Is racial bias still keeping black artists from being recognized
when Hollywood hands out its annual Academy Awards?
On the one hand, the musical Dreamgirls, which features
an ensemble of black actors in the story of an African-American
singing group, failed to earn an expected best film Oscar
nomination this year, and some Hollywood watchers wondered if
racism played a role.
But on the other, black actors received a record five of the 20
nominations in acting categories for 2006. And three -- Forest
Whitaker, Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson -- are favored to win
when the Oscars are handed out on February 25.
If they do not, the question of racism among the nearly 6,000
Academy Award voters almost certainly will be raised again. The
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been notoriously
stingy to black artists at Oscar time, with blacks having won only
10 acting Oscars since the first awards in 1929, excluding honorary
awards.
No black person has ever been named best director.
Race bias will affect Oscar politics as long as it plays a role
in US culture, Oscar watchers said. "Race will go away from the
Academy when race goes away from America," said David Poland of
MovieCityNews.com.
Poland is one of many observers who said he did not believe race
played a part in Dreamgirls failing to land in the best
film category despite gaining eight nominations overall, more than
any other movie.
Since the January 23 nominations, several theories have
outweighed racial bias when it came to the Dreamgirls
snub, according to Oscar pundits, film historians and critics.
Musicals are a hard sell to Oscar voters, they noted.
Dreamgirls was also touted early on as the best-film
frontrunner, and Academy Award voters did not want to be told which
film was best before casting votes, some said.
SIMPLE MAY BE BEST
But the simplest explanation is the movie was not among 2006's
five best. "Having seen all the other films ... they are better
films, pure and simple," said Gil Robertson, syndicated columnist
and president of the African American Film Critics Association.
The five best picture nominees are: road comedy Little Miss
Sunshine; crime thriller The Departed; cultural drama
Babel;, Japanese war saga Letters from Iwo Jima,
and The Queen, about Britain's royal family in a period of
crisis.
Hattie McDaniel was the first black to win an acting Oscar --
for supporting actress in 1939's Gone with the Wind. The
second was not until Sidney Poitier received the best actor nod for
1963's "Lilies of the Field, and the third took almost another two
decades -- Louis Gossett Jr.'s supporting actor nod for 1982's
An Officer and a Gentleman.
Just a handful of supporting actor and actress nods followed,
until 2002, when Hollywood thought that the Academy had put the
race issue behind it. That year, Denzel Washington won best actor
for Training Day and Halle Berry was named best actress
for Monster's Ball.
It was the first time black Americans won the top two acting
awards in the same year. Three years after Washington's and Berry's
dual wins, Jamie Foxx scored a best actor victory for his role as
soul singer Ray Charles in 2004's Ray, and last year the
drama Crash, which explores race in America, was named
best film.
"I think the color barrier is coming down, but it takes a
generation or two to die off. It's a slow process," said Robert
Osborne, Oscar historian and author of a series of books subtitled
"The Official History of the Academy Awards."
What many Hollywood watchers are wondering now is whether
younger voters will cast enough votes for Whitaker as the brutal
dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, and Murphy
and Hudson playing soulful singers in Dreamgirls.
(China Daily via Reuters February 19, 2007)