{"id":2053,"date":"2014-02-04T10:27:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T17:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/carynriswold\/?p=2053"},"modified":"2014-02-04T10:27:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T17:27:51","slug":"black-masculinity-oscar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/carynriswold\/2014\/02\/black-masculinity-oscar\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Masculinity & Oscar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>The two movies I wrote about here last year, Fruitvale Station<\/a><\/em> and The Butler<\/a><\/em>, were inexplicably<\/a> shut out of the Academy Award nominations this year.\u00a0 The Butler<\/em> has received some nominations and acknowledgement by other awarding organizations like the Screen Actors Guild, and Michael B. Jordan has received much critical praise for his performance in Fruitvale Station<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But the black man nominated for a lead acting Oscar played a slave.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Chiwetel Ejiofor\u2019s performance in 12 Years a Slave<\/em> is powerful and Oscar-worthy.\u00a0 The film itself is a beautiful portrait of human tragedy and systemic evil, if such a thing is possible.\u00a0 Under Steve McQueen\u2019s Oscar-nominated direction, it seems to be.\u00a0 Lupita Nyongo\u2019s Oscar-nominated portrayal of Patsy stays with you after Ejiofor\u2019s Solomon Northup leaves her crying out in the middle of the road as he is transported back to freedom.\u00a0 The concluding scene at Northup\u2019s home leaves us with the image of traumatized man trying to find his way back to his family and some semblance of civilization.<\/p>\n

It is a remarkable story, and worthy of every accolade it receives.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not<\/a> the only one who wonders:\u00a0 Will the Academy and the movie-viewing public ever REALLY make room for non-slave roles for black men and women?\u00a0 Can\u2019t we award and shower them with praise in the same way?\u00a0 Incidentally (or not), behind the camera, Steve McQueen is only the third black man ever nominated for best director (after John Singleton for 1991\u2019s Boyz in the Hood<\/em> and Lee Daniels for 2009\u2019s Precious<\/em>).<\/p>\n

The movies I wrote about last year are just two examples of complex, human, and true stories of black men that aren\u2019t heard and acknowledged enough.\u00a0 Oscar Grant was a young man on the cusp of figuring out fatherhood and his own future, gunned down for no good reason.\u00a0 Michael B. Jordan plays the role with a sweet fierceness that has to be seen.\u00a0 He\u2019s not perfect, no hero this young man, and in many ways eminently relatable for anyone who has tried to find their way in a world that seems to be working against them at every turn.\u00a0 As his mother, Octavia Spencer is heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Forest Whitaker played Cecil Gaines in a story inspired by the life of Eugene Allen<\/a>, who worked for 34 transformative years as butler at the White House.\u00a0 While many people found the historical scope of his story to be the draw of the film, I thought that the fractious relationship between him and his son, especially the generational gap between them and their forms of black political activism, the most compelling.\u00a0 The moment that this hard working father has a consciousness-raising moment related to U.S. support for apartheid near the end of the film was one of the best things on screen all year.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t yet seen Mandela<\/em> and Idris Elba\u2019s performance of the recently deceased South African activist-turned-president.\u00a0 There too, on screen, is a black male character who has some measure of triumph despite his own flaws that the Academy failed to recognize.<\/p>\n

Some<\/a> critics suggest that the Academy makes room for one \u201cblack film\u201d in any given year.\u00a0 This year it was 12 Years A Slave<\/em>.\u00a0 At the risk of oversimplifying things, I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that the reason it wasn\u2019t Fruitvale Station<\/em>, The Butler<\/em>, or even Mandela<\/em> is that those films portray black men as something other than slaves.\u00a0 Yes, Solomon Northup wasn\u2019t only a slave.\u00a0 No enslaved person ever was \u201conly\u201d a slave.\u00a0 But the hours we spend with him in the theater are in captivity, subject to torture and humiliation.\u00a0 It\u2019s also worth noting that the other black man nominated for an acting Oscar this year (in a supporting role) is Barkhad Abdi, who plays a Somali pirate in Captain Phillips<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Black men on screen.\u00a0 Slaves and pirates.<\/p>\n

The Academy isn\u2019t really lifting up complex portrayals of black fatherhood or black politics across the generations or black men whose deaths implicate white racist policing tactics. \u00a0This in effect keeps black men in big screen roles that white powerbrokers understand.<\/p>\n

We can do better.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The two movies I wrote about here last year, Fruitvale Station and The Butler, were inexplicably shut out of the Academy Award nominations this year.\u00a0 The Butler has received some nominations and acknowledgement by other awarding organizations like the Screen Actors Guild, and Michael B. Jordan has received much critical praise for his performance in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1142,"featured_media":2054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,6],"tags":[719,722,721,718,715,555,720,717,716,557,595],"class_list":["post-2053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender","category-race","tag-12-years-a-slave","tag-academy-awards","tag-black-masculinity","tag-chiwetel-ejiofor","tag-forest-whitaker","tag-fruitvale-station","tag-idris-elba","tag-mandela","tag-michael-b-jordan","tag-oscar-grant","tag-the-butler"],"yoast_head":"\nBlack Masculinity & Oscar<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The two movies I wrote about here last year, Fruitvale Station and The Butler, were inexplicably shut out of the Academy Award nominations this year.\u00a0 The\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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