Thursday, February 18, 2016

#OscarsSoWhite or a Misunderstood Understanding?

Well... Let's get some things out the way first.
1. The president of the Academy is an African-American woman. AFRICAN *bing* WOMAN *bing bing*
2. The complaints have only been for the recent two years. two. out of 88.
3. The stand out leaders of the stance for change. Spike Lee. It's always been him vs the industry and the industry vs him for 20 plus years. Jada Smith. Her track record as an actress (as a damn good one) has never been up there with those (of all races) that have given an Oscar worthy performance. SO you have a great bitter director and writer with an great lovely black actress who has been offered the roles she fighting for leading a charge.
4. Stop shotgunning straight to racial issues when it seems blacks are not given a fair chance in the situation. Not everything needs to be racial. Half the time it become racial, people be afraid to take the race part out of it because now their point may not be as strong as it was before.
5. Get the F*** rid of that corny "We only win if we play a slave, hoe or crooked cop" line. Please. One them kinds of movies drop every year. If you got to play a hoe to win a Oscar, Meagan Goode would have a million by now.
6. NAACP awards and the AAFCA awards are... no not really... Black associated. OF COURSE they "Got it right" when awarding black people. So woke y'all sound dumb.
7. There is this thing called Oscar season where all the movies aim for Oscars, That drop in the fall after the summer blockbusters are done making big money.

Now that the simple things are out the way, where to start now? Hollywood is Hollywood and the Academy awards Hollywood for what they give it to view. Studios hire actors. It truly starts there. The studio. Once the studio is able to decide that blacks can portray other roles in the eyes of the audience will the fight make better sense. We can go to an even smaller scale and say the roles the black actors accept  matters even more. If we don't pick the roles we believe will give us the accolades no matter how great we are in them. In the end it doesn't matter. Look at Tyrese the singer, he spoke on how it was necessary but no matter how close to right he may be to some those on the opposite end of the argument will look like "well, since you speaking up, what have you given outside of Baby boy, Transformers cameos and a Fast & The Furious role that as a black man means we should open our eyes to look at you and others if you yourself aren't up to par with the white demographic that you can argue by default will always get a nomination." Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Denzel Washington, and Forest Whitaker. Let's start with Forest. No eye jokes as easy as they may be this is serious *refrains from y'all enjoyment* He played a ruler in 'Last King of Scottland' to win his. Not a Slave or crooked cop, but a ruler and beat out Leo, Ryan Gosling, Peter O'Toole, and none other than Will Smith in that damn tear jerker of a soul snatching "The Pursuit of  Happiness". Gauge his early roles prior to the nom and the win. They didn't push him to showcase that he deserved that gold. They were all "Forrest did a great job." not "Oh WOW... He killed that part I can't see Forrest.. I see the character and only the character." By a landslide that year he won for that role majority of the awards. Same with Denzel, Jamie, and Will. Look at what parts and films they starred in prior to a nom or win then all the roles after. Jamie did comedies that showed his comedic skills. Made him one dimensional. Comedic relief. "Ali" was a new light for him and so was "Collateral" which he had to seriously act next to Will and next to Tom Cruise respectably and right along came "Ray". Blew our minds and showed him not as Jamie Foxx the funny guy but as Ray Charles. Will was an Comedic and action star then Ali happened for him. They knew he could make us laugh, they knew he could run around explosions and bring in those summer dollars but could he grab your heart and not be the fresh prince but truly remembered as a character? Yes, proved that once that switch came to show he had that serious role edge in him. On a side note Will is also apart of the Academy. Another note is it's just awards it doesn't affect society. Not necessary to be made a big deal. Common sense is if Majority of the roles given, actors available and quality to place in your works is a white male.. then by numbers and statistics white men will dominate. White actress said she wish she was black because she felt is had an advantage when speaking on situations and got condemned by us. We speak so highly of our power but tear another down for seeing it. She has "white privilege". It's Hollywood and white actresses don't have much privilege. They're underpaid and shipped out of roles soon as they get in their 30s for younger, more attractive girls. Why stop at only our race though? Other races have great actors/actresses. Should better organize with others to get the fight stronger than just only us and we don't have many that can play a role that is "meant" for a white actor. Popular don't mean worthy. Color cause of yours don't mean worthy. People mentioned the guy from Star Wars and that was SOLELY on color not what he did in the film which was..... yea. Idris Elba GREAT actor but the role he did was a Netflix Exclusive. Not many films that hit that format may be recognized at certain awards as credible to get a nomination. Michael B. Jordan Y'all loving him, He's killing the roles but it's all popular. Same with "Straight Outta Compton". Now there are a series of tweets I seen that helped further explain how this fight is going in the wrong direction with the right idea for the wrong reasons.


























and the criteria is...













Pretty much.

Now I personally had said that to shut people up on the topic a type of affirmative action like effect may end up happening to where they just start tossing black actors and "black" films into the nominations just to quiet the talk even if they still may lose a films and actors are in the race. Now we know that still won't work because the need to find something wrong to continue complaints is our thing when even given what we initially fought for. To end this post I'll just place a video of  a few guys speaking on the new changes that are supposed to take place. At the end of the day we'll see what happens.

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