David Oyelowo made his feelings known at the Santa Barbara Film Festival last night.
This charge has been circulating for a while now. I spend so much of my time championing any black performances at all, whether they are subservient or not, because I think it helps to level the playing field in terms of power. That’s why I thought Viola Davis should have won for The Help (she didn’t). But if you really want to get down to it, you will look at the problem from a different perspective entirely – why is it there is such an unwillingness to reward powerful black characters?
He makes the great point that Sidney Poitier was not even nominated for In the Heat of the Night – which goes down as one of the biggest jokes in Academy history. Worse, was their outright snub of Spike Lee’s entire movie, and all of its empowered players, Do the Right Thing. Movies like The Great Debaters and The Butler are written off immediately, of course, for being not hip and cool enough for voters. But they shore do like their not hip nor cool Brit dramas, eh?
I would add to Oyelowo’s statement about “subservient” to say also “criminal element,” or “bad” in some way. The “magical negro” is a big one, too – the character that helps the white character do something heroic. The one exception is, of course, Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles. What was it Spike Lee said about the musicians and basketball stars being acceptable in the white community?
Lead Actor
–34 years before—
Sidney Poitier, Lilies of the Field (itinerant handyman)
Denzel Washington, Training Day (dealer, criminal)
Jamie Foxx, Ray (musician)
Forest Whitaker, Last King of Scotland (evil dictator)*
Did not win:
Denzel Washington as Malcolm X
Denzel Washington as Rubin Carter in The Hurricane
Will Smith as Muhammad Ali
Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda
Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus
Lead Actress
–only one win out of a total of ten nominations in 87 years of Oscar history–
Halle Berry, Monsters Ball (poor Southern woman)
Supporting Actor
Louis Gossett, Jr., Officer and a Gentleman (drill instructor)
Denzel Washington, Glory (black soldier during Civil War)
Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jerry Maguire (football player)
Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby (trainer)
Did not win:
Denzel Washington as Biko in Cry Freedom
Supporting Actress
Hattie McDaniel, Gone with the wind (slave/maid)
–51 year gap–
Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost (small time crook/psychic)
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls (backup singer)
Mo’Nique, Precious (drug addict abusive mother)
Octavia Spencer, The Help (maid)
Lupita Nyong’o (slave)
Other category nominations here
I have to say that Oyelowo has a point. But even the Academy’s inclination to reward drug dealers and maids doesn’t explain how Oyelowo did not get nominated for Selma. What happened there was a coordinated effort to take down a film at the precise moment ballots were in the hands of voters. The window was so tight – December 29 through January 8th that all they really needed was an excuse not to watch the film. When CNN, NBC Nightly News, the Washington Post – to say nothing of the countless think pieces — all pouncing on a movie that hadn’t even made $20 million yet gave voters all they needed to push that film aside from their essential viewing pile.
Negative campaigning doesn’t always come from a studio. Sometimes it’s just an interested party who has nothing to do with the race that feels like being an asshole or to have some sort of power in the Oscar race. With social networking in place it becomes all too easy to create something out of nothing. A cautionary tale.
