Anghus Houvouras on Hollywood’s ongoing diversity drama…
I’m white. Take a minute, let that settle in. I know it’s shocking. I’m like the Rick Astley of film columnists because you probably first thought I was black and like Rick Astley you’re always a little bummed when you click on a link and it turns out to be me. I’m not just white, I’m super white. Roger Deakins uses me to color balance his camera. My blood can be used as liquid paper. I’m so white the Academy Awards are considering giving me a lifetime achievement award. So take the rest of this column with a grain of salt, because a white man talking about racism is like an arsonist talking about fire safety: we’re familiar with the subject but probably not the best suited to discuss the topic with any sensitivity.
A few weeks back the Oscar nominees came out and almost immediately there was a knee-jerk reaction/freak out over the fact that there were very few nominees that didn’t fall somewhere on the eggshell color side of the spectrum. Sure, there were some nominees of the non-white variety, mostly in the Foreign Film Category, but for the most part this was a lily-white affair. #OscarsSoWhite started trending and everyone started talking about a boycott. And by ‘everyone’ I mean a half-dozen people who at best had a 50/50 shot of being invited anyway. I’m sure Spike Lee gets an invite every now and then and Jada Pinkett-Smith is a +1 if Will is attending. Danny Glover just said he think we should ‘do away with the Oscars’ and then grumbled something about being ‘too old for this shit’. Other than giving Chris Rock some prime ‘The Oscars are so white’ material for his opening monologue, the whole thing has been more talk than action.
Frankly, I’m tired of the talk. Last year when everyone was up in arms about Selma’s lack of quality nominations, I proposed every pissed off individual call for a boycott. If for no other reason than the subject has been talked about for so long that I’ve become bored. Fifteen years of film columns and every year it’s the same thing. When the Academy Award nominees are diverse, people celebrate the progress. When there’s not a very vocal minority gets bent out of shape and demands action. Action that never really gets taken.
It amazes me how sacred the Oscars are treated. No one wants to rock the boat. I mean, no one. There were plenty of words when they decided to give Elia Kazan, a guy who gleefully called out suspected communists during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950’s, a lifetime achievement award. However, the most action you saw were the members of the angry mob electing to not clap when he took the stage. The Academy Awards are an event that so many in the film industry hold as a sacred institution.
The Oscars make people stupid. We know this. Just look at the amount of online real estate devoted to the topic each year. At best, it’s embarrassing. At worst, it’s an orgy of sycophantic star fuckers who treat it like the prom they probably didn’t go to because they were too busy getting high and trying to sync up The Wizard of Oz to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Or was that just me?
For the most part I find myself without a horse in this particular race. I agree that the Oscars are a very old, very traditional group of voters who often prefer more traditional fare. It’s a stodgy bunch who are far more likely to nominate Eddie Redmayne in a mediocre movie like The Danish Girl than O’Shea Jackson in a great movie like Straight Outta Compton.
This week at Sundance, Nate Parker’s highly anticipated movie about an 1831 slave revolt The Birth of a Nation debuted. Critics were quick to call out its genius and declare it an early favorite for next year’s Oscars. Next year… like 2017. I find it odd that we’re already talking about the 2017 Oscars when this year’s trophies are still being monogrammed. It’s because film bloggers and critics see the controversy of “OscarsSoWhite’ and are already looking forward to next year when it seems like we’ll have a movie with a black actor, writer, director, and producer in the driver’s seat for next year’s ceremony. So, good news everybody: The problem with the Academy Awards’ lack of diversity has already been solved by a movie that only a handful of critics have seen and won’t be released to the general public until October. Crisis averted! Ah, sweet sweet hyperbole.
And can we talk for a moment about the temerity of naming a movie to be a major award contender this far out? It’s a freaking year away. While I have no problem believing that Birth of a Nation has the potential to be a major award caliber movie, why would anyone want to heap those kind of expectations on a movie less than 24 hours after its premiere? You’ve just slung an enormous albatross around the neck of the film. It has to endure 12 months of being the Oscar front-runner? Why on earth would you want to paint that target on a movie you claim to love? I remember hearing the same thing about Selma and Lee Daniels’ The Butler. And it sucks for Birth of a Nation like it sucks for those films. Do you want to know why?
Because the films don’t get remembered for their quality. They are remembered for what they didn’t accomplish. And this is the fault of the film columnists who continue to push the idea that films like The Butler and Selma are only successful if they are bestowed with Oscar gold. That is a ridiculous level of expectation to heap upon any film, and now it’s been done to Birth of a Nation. For people who actually love movies and not the fancy dress balls that celebrate them, that is deeply depressing.
I’m not sure why so many people pray at the altar of Oscar or why they imbue it with so much power. No one applied that kind of logic to Mad Max: Fury Road when it came out. People talked about what a great movie it was, but the perception of the film’s success had nothing to do with the fact that it garnered so much award praise at year’s end. Can the same be said about Birth of a Nation, or any high-profile film about racism/slavery/Civil Rights? It’s a ridiculous load to bear, and shame on the critics who are too busy anointing the film with award potential instead of just reviewing the damn movie. I think we’d all be better off if critics/bloggers stopped talking about films as ‘important’ or ‘relevant’ & more time discussing, you know, the film.
The relevance thing is another pain point for me. Fox Searchlight paid 17.5 million dollars for the distribution rights and immediately released a statement that read “…the film’s portrayal of injustice is unfortunately still relevant today” The thing is, it’s that unfortunate relevance that made you pay a record fee for the distribution rights. It’s that unfortunate relevance that makes this movie so timely and utterly poignant and therefore valuable to a distributor. Plus from what every major news outlet tells me, it’s a shoe-in for next year’s Oscars! Yes, Fox Searchlight. I’ll bet you’re hella-bummed about the unfortunate relevance the movie holds. So much so that for every ticket sold they’ll produce a genuine, glistening tear. And for every award Birth of a Nation receives they’ll drop to their knees and cry out ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO’ because, you know… the unfortunate relevance. It’s always nice when boiling racial tensions can help provide a supporting argument for distributing a major motion picture.
Progress, real progress, is more than checking off a box or assigning a film as the defacto diversity film for 2016, which is the perception Birth of a Nation now has to fight from now until its inevitable release. The media won’t allow the film to just be a great movie. It has to have resonance beyond the theater and achieve a heightened level of importance. But why? Is that true of any of the nominees for Best Picture this year? Is the same level of crushing expectations weighted on Spotlight or The Big Short? Of course not. The media will not allow Birth of a Nation to just be a movie and judged on the merits of what happens from the opening frames to the final credits. I struggle with that. It feels patently unfair, as if every movie from a black filmmaker on the subject of race has to be some kind of cross cultural experience or it ends up being perceived as a failure.
The Birth of a Nation sounds like an amazing movie that I’m looking forward to seeing. Not because it’s an award season front-runner a year ahead of the nominations, or because the film is relevant. But because between the yammering about importance, relevance, and award potential, it sounds like it might be really good.
And frankly, that’s all a movie needs to be.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker and the co-host of Across the Pondcast. Follow him on Twitter.
