By Frederick W. Gooding
The 2020 Academy Awards feature merely one single nomination of a Black actor.
Hmmm.
This year’s slate of Oscar nominations simply read like the eight or ninth sequel in a movie series (“Fast & Furious,” we’re looking at you) – while the latest installation of the series technically constitutes a “different movie,” the premise of the prior films is largely the same. When it comes to the Oscars, the Academy for Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has been running this movie for ninety-two years now with largely the same script. Some years, the sequel reads a bit differently – of the ninety-one ceremonies thus far, on fifty separate occasions there were no Oscar nominations for any Black actor in that year’s cycle, with 2016 being the last year this occurred (#Oscarssowhite anyone?). This year, we have only one nomination. Often, but not always, “progressive” individuals within the industry will wring their hands and make statements about how “we must do better,” only to repeat the cycle – or sequel – the following year.
Why does this matter? It is indisputable that the Academy Awards is one of the most popular and prestigious award shows still in existence. This industry-wide event has grown to the point where it is now televised in 225 countries, lasting over three hours on network television. The Academy Awards are such a spectacle, that only the NFL’s quasi-holiday Super Bowl can boast more viewers. Seeing how the whole world is watching, these nominations prompt us to seriously consider the quantity and quality of such nominations.
Yet, despite renewed promises of change on the horizon, I wonder whether next year we might be having a very similar conversation. If you haven’t seen this movie before, then just wait for the sequel.
“Orrrrrrrrrrrr, if you’re tired of waiting for another unimaginative sequel, maybe we should be more conscientious and consistent with our consumer choices. Under the Cycle of Blamelessness, Hollywood points the finger at us, stating that the box office data evidences that only certain movies are “successful” and worthy of investment. Meanwhile, we point the finger back at Hollywood, blaming them for holding us hostage with limited choices.
While it may be ambitious to pull off a full scale boycott in the name of reactive cancel culture, we can at least start by educating our students as to what a “healthy appetite” of racially diverse iconography looks like with critical media literacy.
BIO: Dr. Frederick W. Gooding, Jr. of the TCU John V. Roach Honors College has a new book entitled Black Oscars: From Mammy to Minny, What the Academy Awards Tell Us about African Americans (Rowman & Littlefield) arriving in shelves May, 2020.
