity examination to mulling over how something was done and who was the best in a category.
Except there is still blood in the water.
Jada Pinkett Smith
The originator of the whole boycott keeps being ambushed by interviewers and somehow remains gracious about it. While in Flint, Michigan, trying to help that situation, Jada was ambushed by a TMZ reporter who asked her about the Academy’s solution, and actually gave an insightful and compassionate response. Preach:
I think that’s necessary, but I hope the Academy understands that its not just about having more black voters to give the connotation that black voters vote black. But, that the academy, as a whole, we all need to, as human beings, get to know each other, expand our education about everyone. Some of the things I heard was that Beasts of No Nation was too difficult of a movie to watch. Maybe. But, these are the movies that, you know… part of the reason we have art is so that we can come out of our comfort zones and get to know about different cultures; different realities. And, I must admit, Idris’ performance in that movie was fantastic. So, we have to take the responsibility to… if we’re going to have awards shows, it’s not watching movies based on preferences, necessarily, especially if we claim its based on merit. But, we need to watch movies because, if we’re having awards shows, we need to make sure we are committed to being inclusive to everything.
Berlinale
Hot off the OscarsSoWhite controversy, Berlinale finds itself in a particularly tough spot trying to defend its all-white jury. National treasure Meryl Streep leads the panel of 7 all-white filmmakers, 4 women and 3 men, and spent her time at the press conference dodging questions about the racial makeup. Here are some key quotes:
- “We’re all Africans, really.”
- “The jury is evidence that women are included and in face dominate this jury, and that’s an unusual situation in bodies of people who make decisions. So, I think Berlinale is ahead of its game.”
- “I’ve played a lot of different people from different cultures.” (on whether she understood the Arab and African culture enough to appreciate their films)
While I applaud the gender makeup of the jury (no, really, that’s a fantastic thing)…the Berlinale jury is still made up entirely of white people, and not one of them was Heather Matarazzo interrupting Meryl with “Shhhhhhh.”
Cannes
Speaking of European film festivals, did you know that, in 30 years, Cannes has had exactly two non-white Jury presidents: 2005 – Emir Kusturica from Serbia and Montenegro, and 2006 – Wong Kar-Wai from Hong Kong. This week, they announced their 2016 Jury president: George Miller.
Women in Film
Intersectionality can be hell. As the kerfuffle at Berlinale is proving, its hardly enough to address any one problem singularly. This year’s It’s A Man’s (Celluloid) World report from San Diego State University documents the quantity (the only mention of quality is degrees of presence; major vs minor characters, or number of spoken lines) of women’s roles in Hollywood’s top 100 movies at the box office in 2015.
The good news: female protagonists went up to a whopping 22%!! OK, that’s a little sarcastic, but, according to the report, that’s the highest percentage of female protagonists in recent history. So, progress of sorts. Along the same lines, women also made up 34% of speaking characters, another recent high!
The bad news: much like how the benefits from our economy have gone to the 1%, the benefits of the “increase” in female portrayal has gone to white and black women. Latina, Asian, and other women saw their participation decrease. In addition, minority women are still more likely to not be “major” characters.
Signs of Improvement
This week saw three glimmers of hope.
- Idris Elba is in “talks” for the lead in Mountains of Hope, a character originally written as White
- Taraji P. Henson headlines the announcement of a biopic about African-American female mathematicians behind an astronaut launch, Hidden Figures (full disclosure: this is at the tops of desired list because minority + women + math and space; please don’t fuck this up)
- Ava DuVernay, who was the center of last year’s #OscarsSoWhite, was attached to Intelligent Life, a sci-fi project headlined by Lupita Nyong’o
Note: these are all in the “planning stages,” so they could be dropped or change at any time.
