50 shades of racism at the Oscars

The Oscars will never be the same again. The award ceremony in Los Angeles 4pm (Pacific Time) onwards on Sunday will herald a new era of sorts by doing away with the laundry list of thank yous in the acceptance speeches.

Instead, the names of persons the winners wish to thank will now scroll across the bottom of the television screen as you watch one of the world's most widely telecast live-events.

A more substantive issue in this year's edition of the Academy Awards centres on the total absence of any black actor among the 20 nominations in the best actor/actress and the best supporting actor/actress categories for the second year in a row.

This perceived slur has already tarnished the golden statuette with the taint of institutional racism, and threatens to rip the show's genteel, glamorous façade.

Performance

Disgruntlement over marginalising blacks by ignoring their performances in Hollywood films isn't exactly a new-found sentiment. But last year's sniggers in response to the all-white nomination list have given way this time to a collective and concerted howl of protest. The mainstream and social media all but sizzled for weeks with outrage, and a clutch of prominent black brothers-in-solidarity who could easily walk on their own steam into any list of top-notch Hollywood personalities of any colour - notably director Spike Lee and actor Will Smith - announced their boycott of Sunday's ceremony.

However, even those insinuating a sour-grape resentment to Lee-Smith's decision cannot deny an unmistakable conclusion accruing from historical fact.

In the first 50 years since the Oscars began in 1929, only two black actors won. Of course, people prone to view the glass as being half-full will point out that the next 37 years (to date) saw that number rise to 11.

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But sadly, there's just no bright side to the fact that the glass hasn't seen a single drop in these last two years. Should we accept that no performance by a black actor crossed the Academy's threshold of good acting?

Not if we believe the reviewers who variously thought Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation), Michael B Jordan (Creed), and an ensemble of young relatively unknown black actors (Straight Outta Compton) besides Will Smith (Concussion) deserved a serious look-in.

Could it then be that it's really the perspective of a typical member of the Academy - known to be overwhelmingly male, white and aged 60-plus, and on whose vote the nominations and awards hinge - that calls for a more critical scrutiny?

Assuming a stint at film school, does he assess the merit of an acting performance purely from the technical standpoint of histrionic standards that evolved out of acting courses designed by the predominantly white pioneers in the field?

Real-life

Furthermore, being ethnically and often geographically removed from the real-life experiences of the black community, wouldn't he face a problem relating to the theme (generally) and the characters (specifically) of a "black" film?

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Apparently not, and this might well be the clincher for the prosecution. While such films have been appreciated and even lavished with Oscar nominations and awards, the black contribution to their artistic success has been effectively and singularly sidelined.

Three pertinent examples. For its authentic depiction of segregation and racism in America's south, In The Heat of The Night won five Oscars besides two other nominations - but without an award or even a nomination for the two black artists (actor Sidney Poitier and music-composer Quincy Jones) whose legendary work in this classic 1967 film is still remembered.

Nominee

Nearly 50 years later, the irony endures. The writer-director and the lead actor of this year's Creed are black, but its only nominee is a white man. And while Compton's black actors and director drew widespread approbation, its sole nomination went to "a white Jewish gay guy from Connecticut" and his two white writing partners.

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs - a black woman heading the old-white male bastion - promises "dramatic steps to alter the make-up of our membership." Lee and his ilk want this alteration to reflect a more diverse demographic.

One hopes that this arithmetical approach won't translate into a quota system - for the Academy membership initially, and later (god forbid!) for the Oscar nominations and awards.

So far, America has avoided the slippery slope of our caste-based reservations by recognising ethnicity as a factor but not the sole determinant for claims to jobs and other benefits by contenders from disadvantaged groups.

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Another grey area concerns the very nature of the performing arts. While a quantitative evaluation of a participant's efforts is possible in an activity like sports, it finds no place in the qualitative assessment of acting skills where the process of judging excellence is ultimately personal and subjective.

Raising awareness of the race-gender issue by registering protest from within appears to be the desirable way ahead, not boycott. I would, therefore, urge Spike Lee and Will Smith to attend the Oscar ceremony wearing black bands.

Wait a minute. Was that a racial slur?

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)