“Could white actors really take home all 20 Oscar nominee slots?” asked
Kyle Buchanan at Vulture in September. On Thursday morning, the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences delivered its answer: Yes.
Mr. Buchanan had identified Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” as a film with the potential to yield some nominees of color:
“On paper, this is a
serious Oscar contender: It’s a movie about Martin Luther King Jr.
(played by David Oyelowo), directed by a talented up-and-comer (Ava
DuVernay, who helmed the acclaimed indie ‘Middle of Nowhere’), shot by a
tremendous cinematographer (Bradford Young), and blessed with a
sterling team of producers that includes Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner (who
just took home Oscars for producing ‘12 Years a Slave’) as well as
Oprah Winfrey, who also plays a supporting role in the film. That’s a
whole lot of heft.”
“Selma” was nominated
for best picture and best original song, but neither Mr. Oyelowo nor Ms.
DuVernay got nominations on their own.
“The lack of a best director nomination for DuVernay,” writes
Linda Holmes at NPR, “is a disappointment not only for those who
admired the film and her careful work behind the camera, but also for
those who see her as a figure of hope, considering how rare it is for
even films about civil rights to have black directors, and how rare it
is for any high-profile project at all to be directed by a woman.” She
notes that “the film has been criticized for the places where it takes
liberties with facts,” but says “that issue doesn’t comfortably explain
any challenges it faces with voters, given the welcoming of ‘The
Imitation Game’ and ‘Foxcatcher,’ both of which have been criticized for
substantial alterations to the stories of not supporting characters but
principal characters.”
And, she adds, “how a
film can qualify for best picture and have practically no other elements
worthy of recognition is an eternal — but here, particularly painful —
bit of bafflement.”
At The Root, Stephen A. Crockett Jr. surveys a variety of explanations for its relatively few nominations, from racial bias in the academy to a failure to send “Selma” screeners
to Directors and Screen Actors Guild voters. But, he writes, “no matter
the explanation, the reality remains: DuVernay and Oyelowo were robbed.
In retelling the story of a fight for justice, a great injustice has
been done to them.”
At The Huffington Post, Lauren Duca notes
that this is the first year since 1998 that no actors of color were
nominated. This year’s lack of diversity, she writes, “is especially
troubling when you consider that last year’s Oscars was a banner year
with a best supporting actress award for Lupita Nyong’o (and Steve
McQueen taking home the best picture title).” And, she writes, “if
there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s that we have a long way to go
before we can truly talk about progress being made.”
Mr. Buchanan made a
similar point in September. It’s “notable,” he wrote, “that after nearly
two decades of inclusion, where nearly every year featured multiple
nominees of color, the Oscar cupboard could soon be bare for nonwhite
actors.”
But at Fusion, Jorge Rivas points out that
those two decades may not have been all that inclusive: “Of the 80
Oscars that have gone to actors in the last 20 years, 67 have been
awarded to white performers.” And he writes that the homogeneity of the
Oscar voters (a 2012 Los Angeles Times study found
that 94 percent of those voters were white, and 77 percent were male)
is only part of the problem. He quotes Alex Nogales, president of the
National Hispanic Media Coalition: “The whole industry is to blame and
it starts with the agents.” And, Mr. Nogales adds, “We have a group of
people that are more comfortable dealing with people that are like them,
and that’s why you have so many stories that are pretty much the same.”
In a widely cited NPR op-ed,
the history professor Peniel E. Joseph argues that “Selma” may have
been dismissed by some precisely because it’s different from the story
many Americans like to tell themselves:
“The real problem many
critics have with this film is that it’s too black and too strong. Our
popular reimagining of the civil rights movement is that it’s something
we all did together and the battle is over; that’s just not true.”
And, he adds:
“Ultimately, the
beating heart of this film rests not with its portrait of LBJ, or even
King, not with what group has been left out or ignored, but with the
larger truth that the civil rights movement’s heroic period reflected
our collective strengths and weaknesses as a nation, something Americans
are loath to recognize let alone acknowledge. ‘Selma’s’ greatest gift
is that, even when it reimagines some moments of history, it remains
unflinching in its examination of America’s racial soul.”
For Mr. Crockett Jr.,
the story of “Selma” may be one we especially need right now: He calls
it “a movie whose social message couldn’t have been more relevant in a
post-Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter push for social change than if it had
been preordained by a minister.”
And for many, the
relatively slim showing for “Selma” is a sign that the academy has yet
to feel such a push for change — or, if anything, that it’s changing in
the wrong direction.
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