Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Critics Choice: "Thank you straight white guys ... you've dominated movies for so hard and so long ...".


YOU WANT DIVERSITY? 

Thank goodness for the Critics Choice Awards, which awarded best new comedy to Master of None starring Aziz Ansari and co-produced with Alan Yang.

"Thank you straight white guys," said Yang upon receiving the award on Monday (Jan. 19). "You've dominated movies for so hard and so long that anything else seems ... refreshing." Yang was obviously taking a jab at the Oscars which for the second straight year, failed to nominate an actor of color for any of the 20 acting awards.

The 10-episode first season of the critically acclaimed comedy about a Asian/American melllenial's life in New York City trying to succeed as an actor. It's kind of like Friends if that show reflected the New York City that you see in the streets.
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Even with the show's critical success, its future remains uncertain but Ansari all but confirmed to Deadline that another season is in the works but dodged the matter of timing. “I think we’re figuring that out,” he said. “I definitely need some time to refill my head. The first season was so personal, I just wanna make sure whatever we do for season 2 lives up to what we did in the first season.”

Aired on Netflix instead of the major networks, the series was able to take chances where other networks would whitewash the show to make it more "palatable" to the Euro/American audiences. In reality though, the audience is becoming more and more diverse, something that television has realized with this last season showing more Asian/Americans in all sorts of roles, including the main protagonists in series such as in Master of None. Dr. Ken, Quantico, Into the Badlands and Fresh Off The Boat. A second season hasn't been confirmed by Netflix.

Other diversity notes:

The Best Animated Feature, Inside Out, was co-directed by Pixar's Ronnie del Carmen, a Filipino/American, along with Pete Doctor. Filipinos working at the Bay Area's Pixar Studios  are so numerous they've nicknamed themselves the PixNoys (Pixar + Pinoy).


Pixar's Inside Out won Best Animated Feature. The co-director was a Filipino/American.
The CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's lead actress Rachel Bloom was also named Best Actress in A Comedy Series by the Critics Choice Awards. The musical comedy's male lead is played by Filipino/American actor Vincent Rodriguez. This is the second award picked up by Bloom, who won the same award for the Golden Globes. She created the show with Aline Brosh McKenna and they deliberately chose to have an Asian/American romantic lead, the object of love by the title character. The show was the first American TV show to depict a Filipino/American family during its Thanksgiving show, written by Alan Gube, a Filipino/American on the show's writing staff.

Egyptian/American Rami Malek, star of Mr. Robot, won Best Actor in a Drama Series and Idris Elba won Best Actor in a Movie Made for Television for his role in BBC's Luther.

Despite these winners demonstrating the universal appeal of actors of color, it should be mentioned that the vast majority of the nominees were Euro/Americans, including all the major acting awards. Only Elba, Ansari, Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), Tracee Ellis Ross (Blackish) and Fresh off the Boat's Constance Wu and Randall Park broke through the white ranks of nominated actors.
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