Unless you were dodging the Twittersphere last night then you probably missed one of the most historic and needed wins of the awards evening. Jordan Peele’s timely and critically acclaimed film Get Out, took home the Academy Award for Best Screenplay. This moment at the 90th Annual Oscars is not only monumental in 2018, but reminds us of the many firsts that were claimed by black actors, actresses and producers in the past awards seasons.
If you remember, a few months ago, there was some controversy when the Golden Globes classified Get Out as a comedy among it’s film nominations. A comedy? Okay Golden Globes, you were obviously apart of the problem. But clearly, Peele knew how to bounce back.
Let’s be honest, so many of us were on the edge of our seats when we waited for this category to come on in the awards line up; and when it finally did we probably breathed a sigh of relief because this film more than deserved this win. Jordan Peele, you are truly amazing.
But among this many group of firsts let us not forget about Hattie McDaniel, who was the first black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the civil war epic Gone With the Wind. In the film, she portrayed the status of what many black women did in that time, which was to play Mammy, a role often given to black women to suffice their roles in the film industry.
Even with McDaniel being a stellar actress and radio personality and now having two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she was not given half of the respect as her white co-stars at the Twelfth Annual Oscars and was shown to a small table in the back in light of the strict “no-blacks policy”, that the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in The Ambassador Hotel enforced. So much shade.
However, in light of Jordan Peele winning this award, we must not forget that Hattie helped to open those doors even when she was not welcomed at the table. Overall, we have to continue to garner support for black men and women in the film industry to continue to see change. We must continue to support the Black Panther’s, the Get Out’s, the Selma’s, the Wrinkle in Time’s and any other movie that is put together to make sure that we not only have a seat at the table, but we are bringing others to the table with us to take home these awards.