Why the Oscars' acting nominees are all white

Hollywood is shooting itself in the foot

A LOT of effluent has been stirred up about the lack of racial diversity in the acting categories of the Motion Pictures Academy Awards this year. Sunday, the motion picture industry will hold their annual celebration of themselves but this year, the tinsel and glitter surrounding the Oscars has been sullied and stained.

Why should it matter to us? Unfortunately - like it or not, wrongly or rightly - most people form their opinions and world views through the movies, television and the Internet.

All of the 20 acting nominations went to all white actors. A lot has been written about the composition of the Academy members and to no surprise, the overwhelming majority are older, white men who tend to vote for what they are most comfortable with, you know, people with whom they can relate - other white people. I'm not defending this attitude of privileged familiarity, but I do understand it. More details here. Huffington Post had a good article explaining just how exclusive the Academy is.

Of course, it doesn't help the diversity issue when they have relatively few actors of color to choose from. Not that there aren't any actors of color, there are more than you'd think. There just aren't that many roles in which minority actors can show off their acting prowess.

That sorry situation falls in the laps of the directors and producers who decide who - or "type" - to seek when filling the roles. It doesn't occur to them to go beyond the stereotypes that minority actors find themselves auditioning for. Color-blind casting is much talked about but in reality, rarely used.

A recent example of color-blind casting was the choice of John Cho on the short-lived TV series Selfie. The producers were not really looking for an Asian male to play the romantic lead, but Cho's audition made his selection a no-brainer. Adding Cho to the cast added a whole new dimension to the comedy even though "race" was never made a central issue on the series.

The other side of the coin is, all things being even talent-wise, producers will choose the white applicant because in their own mind, white actors are more marketable. Never mind the data that shows the growing number of American moviegoers, tube watchers and social networkers whose skin color is not white (or pink, or light beige, ... whatever.);  never mind that in a few years, people of color will be majority in the United States; never mind that in the international market, the largest audiences are in Asia;  That is the particular lens they view the world; it just is.

"Why was Selma the only film that was even in the running with people of color for the award?" asks Ava DuVernay, director of the critically acclaimed Selma  which was nominated only in two categories, Best Picture and Best Song. "You know what I mean? I mean, why are there not—not just black, brown people? You know what I mean? Asian people, indigenous people, representations that are more than just one voice, just one face, just one gaze?"

That brings us to the other hurdle facing the industry. There's not a strong interest in investing in source material from which they could develop strong story lines featuring black, brown, yellow and red actors

It's not only important for writers to diversify their own characters and tell stories around minority themes and issues; producers need to widen their search for source materials beyond Marvel comic books (OK, Marvel is doing more to diversify it's own characters than the movie industry is; but that's the subject of another post.)

Despite the power and influence of successful minority producers like Tyler Perry, Dean Devlin and Oprah, Hollywood's culture has hardly moved an inch towards inclusion.

I can empathize with those actors of color who study their craft for years but are reduced to playing stereotypes.

I once auditioned for a role on a popular TV series. I read the lines given to me and the casting director was so enthusiastic and encouraging over my reading (which-  I figured out later - was the normal Hollywood B.S. way of speaking.) Then he said, "Now try it with an accent." What accent? I think to myself: A Filipino accent? Chinese? Japanese? Vietnamese? French? British? "You know," he said, "an Oriental accent."

Needless to say, I didn't get a call-back. That's why I became a journalist.

Ava DuVernay

Sorry for straying away from the topic; back to the bigger question of why there are no actors of color nominated for this year's Oscars. DuVernay, got down to the meat of   the motion picture industry's problem.

“The obstacle, it is systemic. It’s systemic," she said in an interview in Democracy Now. "It’s a system that’s been set up in a certain way. Times have changed, ideas have matured, and the system might not have caught up with that or stayed up with that, ... “Perhaps all of the hoopla this year will trigger some action.”

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