Diversity and Representation in Media

No one validates the Oscars more than the people who pound keyboards in rage over the nominees.

I don't see anybody pounding keys in rage over here. Do you?

I don't know why anyone ought to care about the Oscars to begin with.

Trust me, you are better off finding a copy of the 1966 film The Oscar and watching it instead. You will laugh your hinder off and it will be worth it, much more than if you watched that godforsaken spectacle on TV.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

They mostly win because of the narrative. Leonardo Di Caprio finally getting an award is a good narrative, so he should finally get it (until the voters decide in the last moment that the joke is too funny to not keeping it up). When Sly gets it, it will be more a live-time achievement award. When Heath Ledger won for the Joker, he had delivered the performance of a livetime, but that is not why he won. Usually the fact that said performance was in a comic book movie would have had a very negative impact on his chances. But since he died beforehand and the performance of a live-time became exactly that, he was a shoe-in for a winner.

The academy award never was about finding the best movie, but finding the best narrative. Sometimes they choose right - sometimes the narrative leads to questionable decisions. The academy award for best animated picture has actually a pretty good track record, but a really dark spot on it is the year in which Brave won. There were at least three animated movies that year which were better than Brave (Rise of the Guardians, Wreck-it Ralph and Paranorman), but Brave got it not because it was Pixar (as some assumed), but because there are so few female directors in animation and they really wanted to honour Chapman, since she was involved in a number of really good productions in the 1990s, but never got an award because, well, because the academy award for best animated picture was only introduced in the early 2000th. It would have been a great narrative - if not for the fact that Chapman was booted out of Brave during production and the movie was so clearly not the best of the year by a long shot.

Of all the narratives the academy likes tell, the ones which involve the "triumph of a minority" nearly always yield the most questionable results - followed by "we should have given the award to this actor last year, let's do it this year to make up for it".

Oh, and, btw, if you really want to know which movies are the best ones, you shouldn't look for Oscar wins, but you should look at movies which are 20 or 30 year old (or older) and try to figure out, which ones people are still talking about, which ones are citied by movie makers as influence, which ones stand the test of time.

LOL yes obviously the problem here is too many black people getting attention in Hollywood. How could we have been so blind!

Yeah, that's utter nonsense. Walk The Line got noms. The Academy has no problem nominating musical biopics. I'm not even invested in the Oscar drama but saying the real problem is that it had limited appeal and was in a genre the Oscars don't like is flat out untrue.

edited 27th Feb '16 11:19:46 AM by comicwriter

To the old white guys who make up the Academy, rap is still new and threatening. MC Hammer and Kid 'n' Play are still the mainstream of rap to them.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

More people should care less about the Hollywood industry. I feel Drew Galloway being half of the EVOLVE tag champs while Rich Swann jobs on "NXT" is a topic more worthy of discussion. That's a citizen being shafted by a system the powers that be tells us he's advanced in while moving to him to a role of insignificance and replacing him with a Scotsman. Don't you see, they're stealing our jerbs!

The Oscars, I mean we can discuss them too, but there is only one place it can go for me. Let's stop watching them. No, let's not "boycott" them, let's just stop watching, they're not worth the attention. Don't make demands of them, if they really care they'll start catering to you without you having to say anything. They need only see eyes are no longer in their direction, they aren't a word coming up in topics very often.

Now if you want discuss specific details, I could maybe see that. Tell me, what made Concussion unworthy of nomination? What made Selma for that matter? "I voted against it." and "see beyond racial issues." are not valid reasons in the realm of the debate. I can tell you I didn't watch Concussion because Will Smith was in it, I watched it because it involved a national past time and a poorly understood disease linked to concussions. I understood why people were curious about lack of nomination because it turned out to be a good movie. Tell me what was so bad about it? We need flaws, people!

Talking about the specifics of Creed, that's something too. The Rocky sequels don't turn on the academy, it was just something they were doing for Stallone? Okay, so Stallone wanted to join the boycott? What's that, it suspiciously looks like gratitude toward the director who brought him aboard the project, how sweet.

But discussion on the Oscars in general? How about instead of the Oscars we just watch reruns of the NBA, or something? We can discuss what would be a more enjoyable, rewarding viewing experience.

edited 27th Feb '16 11:32:07 AM by IndirectActiveTransport

Walk the line is based on a legend whose name is even known to people who don't care about Country music at all. That is not the case with the SOC...I barely know that Ice Cube is some kind of rapper. (I am not interested in either genre - or any specific genre, I am a "oh, I like this song" kind of person). I know, shocking for those who really are into this, but that's the reality. In addition, Walk the Line got nominated in five measly categories and won in one which is frankly one of the easier ones due to the low number of meaty leading roles for females. (Meryl Streep is great, but I doubt that she would have as often as she did if she had competed in the way more stacked male category)

I have never watched the Oscars. I only check who won later on.

My point is that if they stand up for something, they should stand up for more diversity in general and not for "why don't we get more attention".

edited 27th Feb '16 11:38:22 AM by Swanpride

An anecdote about you specifically not caring or knowing about it is not an indication of its appeal, and is a rather silly metric to use.

