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Will Smith played Muhammad Ali in Ali the Boxer (2001).
Last month, the Announcement of the Oscar nominations and the failure of a single black actor to be nominated sparked a backlash that people talked about actors that critics thought should be considered: idris elba in "Beasts of No Nation," Michael B. Jordan in "Creed;" and Will B. Jordan in Concussion. Will Smith; or one of the stars in "Straight Outta Compton."
#oscarssowhite抗议活动的喧闹让我很好奇: How does the academy of motion picture arts and sciences evaluate the performances of black actors? Black artists have been nominated for Best Actress or Actor in 30 awards for 28 films. I've watched all of these films in the last few weeks.
These films have a lot in common, but it is important that the writers and directors of these films are mostly white. Only 3 of the writers and directors are black. None of them are female directors. These figures may not come as a surprise, as we all know the demographics of the film industry. Some of the other findings were even more surprising.
That is: In Oscar history, 10 black women were nominated for Best Actress, nine of whom played roles that were homeless or soon to be homeless (the only exception being viola davis's role in the 2011 film The Help).
The first was Dorothy Dandridge, who starred in Carmen Jones (1954). Adapted from an opera, the musical film is primarily about a young woman who is sexually greedy and her lover, who is obsessed with and eventually kills her. But it also tells the story of a cunning, proud man who has nowhere to go. At the end of the film, Carmen and her fugitive boyfriend hide in a dilapidated apartment in Chicago. They have no money to pay the rent and will soon be driven away. Throughout the film, Carmen strives to appear carefree and enthusiastic, and when she goes out to list food and rent, she tries to show that look again.
Nearly every black actress nominated for Best Actress was in a similar predicament in the film, until 2012's "Beasts of the Southern Wild," in which Quvenzhané Wallis played a little girl about to lose her home to a flood. No black woman has ever been nominated for Best Actress for playing an executive or even a role with a college degree (although gabourey sidibe's role in the 2009 film Precious seems likely to end up with a degree).
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Gabriel Sidibé played Claryth Jones in Cherish (2009).
The 10 black actresses nominated for Best Actress played poor or low-income roles, half of whom were penniless mothers. Two are played by a singer who once had a huge fortune — Diana Ross's billie holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and Angela Bassett's play of Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It (1993) tina turner)。 However, Hallede is penniless at first, and the audience knows that she will eventually go bankrupt, and Tina Turner does not have her own money until the last five minutes of the film. Other roles are maids, sharecroppers, criminal vagrants, and poor housewives and girls.
There are a few other things in common: 7 of the 10 characters have no husband, boyfriend, or father (or in prison). Six of them have been subjected to violent abuse and five have been raped.
The Oscars seem to favor the various roles played by black male actors and give them honors more often. The black actor has been nominated for Best Actor 20 times, including four nominations by Denzel Washington, three nominations by Morgan Freeman, and two nominations each by Sidney Poitier and Will Smith.
Thirteen of the nominated characters have been arrested or imprisoned. For example, Chiwetel Ejiofor played the newly kidnapped solomon northup in "12 years a slave"; Malcolm little, played by Deazel Washington, was imprisoned and quickly changed his name to Malcolm x (all the other characters he was nominated for were arrested, Even the fallen detective Alonzo Harris, whom he played in Training Day, was arrested before escaping in the final minutes.) Also, police storm the bedroom door of Jamie Foxx, played by Jamie Foxx, or Jack Jefferson, played by James Earl Jones in The great White Hope (1970). In the film, most of these characters are arrested out of good intentions, so we may sympathize with them and hate the injustices they suffer. However, these images seem to be constantly being repeated sadistically.
jaap buitendijk/fox searchlight pictures
Chevat Egart ford in Twelve Years of Slavery (2013).
Of the 20 films, 15 involve violence or crime. These actions are often justified or do not harm others, or violence is part of their daily routine, as is the case with boxers in Ali (2001), The Hurricane (1999), and A History of Boxer Struggle. However, these characters all seem to end up in jail (if the crime is not without harming others, such as in Training Day or What to Do with Love, then the perpetrator usually never goes to jail).
Ten of the characters had white partners or rivals, or, like lilies of the field (1963), the black protagonists were paired with white nuns from an entire convent. For the most part, that white opponent is the obvious protagonist. Examples include Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), or Ethan Hawke in Training Day.
Seven of these films do not feature major black female characters. There are 7 characters who abuse women.
I shared these findings with Dr. Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies and author at the school of cinematic arts at the University of Southern California. He wasn't shocked, but he also said it wasn't appropriate to focus on Oscar. He said: "Oscar is just a symptom", not the disease itself.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in announcing the changes to #oscarssowhite, cited the film industry's failure to produce films with diverse castings as the root cause. Boyd made a similar point: "You have to go back and study the kind of films that African-Americans make. ”
jess pinkham/fox searchlight pictures, via associated press
Quinvanzani Wallis played "Little Tortilla" in The Beast of the South (2012).
What kind of movie?
The 28 films are full of characters of world historical or pop culture significance, men and women who face seemingly unbearable oppression with incredible determination, who are persecuted or cruelly treated, and sometimes they are cruel to others.
The characters that these films lack are ordinary people. When such characters do appear, the camera seems to stay stuck in the part of life where they are most likely to trigger white Americans to reflect on America's history of racism. We know Miss Daisy very well – her son, her childhood and political stance. But we only hear a line or two about the family of her driver (Morgan Freeman). Similarly, there's a lot of information in Monster's Ball about Billy Bob Thornton's Hank, but about Halle Berry's bereaved Leticia Musgrove, all we know is that she was unlucky to end up being redeemed by a white male.
Dr. Miriam J. Petty, an assistant professor of radio, television and film at Northwestern University, said the characters were mostly lonely and "closely tied to the fate of the white people who appear in the film."
It's not entirely surprising that so many of the actors nominated are playing great or miserable poor people and prisoners. There are many such figures in African-American history, and Oscar loves history. Eight of the 10 actors who were recently nominated for Best Actor played historical figures. But none of the black actors nominated for the Oscars were woody grant in Nebraska (2014, where Bruce Dern was nominated for his performances in the film) — a unique, but also fictional, ordinary person.
"If a film is about an average black man — well, that might mean he knows other black people," Petty said, "and those black people might also need to be in the film." Then it became a film about black people entirely. ”