I won't be watching The Oscars this year. But that's not unusual, I never watch the Oscars, an award ceremony and dinner party that long long ago mushroomed into a fawning, bloated, psuedo-entertainment which I cared little about. Almost none of the movies I actually go to see (when I used to go see movies) ever get nominated, or rarely do, particularly in the high-profile categories. Recent years have seen some shift along that front, but still by and large Oscar movies are not the flicks I'm inclined to waste two hours on. The Revenant from this season might be an exception, as it looks to be quite compelling. I gave up on the Oscars long ago when the hopelessly forgettable domestic groaner Kramer Vs. Kramer beat out one of the clearly great movies of the century Apocalypse Now.
But I'm not alone this year in not watching the Oscars. Many more will be joining me in protest it seems for the singular lack of non-white nominees in the big categories. I dismissed this kerfuffel as a tempest in a sun-baked teapot since the nominations are such a tiny sample that I can't imagine any given year would be significant. This article from The Economist might've changed my mind a bit on the issue, as it points to larger trends in the industry.
Personally I find the profound lack of black coaches in the NFL more distressing, since this industry has a majority black participation at the player levels. Same for both Blacks and Latinos in professional baseball.
By the way, I don't watch the Super Bowl either, but that's just because it's on too late for my tired bones and most of the show is too damn boring to care about.
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Ru gonna b doin' tha Super Bowl, at least? :) it's tha big '5-0'! :D
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but I'll still not watch. It's just too much ballyhoo.
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I usually tune in for tha ha lf-time show, at tha very least :) this year, imma def gonna dig Bruno's 'Uptown Funk'...hellz yeha, 70's FUNK!!! :D ;)
DeleteI have a book called the Alternate Oscars and for every year this author picks the movies andd performances that should have won. For as long as their have been Oscars second guessing them has been more fun than the actual awards. I too had an I can't watch this anymore moment, it was Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture. As to the controvery this year, the article you shared is the first good one I've seen on the subject it had evidence backed with statistics and mentioned great performances by black actors that were ignored. The other articles I read were just a lot of complaing. But still I havent seen any articles that offer any solutions. I guess talking about it is the only solution. Though are Academy members going to feel like they have to vote for black actors next year? Next year every nominee is going to be Black. Did you see that SNL sketch were all the white guys are nominated even though they just had cameos and the black actors were giving amazing performances. it was really funny, but also a sad commentary. It sort of proved SNL still gets it right every once in a while.
ReplyDeleteThat's the problem. They now have exactly that problem of making sure to identify at least one black actor, actress or project to highlight each year. It's ironic that SNL does that gag since for a very very long time they featured exactly one black comedian at a time. They've gotten much better about it, much more relaxed but for many years you had Garrett Morris, then Eddie Murphie, and so on.
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