Representation in Art/Entertainment/Media • Page 17

The Oscars over the last ten years have been pretty bad. But the system itself, not really. Flawed, absolutely. Cancerous to the film industry? Certainly not.

 

The Academy members vote for the films that have multi-million dollar awards campaigns that promote them. Critical success is pretty objective; you can round up the critics and get an idea of the consensus top films every year; we have been doing it for a long time.

The idea that foreign films are going to start getting nominated for Oscars is so laughable that it seems intentionally provocative. Foreign films are never going to get that sort of recognition unless they have a gimmick (The Artist, which is not technically in a foreign language anyway), and when did the guy who agreed to make a superhero movie become such an expert on art cinema? How is his blackness making him more receptive toward independent or art cinema? Given his career choice, it is much easier to assume it will be more of the same. In all my years traveling long distances to see art films that no one ever talks about or even gets discussed in awards, the racial makeup of the audiences and handful of critics that promote these films has never been some sort of dividing line. When Spike Lee released a great film no one saw last year, the dismissal of the film was across all races.

The Academy is not some underground lair where everyone can meet and Ryan Coogler can take a 12 Angry Men stand to get some amazing art film nominated. It is a group of trade people who do not watch the movies that are nominated and vote for the films they think they are "supposed" to. Every year we see Academy members admit to not watching the films they voted for, not completing the ballots, or letting their grandson or butler fill out the ballot for them. Ryan Coogler or any non-white member is not immune to that sort of behavior, and for him to not waste his time with such a rotten institution is admirable.

 

Man, their butler must be pretty good cause most of that BBC list was nominated for an Oscar.

Flawed, yes. Cancerous and destroying the industry, no, that's just being dramatic.

 

Less than a fifth of the films on that list were nominated for Best Picture. That was my entire point.

The tastes of the butler was never in question, but it is still a weird comment nonetheless.

 

Honestly, you're just being deliberately obtuse at this point. You keep talking about all these (valid) complaints whose roots are all in the fact that the people currently voting for the awards are homogenous, old, and generally not in-touch with how cinema has evolved over the last 50 years.

Foreign films, films based around people of color or other underrepresented groups, etc. will get nominated for awards more frequently and more often when the make-up of the Academy reflects their experience. This isn't just about one person, it's about getting enough people from diverse backgrounds REPRESENTED in the Academy, which will, in turn, change what is nominated and what wins.

And your comments about Ryan Coogler's career choice is actually beyond insulting. The guy chose to take in the responsibility of creating a film about, arguably, the most prominent black superhero in all of comics, and that's after coming off of two smaller-scale, critically-acclaimed films that everyone adores. His track record thus far gives him the authority to vote on these matters and his experience and background give him a perspective that isn't REPRESENTED enough in the overall demographics of the Academy at present.

And please, save me the "I know art films because I travel all over to see them" line. I see more films in a year than the average person sees in a decade and I don't discriminate between studio films and indies/foreign films either. And Spike Lee's film last year was met with a resounding "meh" because it was nothing special and he hasn't directed a truly groundbreaking film in years. Not because of some kind of vast movement to deny it success simply because it's an indie film.

The platform that the Oscars can give to the nominated films is enormous and, as such, if more diverse members of the industry joined the Academy then more diverse films would be up for awards. It's not a hard concept. But you just have some kind of personal grudge against the Oscars and it's blinding you to all the good the institution could do if it was actually reformed. Because, like I keep saying, you STILL have not mentioned one single problem with the Academy that wouldn't be fixed by a change in demographics.

 

The Academy adds new people every year and the problem has never been resolved. The idea that a black director and a handful of other people are going to suddenly start nominating Iranian films for Academy Awards is the stuff of fantasy; bad and bland taste in film crosses lines of gender, race, education, and income. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the only other people I see in theaters for art films are old white people, so it is not and has never been a race issue.

The fact that you would regard a film like Chi-Raq as average while raving about a superhero indicates your own problems with the role of race in film. You would rather have symbolism without change rather than something overtly political and challenging. That is literally the definition of the kind of films the Academy praises (Driving Miss Daisy, The Blind Side).

You keep repeating this line about how changing demographics would fix the problem, but there has never been any evidence it would. Anyone who would participate and promote that pointless, months-long, fame-obsessed, capitalist-driven awards show is the problem, not the solution. The institution is beyond repair because the institution itself is the problem. The best thing that could possibly happen is that bad, middlebrow films full of white people will be nominated less so bad, middlebrow films full of people of different races will be nominated. That is not meaningful progress.

 

I have to say, I could be wrong but I think you might be the first person to come onto the "Representation in Entertainment/Media" page and argue for less representation, so at least you have that going for you.

