(TheDailyKOS) - In this article Doctor RJ makes a good enough case for why black talent is pissed off at the Oscars this year, being the second year in a row that they have been shut out because as we all very well know, #OscarSoWhite.
But no one has been able to make the case for why they're getting shunned, other than this half-assed write up about the repeated neglect where Cheryl Boone Isaacs who is the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences apparently asked the board to be more diverse in their thinking and in response is quoted as saying:
"The Academy has no power over Hollywood. We have nothing to do with hiring," she said. "What we can do, however, is to get them to widen their normal stream of thought."
For those who are already sick of these complaints and likely, have come up with better solutions to this from the comfort of their arm chairs such as "why don't 'they' start their own academy," need to think about that for a bit longer to realize that, it would be no different from someone being forced to leave the neighborhood because of some asshole neighbor, which brings up the common phrase, "why should I have to move?"
But the Academy is like anything else that doesn't get a lot of turn over where it embeds itself and becomes more difficult to get rid of.
Millionaires Cry Foul
When I get rich, things are gonna fucking change. For one, my audience is what put me to the top and really, that's all I'm going to count on. That's if enough people like what I'm selling for me to even get there. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqA_e-NfYFg[/embed]
Fuck, that's a good looking woman!
And while these actors are working super hard to get cast in a lot of great roles, they're not really hurting. If they want to be philanthropists that's one thing but the monster they're fighting only exists if they see it or rather, treat it as one.
I could take you down Labyrinthine lane and get you wrapped up in all sorts of reasons why The Academy are nothing but thugs, where they've made it so that you can only go through them. And then I think about Robert Redford's admission or submission to Hollywood in saying that he doesn't fuck with them.
Here's what he said when he was asked about being snubbed by the Oscars in 2014 while he was running the Sundance film festival at the same time and his view as the creator of the independent cornerstone as reported by The Star.
“Our job and our role is to create the space and the platform to bring new voices and new ways of seeing the world using independent film, using this place. That’s it. We’re not interested in the money, that’s somebody else’s decision.”
A 21st century search of the all white actor will show his assets are in the 170 million dollar mark, so what the fuck right?
But we're supposed to look West towards Hollywood in order to make them relevant because the Oscars are supposed to matter?
And let's confirm what we already know that The Academy puts on the worst show on television every fucking year like, almost deliberately and our jaws are supposed to drop because a Mexican director finally gets some recognition? Because it's supposed to somehow show that there's finally some acceptance of minority talent?
It should be criminal that they can torture us with the worst entertaiment while they're supposed to be awarding the best.
The Ultimate Oscar Snub
Since Jada Pinkette Smith is boycotting the Oscars and a few others seem to be getting on board -- clearly a soft "fuck you" statement to the Academy -- why not just create a better and more up to date awards show that represents the 21st century instead?
Millionaire or not we all love stories and those of us who are involved in creating those stories no matter what media it's in, love that too because stories are in everything.
Hey someone got murdered! Who? Why? When? And if you don't have that information, frankly it's boring no matter how tragic the reality might be.
And telling those stories is important but you can already see a problem forming when minorities get involved. Suddenly, the entertainment industry even has a way to solve those problems by not telling those stories and even casting, which brings me to my example with The Simpsons via incendiaryAmerican, where something we might have accepted as normal is gradually becoming a problem.
That's just one angle about minorities, but as far as the stories go, why isn't black cinema a draw? Latino cinema has done more marketing as of late so there are a lot of stories out there that want to be told but those very same filmmaker are contributing to the problem too because they're expecting their produced stories to be told on a more full-frontal scale which only Hollywood money can offer.
At the same time, we as viewers/consumers are all drunk from the big numbers we read about the papers and J.J. Abrams is kind of right to go there, because he has to make the studios happy, or not. But he's likely signed a deal with the devil and yet, if he wanted to, he could be the kind of power needed to form a new Academy and a new award show.
The point is that there needs to be a insurgency. The neglected talent need to defect from the Academy's grip and start all over again.
We need a better show, a better committee of voters to select the right movies and for them to throw some collective money in the right direction in order to appropriately support it and do what a boycott video won't and take a real stand against the old guard.
And let's be honest, as it looks now no one in the big entertainment business she's boycotting wants what Jada '20 million dollar' Pinkette Smith is selling. If Kanye West's regular routine of bumping award winners off their mics during live broadcasts is any indication, we need a coup immediately!
[Featured image by Prayitno via Flickr / CC BY 2.0]
"There's Only One Way For #OscarSoWhite Supporters To Really Boycott The Academy" by incendiaryAmerican is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License based on a work at http://wp.me/p6VWlN-1vg
