Oscars whitewash: why have 2015's red carpets been so overwhelmingly white?
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Version 0 of 1. At the 60th Academy Awards in April 1988, Eddie Murphy gave a short speech before announcing the nominees for best picture. In front of the academy and the nominees gathered at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles he introduced himself and waited for the applause to die down. Then he said the following: “When they came to me and said they wanted me to present the award for best picture, my first reaction was to say no, I ain’t going. My manager came to me and said, ‘Why?’” Murphy proceeded to explain that the reason he considered rejecting the offer was because the academy had consistently failed to recognise black actors. Yes, some exceptions existed in the form of Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier and Louis Gossett Jr, but were they anywhere near enough? He then paused, before concluding: “I’ll probably never win an Oscar for saying this – although the way it’s been going we’ve been winning one every 20 years, so we ain’t due one until about 2004 – I just feel that we have to be recognised as people. I’m going to give this award, but black people will not ride the caboose of society and we will not bring up the rear any more.” “I want you to recognise us.” In the 27 years that have passed Murphy hasn’t won an Oscar. The comic’s call for recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences feels more pertinent than ever in 2015. This year nearly all the major events this red carpet season from the Grammys and the Golden Globes to the Oscars and the Baftas have been accused of the same glaring deficiency: a distinct lack of colour. At the forthcoming Oscars, none of the major awards feature a nominee of colour. The Grammys looked whiter than they have done in decades. Meanwhile, in Britain, the Baftas were criticised for a lack of diversity and a preference for posh, privately educated white male actors. After last year’s “game changing” moment at the Oscars, where 12 Years A Slave placed the story of American slavery front and centre and took away three awards including best picture, there’s a sense of the industry going back to business as usual. Amma Asante, who directed Belle, the period drama which starred a mixed-race lead in Gugu Mbatha-Raw, believes the explanation for the Oscars whitewash could be down to industry trends. We've seen what have looked like breakthroughs in the past and they haven't been – what they've been is industry fads “At this time last year a lot of questions I was getting from the press and people in the industry was ‘do you think we’ve hit a turning point?’ And it was a question that was nagging at me as well: have we finally hit a point where we’ve made a breakthrough?” “I was worried because we’ve seen what have looked like breakthroughs in the past and they haven’t been – what they’ve been is industry fads. Things come in and out of fashion,” she says. Screenwriter Jeremy Pikser, who received an Oscar nomination in 1998 for his work on the political satire Bulworth, thinks Selma’s snub is straightforward and is down to racial fatigue on the behalf of academy voters. “There’s no special backlash going on now, other than maybe the residual effect of resentment after 12 Years A Slave. There’s a blacklash to white people being held responsible or as they would call it ‘demonised’. I’ve heard a number of people bellyache in Hollywood about it.” Whether there is resentment (only 15% of Republican voters thought 12 Years A Slave should have won last year) or the academy is swayed by fads (arguably this year, experimental film-making is the common thread), there is no doubt trends can be found when it comes to diversity and awards season. Murphy’s prediction of a black Oscar winner every 20 years was off, slightly. In fact a look at the statistics show there’s a slow upward trend. The number of black nominees at the Oscars has been roughly doubling every couple of decades. In the 1930s and 40s there was only one, Hattie McDaniel (who won for her role in Gone with the Wind), in the 50s and 60s there were six, the 70s and 80s saw 16, while in the 90s and 2000s there was a total of 33 nods. Mid-way through this decade the number is on course to increase again, with the past five years seeing 12 award nominations for black actors. The stats for other ethnic groups are much grimmer. Latino/Hispanic nominees total just 19 since the awards started, while Asian nods come to the paltry total of nine. Now in 2015 there isn’t one non-white actor or director nominated for any of the main awards. This year may be an anomaly for the Oscars (it is rare that a complete whitewash takes place), but for the Grammys the lack of diversity is an established trend. Related: Grammy performances put #blacklivesmatter centre stage Digital news site Vocativ looked at the nominees in the four prestige categories (best record, album, new artist and song) and broke them down along ethnic lines. The conclusion was that the Grammys haven’t been this white since 1981. Not only that but over the last 15 years the awards show has moved away from the more diverse nominations of the early 00s, with the trend heading back towards levels of whiteness not seen since the diversity nadir of the mid-70s. What’s made things even more combustable this year is the fact the diversity debate is taking place in a backdrop of heightened racial tensions in the US after a string of high profile police shootings of unarmed black men. For some that’s made the snubs that Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King biopic Selma received (it’s been nominated for best picture and best song, but there’s no acting or directing nominations) even more galling. “If you’ve got a totally healthy leg and someone comes along and kicks it, it’s going to hurt but you’re going to move on. If you’ve got a wound in that leg and someone kicks it: a) the wound isn’t going to heal and b) you’re going to feel it a lot more,” said Asante. “What’s happened in America over the last several months has created a deep wound. Because of that things that might have slipped through under the radar aren’t going to: people are sore,” she said. Related: Latino congressman Tony Cárdenas lambasts Oscars for lack of diversity That soreness has seen political leaders demand action to counter the lack of diversity. Civil rights activist Rev Al Sharpton called for an “emergency meeting” (adding: “The movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher you get, the whiter it gets”), while US congressman Tony Cárdenas wrote to academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs saying “it is unfortunate to see a revered American institution fail to fully reflect our nation”. The criticism isn’t all one way, however. In an article in the Hollywood Reporter film-maker and academy member Lionel Chetwynd argued: “Yes, one can force faster change in the name of diversity, but the price will be steep: mediocrity is easily and quickly achieved. Excellence, not so much.” But the issue for the academy isn’t only who is nominated for the Oscars, it’s also who is voting. A report in 2012 showed that 94% of academy members were white and 77% were male. That contrasted with just 2% of voters who were black and Latino, with 1% native Americans. For Pikser the makeup of the academy is an extension of the industry as a whole: “Hollywood has created an audience and an expectation and the racism of society is built into the business model.” But for Asante simply pointing to the lack of diversity in the academy as the sole reason for the whitewashing of the nominees is an over simplification: “These men are more than capable of being discerning.The situation is very deep and very complex and I don’t think we can let people of the hook by saying, ‘They don’t understand.’” If there is a glimmer of hope for awards season it is television. This year the Golden Globes television awards turned heads for a few reasons, the most obvious being the lack of network nominations but also the number of awards that went to shows and stories that were about minorities. Related: Golden Globes 2015: Transparent the clear winner in TV awards Matt Bomer won for best supporting actor in a mini series for his work on HBO’s Aids drama the Normal Heart; Gina Rodriguez won for best actress in a TV series, musical or comedy for the telenovella-esque Jane The Virgin; and Transparent cleaned up with best TV series, musical or comedy, its star Jeffrey Tambor taking home best actor. The SAG Awards followed suit with big wins for Orange Is The New Black and Viola Davis who starred in ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder. Picking up the award, Viola Davis made her winning speech: “When I tell my daughter stories at night inevitably a few things happen. Number one I use my imagination. I always start from life and build from there. The other thing that happens is that she always says: “Mummy, can you put me in the story?” She then thanked ABC’s producers and showrunner Shonda Rhimes “for thinking that a sexualised, mysterious messy woman could be a 49-year-old, dark-skinned African American woman who looks like me”. |