The Academy Awards take place on Sunday, March 27 — a night to recognize the finest directors, actors, and films, among other categories. However, some people see an issue with the Oscar nominations’ lack of diversity. Only four Black actors were nominated for their roles in this year’s Academy Awards. Will Smith in “King Richard” and Denzel Washington in “The Tragedy of Macbeth” were nominated for lead roles in their movies. Ariana Debose in “West Side Story” and Aunjanue Ellis in “King Richard” were nominated for best supporting actress.
Texas Christian University associate professor of history Frederick W. Gooding Jr., otherwise known as Dr. G, and author of “Black Oscars: From Mammy to Minny, What the Academy Awards Tell Us About African Americans,” gave some insight into the issue at a recent Zoom event at the Oak Bluffs library.
The presentation was kicked off with Gooding prefacing to the audience that it is good for people to ask questions about race and to be critical of Hollywood “without jeopardizing their overall relationship with movies as a very powerful medium to communicate ideas, thoughts, or feelings.” Gooding himself is a fan of movies.
“Everybody loves the movies, including me,” Gooding said. “While I am indeed critical of aspects of Hollywood’s production and what Hollywood has done, that doesn’t mean I have an axe to grind, or that I hate the movies.”
To better help the audience understand the disparity the Oscars exhibit between white and minority nominees, particularly Black nominees, Gooding displayed two examples: the character Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel in the 1939 movie “Gone with the Wind,” and Minny, played by Octavia Spencer in the 2011 movie “The Help.” Both won Oscars for the category of best supporting actor. Mammy and Minny are both characters who are in roles of servitude, a slave and a maid respectively. Gooding said there is a significance to these Oscar winners’ roles. In particular, although Gooding said he recognizes “The Help” was designed to bring people together, he takes issue with how people are entertained by this type of imagery of a Black woman decades later.
“Black women in particular, and Blacks in general, are receiving Oscars for playing the role of maids onscreen over 70 years apart,” Gooding said. “There is a claim to be made that in the 1930s, that’s just the way it was, so we’re just reflecting and reinforcing what’s popular in mainstream culture. What’s the argument for 2011? What’s so fascinating about seeing a Black woman serving as a maid onscreen? … If you put in a Black person’s perspective, the movie would have turned out differently.”
The portrayal of Black Americans by Hollywood has a global impact, according to Gooding. He said Hollywood movies have a dominant position in the international movie industry. Additionally, many people outside the U.S. watch the Oscars, which Gooding stated shows the world what Hollywood thinks about African Americans. The way Hollywood portrays or plays Black Americans is also significant because of its racist origins, which Gooding shows in two movies. The 1915 movie “The Birth of a Nation” was America’s first feature-length film and Hollywood blockbuster, making it an influential piece of cinema history that shows moviemaking techniques that are employed today. It also romanticized and helped in the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915, according to PBS. The second is the first talking film, which was the beginning of the end of silent movies: the 1927 movie “The Jazz Singer,” which featured its protagonist in blackface.
“The content [in The Jazz Singer] is [also] problematic, and again historically significant. It’s the first talking feature film. Any film school worth their salt is most likely going to show this or talk about this in detail,” Gooding said. He also pointed out how these historic movies portrayed and stereotyped the image of Black people, such as Black men shown as being predators and having large features.
Gooding said the usage of blackface or similar methods has been shown in more recent movies as well. Robert Downey Jr., famous for his role as Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, played a character in the 2008 movie “Tropic Thunder” in which he darkened his skin, and was nominated for an Oscar for this role.
For Black people to be nominated or to win Oscars, they usually fall under some of the criteria in the “rubric,” according to Gooding and his research. These nominees are usually non-American Black people (e.g. Cynthia Ervio from England playing Harriet Tubman in the 2019 movie “Harriet”), crossing over from another industry (e.g. Will Smith and Queen Latifah going from rapper to actor), have won Oscar awards before (e.g. Morgan Freeman), shows a stereotyped “gravity of reality” for some Black people such as poverty or racism, and are “still in the struggle” (nearly a quarter of Black Oscar nominees’ characters die before the end of their movie).
“This has nothing to do with the actual actors and actresses. This, for me, is pointing the finger at Hollywood because it points to the paucity of opportunity for African Americans,” Gooding said. White people have a large majority in terms of acting and directing roles, which influences how a story may be told. According to the 2021 Hollywood Diversity Report by the University of California Los Angeles, 4 out of 10 lead actors are from minority communities, and 2.5 out of 10 directors are from minority communities. The continued dominance of white actors and directors being nominated brought up hashtags like #OscarsSoWhite.
Gooding acknowledged that Hollywood is aware of the issue and has been researching it, but progress has been slow. Gooding said “fundamental systemic change” is needed, but he is as of yet unsure what the best approach to this change would be.
Gooding gave those on the Zoom presentation much to think about before the upcoming event. At the end of the day, the Oscars are kind of like the contents of New England clam chowder: some varied ingredients, but it’s mostly white.
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February 28, 2022 at 10:56PM
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Hollywood and Oscar's inequality - Martha's Vineyard Times
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