If we're specifically talking about how mainstream it is or whether or not there's broad appeal, it made more money than two of the five films currently nominated for best picture (one of which, significantly more) and is at an 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which is only a few percentage points away from most of the other nominees. So saying that the problem is that the movie didn't have appeal to anyone except a small niche of Ice Cube fans is again, flat out untrue.

Who is they? Black people?

Because once again, Will Smith and his wife are not the only people talking about it, and I have yet to see anyone saying that there specifically needs to be more diversity for just black people and no other racial minority. That's a Strawman if I've ever heard one.

I'm annoyed that this has turned into another Oscar discussion because I really don't give a shit, but these specific points you're using are as I said, baloney.

edited 27th Feb '16 11:47:18 AM by comicwriter

I had actually seen Selma and thought it was a pretty good film. "Pretty good," however, doesn't necessarily translate to Best Picture...

As I've said, the Academy is made up of old white guys who think rap is new and threatening still.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Everyone knows Hustle N Flow should have beat Crash.

I don't think I ever disputed that. We're all aware it's made up of out of touch old white guys. What I was responding to was their claim that the movie didn't get nominated because it has no appeal except to a teeny tiny niche of hardcore Ice Cube fans, which is silly because by all measurable criteria, that's untrue.

edited 27th Feb '16 11:54:03 AM by comicwriter

I didn't say no appeal, I said it appealed to a certain group of people - meaning people who grew up during the time in which rap became a thing, who can remember going to the concert or at least that this was the music which they listened too aso. Those people are not old enough to vote for the academy yet. But when the movie about Johnny Cash was made, he was a legend, but even more important, the people who were around during his "golden time", well, they were old enough to have voting power and felt moved by it.

edited 27th Feb '16 11:55:16 AM by Swanpride

Pretty much.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Edit: Pretty good but not best still isn't much to go on. Let me prod a little. What do "Grand Budapest", "American Sniper" or "Birdman" have on it?

Hell, what did "Birdman" have on "Grand Budapest"?

I saw none of those, so can't tell you...

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

I wish I could find it, but there was an article from a casting director who mentioned that "Race neutral" casting is usually just a myth that people on the internet like to bring up whenever a white person is cast in a role that is supposed to be for a person of color. They said there are exceptions, but that generally speaking, unless a role is specified as black or Asian or Latino or what have you, it's automatically gonna go to a white person.

That attitude with writing really feeds into it and it goes back to what the woman working on Deep Impact said about how the studio was resistance to casting Morgan Freeman because they just automatically assumed it was gonna go to a white actor.

I kind of have to agree with the Coen Brothers. A lot of the time, trying to explicitly write a character who's not white means you end up with a token whose defining characteristic is being black/Asian/Native American/insert ethnicity here.

The way to go, instead, is to write a character as a character, who could be any race - white, black, Asian, whatever. Whatever ethnicity you make him has no impact on his character. A really good character is relatable no matter what color his skin is.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Writing a character as a character with no race in mind is 9 times out of 10 still going to default to a white actor.

edited 27th Feb '16 12:17:04 PM by higherbrainpattern

I agree with them to an extent, but the problem is that the reverse scenario doesn't happen as often as it should.

Sure there are a lot of really poorly written racial stereotypes (Ethnic Scrappy exists for a reason) but I also feel like there's a bigger problem where writers seem to act as though minority characters only exist in very specific situations. The ideal should be writing well rounded characters where the fact that they're minorities isn't their whole identity, but way too many people in Hollywood take that as an excuse to just not use any at all.

Like the example Wendell Pierce brought up of being told that there were no black people during the time of Shakespeare.

edited 27th Feb '16 12:16:35 PM by comicwriter

Isn't the problem the casting director and not the writer?

Not exclusively, no.

And even then on a writing level there are many situations where a black person or other minority is gonna experience things differently than a white person would so that's something that would likely need to be addressed on a writing level anyway.

edited 27th Feb '16 12:18:12 PM by comicwriter

Okay, then let me put it this way. I completely agree with the fact Spotlight and The Big Short were among the best movies made this year, at least among the best movies made in the USA.

Now if we were standing face to face it would take my restraint not to laugh in yours if you told me The Big Short was more entertaining than Concussion. That may or may not be true of the books, but the movies? I need only quote one word from one of them to tell you which was the more compelling watch. "SCIENCE!" Again, I didn't watch the movie because Will Smith was in it, but I will say he didn't detract from it. It'd have been nice if the science was more thoroughly explained, yes, but all the same Concussion showed us why people didn't want it told to them in detail rather than breaking the scene on assumption we would get lost. And where theory and math were reduced as means of exposition it showed pictures, results, interactions and metaphors over a gradual period to explain to us what we needed to know rather than in periodic info dumps while also displaying the power of human drama more effectively.

Concussion is not any worse than any movie that was nominated! I state it clearly, tell me why I'm wrong. What don't I appreciate? I'm open to your opinions. What do the nominees have on it?

edited 27th Feb '16 12:25:10 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

IGNORE THIS!

edited 27th Feb '16 12:32:54 PM by Eagal

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!