Monday, March 24, 2025
Who Wins Oscars? Women Who Package Their Pain Just Right
Ms. Magazine: One of my favorite performances from 2024 was not even nominated for the Academy Awards. Marianne Jean-Baptiste—partnering again with Mike Leigh, whose previous film Secrets & Lies (1996) led to her Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress—is a tour de force of rage and crippling depression in Hard Truths. At times, her blistering remarks and caustic encounters with both family members and strangers contribute to the film’s comedic moments. But there is no denying the real pain (both physical and emotional) that she suffers throughout the narrative, and which no one in her circle of relatives seem able to alleviate.
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I have thought about this a lot recently. I think as an industry we are doing better at casting women of color specifically. We are seeing more leading characters that are black women and they are getting a lot more recognition. However, I think this article points out a very large flaw we are still fighting against. I was having a conversation with someone during winter break about Halle Bailey and her cast in the new Little Mermaid. It baffles me that as soon as a person of color was casted in a traditionally white role people lost their minds when arguably Ariel and her story is not rooted in a certain ethnicity. Which got me thinking about how white actors can just play “normal” people and do “normal” stories but actors of color must always play characters that have a story that fronts their ethnicity and background. Which is not positive but can put people into boxes.
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