The fact that the Academy has added new people every year and the problems persist means, literally, nothing. The Academy has never made an overt, conscientious effort to extend invitations to members of underrepresented groups on a large scale before. And even the number that they invited this past year isn't enough. But that's the step in the right direction that is needed to overhaul the process. You're operating from the assumption that, just because someone is invited to join the Academy and vote, that person has "bad and bland taste in film." So you're saying someone like Martin Scorsese or Ang Lee has bad taste in film? And, anyway, it absolutely is a race issue, but not necessarily a racist issue. I'm not saying all Oscar voters are racist, it's just that the Academy is overwhelmingly old and white (and male, for that matter) and as such you have the people who only see Oscar bait films, or people who don't see all the films because they're old and can't, etc. Which is why those problems are solvable by inviting younger, more diverse members of the industry into the Academy. Obviously.

AndChi-Raq is an average film, in my opinion. It's certainly better than pretty much everything else Spike Lee has made over the last several years (Oldboy? Red Hook Summer? Miracle at St. Anna?) but it's nowhere near as good as his early work. And, again, please spare me the sermonizing. The fact that you can't see how important it is for major blockbusters to be centered around people of color (and women, of course) is astounding to me. And for someone as talented as Coogler to agree to do it is cause for excitement, not the condescending derision you continue to display. Also, Driving Miss Daisy and The Blind Side are terrible films, for the record. Not that it takes a genius to know that and not that I should even have to say it.

And yeah, I keep repeating it and I will continue to keep repeating it. And anyway, by your own "objective" metric for success in film (critical acclaim), every single Best Picture winner since 2005 is a fantastic movie (they're all scored above 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, yes even The Artist, which is incidentally also higher than what Chi-Raq is scored at). So, really, you don't even know what you're talking about yourself. So much for "bad, middlebrow films," huh? And a white man hasn't won Best Director since 2011. That's not "meaningful progress?" Like, seriously. There's the evidence right there that things are changing. Changing slowly, at the moment, but changing. And accelerating the demographic shift will only make it better.

The Oscars aren't going anywhere, sorry to say. No matter how much hyperbole you post on message boards about how the institution is a "cancer" that "hurts film," it's never going away. So, rather than essentially advocating for the status quo by being happy that the Academy isn't growing more diverse, maybe stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.

 

You could have saved everyone a lot of time if you had tried this line earlier. It is either willful misrepresentation of what I said or trolling.

 

I think we all should just make mixed babies. I'm ready to do my part.

 

Someone who classifies increased representation in the Academy as "not meaningful progress" doesn't sound like an advocate of representation to me, but that's probably just me.

Don't care to respond to your own double-standard about how Best Picture winners with a 90%+ score on Rotten Tomatoes aren't good films simply because they aren't "Morrissey-Approved" when you yourself stated, "Critical success is pretty objective; you can round up the critics and get an idea of the consensus top films every year; we have been doing it for a long time?" I recognize it's off-topic for this thread, but, honestly, I'm kind of interested to see you try and rationalize it.

 

What is the double standard? Those are the same thing.

 

Less arguing.

More interracial sex.

 

the dream

 

The double-standard is you calling all Oscar-winning films "bad" and "middlebrow" when, by your own stated metric, the last ten years of winners have been neither of those things.

 

Pretty tempted to make a Lisa Bonet thread.

 

I did not say all, but it is most. Of the films that won in the 21st century, three are good.

 

Lol if you say so. I think you and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

 

I think there's a valid critique of the idea of hoping for the Academy to fix itself, rather than collectively devalue the Academy as an important institution. Oscars are meaningless and if they are not changing meaningfully towards representation, why keep expecting them to? Why keep placing importance on them? They have failed not only to represent racially diverse films, but even great films. We should stop giving them attention and power.

The answer is, a lot of people care about the Oscars. A lot of people watch them and let awards guide their viewing habits. And most of those people aren't demanding the Academy be more inclusive, most of them don't care. The movie industry also cares about them, they use them as ads for their movies and directors and actors. So meaningful change within the Academy is not really a reasonable expectation, and Ryan Coogler declining membership doesn't really change much, and in fact, I'm glad he did. If more talented and important and visible filmmakers rejected the Academy, that'd be interesting.

 

Typecast as a terrorist | Riz Ahmed | The Long Read

 

The premise of this game: answer the tough question, or eat one of the presumably disgusting foods on the table, such as chicken feet, balut, jellyfish, and pig blood curd. So exotic. "Wow, it all looks so terrible." Thanks, Jameses.

To be fair, I don't know if I'd want to try the ghost pepper hot sauce or the bull penis; it's actually pretty funny how Kimmel is so game.

But yeah, this reminds me of an Asian American Pop Culture class I took that focused on media portrayals of food, and how a lot of the food we eat regularly is considered weird until it's Americanized past the point of recognition.

 

i like chicken feet and pig blood.

 

I can't stand James Corden.

 

All of the network late night hosts are bad now except maybe Seth. Maybe.

All subversion of the medium went out the window when Letterman and Craig both left (and obviously Letterman had grown stale after the revelatory first chunk of his career)

 

We will never get another host as awesome as Late Night Dave.