On Saturday, Spike Lee accepted an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards in Los Angeles. But he wasn't in the mood to kiss the Academy's ass so much as light a fire under it. "It's easier to be the president of the United States as a black person than to be the head of a studio," said Lee. The director continued, "We can talk, you know, yabba, yabba, yabba, but we need to have some serious discussion about diversity, and get some flave up in here!"
3 comments:
It still surprises me that in this particular industry we are struggling so much with incorporating diversity. On a professional level I agree that its really a matter of "diverse" thinking just not being allowed in. Which in and of it self is confusing to me because theater is meant to be and has always been a manner of expressing progressive thoughts and emotions. However, I also think the problem lies in the fact that we don't have many people of color coming up into higher education with the intent to pursue theater from a non-performance angle. Thinking in terms of Carnegie Mellon alone, I can count on one hand the number of undergraduate Design and Production majors, adding in the graduate school increases that number by a total of one. This isn't the schools fault. This is parents of young black men and women who say, "make something of your selves, go into business". This is all fine and dandy that we have a growing number of entrepreneurial African Americans, but then the arts suffer. I think real change will come once that arts begin to exist on the same level as other more traditional disciplines.
I think that this initiative will be a big step in the right direction for the industry. I don't know much about the problem but, by reading some of the previous articles that have addressed it, I can understand that it affects every aspect of the industry from directors to actors and everyone in between. I think that all of the recent talk and pushes for more diversity in every use of the word has helped the academy to notice that they need to take action. This is the first time i am hearing of a substantial organization like the Academy to take action on the issues and hopefully it will set an example for others to get involved. It still surprises me that this is such a big issue in the industry but I am glad that it has a growing interest to fix it now.
Finally, after years and years of awards shows looking like the inside of a snow globe, we can finally get some diversity into these awards. I am afraid though, that this initiative is going to be treated like affirmative action: something that angry white people are going to use when their boring movie doesn't get nominated for an Oscar. In order for us to establish equality, we have to bring everyone up to the same level. I could imagine that people are critical of the fact that is only a 5-year initiative, but I actually believe that this is a genius way to do it. It outlines a time frame that the Academy is going to accomplish their goals, giving the initiative more momentum and incentive moving forward rather than establishing a wide-sweeping blanket statement about incorporating more diversity. By incorporating more diversity over this short time period, hopefully we will see changes in the types of media we consume.
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