The Atlantic: For all the hullaballoo about misplaced envelopes and mistaken winners, it’s sometimes hard to remember that the Best Picture Oscar went to Moonlight earlier this year. It was a shockingly relevant choice for an awards body that’s usually anything but: An artful exploration of identity and sexuality with a gay black protagonist, made by an indie studio for $4 million, defeated the expected victor, La La Land, a glossy paean to show business. Coming after years of controversy over the homogeneity of the Academy Awards’ nominees, the win felt like a transformational moment for the Oscars—in terms of recognizing not just diversity in art, but also films that resonate with the wider moment in American culture.
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Ever since the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite campaign, the Academy has made marginal efforts to diversify either the Academy or its nominations. I think Dunkirk will do well in nominations this year not only because it was a realist war film (and, as the article said, the academy loves those kind of films) but because it was about white people, made by white people, for white people. That's not to say that the history of Dunkirk was anything less than it was portrayed in the film. But the Academy desperately needs to diversify its nominations (to go further up the chain, Hollywood needs to make more diverse movies, but that's another article) if it wants to stay in touch with our generation, the filmmakers of the future. If our generation perceives the Academy as an organization that exists to exalt only the aging traditions of old, white, male filmmaking, the Academy's prestige will fade.
It is fascinating how awards season, and especially the Oscars, takes so many cues from the current social, political, and cultural climate. This article does a particularly great job of distinguishing between not only the types of potentially Oscar-worthy movies that have been put forth for consideration, but also of characterizing the population that votes and elects winners. With Hollywood placed at such a momentous turning point regarding the ever-growing sexual assault and harassment scandal, the disparity between Old Hollywood and New will likely play out across awards season larger than ever before. The Oscars have always been a litmus test of sorts, not only for what is making it on to screens, but for what our society prizes most as a whole. After all, movies are some of the most clear reflections of our culture, and what it clamors to see. Hopefully, this year the reflection will be a more positive one, the product of opening minds, and growing support for the previously unsupported and unheard.
Awards season is always such an interesting time for the way that we observe culture. After the oscarsowhite campaign I have begun to pay more attention to the way that we give praise to white men and the way that we give it to everyone else. What I have found is that men don't get a ton of verbal praise they just move on. On to the better job, on to the next step, on to the biggest awards in their field. They get silent praise, and the kind that is the most important which is career success. The oscars have been trying, I guess, t make themselves a more welcoming environment for people of all genders and races and shapes and sizes but they aren't really fixing anything. The problem with them not fixing anything is that the world is going to out grow them. The industry is going to start making movies by women, or people of color, with only women and people of color and what re they going to do then? Dig in their heels? I hope that as we see culture shift more that the academy does as well, but if they don't then they will be in a long list of casualties to social equality that no one is going to miss.
I don't appreciate them calling Get Out satire because it isn't. That movie was only very slightly exaggerated.
Black people are still harvested for our organs all over the world, especially in cities like DC where black people are going missing faster than they can be reported. Let alone the fact that white people steal the ideas of black people all the time, which resembles the symbol of black people's brains being placed in white people's heads.
My mother is white and my father is black and my father feared my mothers family the way that the main character in Get Out did upon meeting them. Interracial relationships don't erase racism as was shown in this film.
Black people are still lynched, still sold on auction blocks (see Libya), still killed like dogs. Get Out is not and never will be funny.
That movie was meant to make the white population of this country wake up and see that their casual liberalism is not a mask for their racism. Rose's dad is portrayed as so casually liberal as a statement to remind white people that black people do not owe them anything for them being liberal.
Before white people try to decide that this is an over exaggeration they should listen to the cries of black people. Slavery isn't over. And it won't be until white people open their eyes.
That being said, I would like to also point out that the Oscars are indeed still a very white space. Lala Land still dominated the Oscars despite being mediocre compared to the beautiful story telling displayed in Moonlight. Award shows are always incredibly racist which is undebatable. Get Out probably won't win. Not because it's horror but because it accurately displays the fear that black people actually have and subjects white people to feeling it as well.
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