{"id":3679,"date":"2016-01-20T10:10:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T16:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=3679"},"modified":"2016-03-26T16:18:34","modified_gmt":"2016-03-26T22:18:34","slug":"4-thoughts-on-the-all-white-oscar-slate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/01\/4-thoughts-on-the-all-white-oscar-slate.html","title":{"rendered":"4 thoughts on the all-white Oscar slate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"from<\/a>
from https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/prayitnophotography\/4764440136 by user prayitnophotography<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Yes, the Oscar nominations have been published<\/a>, and it\u2019s again, a list of 20 actors and actresses, all of whom are white, and, again, this has produced outrage<\/a> on behalf of non-white hopefuls.<\/p>\n

Does it matter? \u00a0Certainly not as much as any number of other events in the news, but, well, I have opinions, and I\u2019m going to share them with you.<\/p>\n

1. \u00a0Who exactly are these nominees?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at the list of actors and actresses, all based on following the wikipedia links from the above link.<\/p>\n

Bryan Cranston \u2014 mostly of German descent, with a bit of Irish and Jewish ancestry.<\/p>\n

Matt Damon \u2014 English, Scottish, Finnish, and Swedish ancsetry.<\/p>\n

Leonardo DiCaprio \u2014 German and Italian descent.<\/p>\n

Michael Fassbender \u2014 Irish and German (grew up in Ireland, began his career in London)<\/p>\n

Eddie Redmayne \u2014 English (native of England and began his career there).<\/p>\n

Cate Blanchett \u2014 Mostly English, some Scottish (grew up and began her career in Australia)<\/p>\n

Brie Larson \u2014 French Canadian.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Lawrence \u2014 not specified.<\/p>\n

Charlotte Rampling \u2014 English (native of and began career in England)<\/p>\n

Saoirse Ronan \u2014 Irish (dual citizen, grew up and began career in Ireland)<\/p>\n

Those are just the \u201cBest\u201d nominees, not the \u201cSupporting\u201d ones, but it\u2019s already apparent that they are not just \u201cwhite\u201d but fully half of them began their careers in other English-speaking countries. \u00a0Prsumably this is because Oscars predominently go to artsy-type films, and these films are more likely to cast actors from overseas, or perhaps actors from overseas are more likely to seek out artsy films, but it makes sense.<\/p>\n

And this hadn\u2019t occured to me when I set out to look this up, since I fully expected my Thought #1 to be \u201cthese actors are \u2018white\u2019 only because we\u2019ve defined them as such\u201d and then to list the various sorts of ancestries that would have been considered \u201cnon-white\u201d a century ago, but this isn\u2019t as interesting as I thought it\u2019d be \u2014 it\u2019s slim pickings with Italian, Jewish, and Irish ancestry.<\/p>\n

2. \u00a0The voting system itself doesn\u2019t lend itself to quotas. \u00a0Academy members pick their top choice for each of the categories, and then, in a process that seems nearly as complex as sorority \u201cmatching\u201d, second or third choices are plucked as needed, but only one vote per voter is actually \u201ccounted.\u201d \u00a0(See this description<\/a>, for instance.)<\/p>\n

This means that no individual voter can say, \u201cthese are my 5 favorite\u201d and among them be sure to include a \u201cquota\u201d nonwhite actor. \u00a0A votor would either have to truly believe that a nonwhite actor had indeed given the best performance, or would have to be willing to vote for a \u201cnon-best\u201d individual for the sake of hoping to boost the case of a \u201cdiversity\u201d nominee. \u00a0Perhaps an alternate voting system in which academy members specify, say, five choices, and all are counted equally, would improve numbers, but would likely be a logistical nightmare or have other disadvantages.<\/p>\n

3. \u00a0Consider that, in principle, there are no \u201cobjective\u201d reasons to split Best Performer awards into male and female, but it\u2019s done anyway. \u00a0Perhaps it\u2019s a vestige of a time when women\u2019s acting and men\u2019s acting was thought of as categorically different, somehow. \u00a0Perhaps either men or women were felt to be the \u201cbetter\u201d actors so that, if you didn\u2019t have separate categories, one or ther other sex would lose out. \u00a0Or, due to fewer roles for women, it was thought that they wouldn\u2019t be able to compete in a non-sex-specific category? \u00a0Or perhaps it was just a desire to have a larger number of headline award categories for the sake of industry promotion.<\/p>\n

But in principle you could make the same case for a further split: \u00a0Best Performer from a Majority\u00a0European Ancestry and Best Performer from a Majority African, Asian, or Indigenous American Ancestry?<\/p>\n

Oh, sure, you cringe at the thought. \u00a0But, objectively, why?<\/p>\n

4. \u00a0And here\u2019s the\u00a0more reasonable solution, a different sort of split: \u00a0what if there were two categories of Actor\/Actress awards: \u00a0Best Actor in an Artsy-Fartsy Picture and Best Actor in a Picture Marketed to Mainstream Movie Audiences? \u00a0OK, fine, they wouldn\u2019t be called that, and you\u2019d have to have some objective metric, say, revenues, or number of screens, but it seems to me it would solve the problem neatly \u2014 and, as a bonus, maybe I\u2019d have hear of or even seen more of these movies.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, the Oscar nominations have been published, and it\u2019s again, a list of 20 actors and actresses, all of whom are white, and, again, this has produced outrage on behalf of non-white hopefuls. Does it matter? \u00a0Certainly not as much as any number of other events in the news, but, well, I have opinions, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":3681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n4 thoughts on the all-white Oscar slate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yes, the Oscar nominations have been published, and it's again, a list of 20 actors and actresses, all of whom are white, and, again, this has produced\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/01\/4-thoughts-on-the-all-white-oscar-slate.html\" \/>\n<meta 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