For the second year in a row, no Academy Award actor or actress nominees were people of color. In fact, according to The Los Angeles Times, Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” alone has more women of color in main roles than all of this year’s films put together. In light of this news, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite appeared and was used more than 200,000 times on Twitter, according to the BBC. In addition, a number of black actors and actresses, including Jada-Pinkett Smith, Will Smith, and Spike Lee, advocated boycotting the Oscars.
When taking a look at the history of the Oscars, the lack of racial diversity is easy to see. In the Academy’s history, only 31 out of more than 2,900 Oscars have been given to black nominees. In addition, only five Latino actors and three actors of Asian descent have won Academy Awards. This lack of diversity may be a reflection of the Academy Award voters where, according to a Los Angeles Times survey in 2012, of the 6,028 voters, 76% were men, the average age was 63, and 93% were white.
Courtesy of The Mirror
For these reasons, the main buzz on the red carpet, besides the usual analysis of clothing, was how host Chris Rock was going to address the “elephant in the room,” as Kevin Hart put it. As everyone took their seat and the lights dimmed, Rock entered the stage to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” and began his introduction to the 88th Academy Awards, or as he called it, the “White People’s Choice Awards.” During his introductory speech, Rock addressed everything from Jada Pinkett-Smith’s boycott, “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties; I wasn’t invited,” to racial violence, “This year, the In Memoriam package is just gonna be black people shot by the cops on their way to the movies,” to a commentary on sexism, “You know, Robert de Niro’s never said, ‘I better slow this acting down so Meryl Streep can catch up.’”
As the night went on, Rock continued to bring up the lack of black diversity through puns, such as “Now we’re black” and by introducing presenter Michael B. Jordan as a “should-have-been nominee.” Rock also hit the streets of Compton to see their perspective. Almost all of those interviewed could not name an Oscar film, though all saw “Straight Outta Compton.” The funniest moment, however, came when Rock introduced a montage of Oscar nominated films, with the addition of black artists. In “Joy,” Whoopi Goldberg taught Jennifer Lawrence how to really mop, SNL cast member Leslie Jones attacked Leonardo DiCaprio for not casting her in “Revenant,” Tracy Morgan ate a danish in drag in “The Danish Girl,” and finally Rock himself was left on Mars because it was too expensive to bring a black astronaut back in “The Martian.”
Nominees and presenters also used their platform to talk about diversity. The winners for Production design, Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” called their win the first Oscar for diversity. Presenter Kevin Hart applauded the actors and actresses of color that didn’t get nominated and said that “These problems of today will become problems of old.” Finally, Alejandro Iñárritu, awarded Best Director for “Revenant,” said this was “a great opportunity to our generation, to really liberate yourself from all prejudice and this tribal thinking and make sure for once and forever that the color of skin becomes as irrelevant as the length of our hair.”
The Academy, aware of the allegations against it, also took the time to respond to their lack of diversity. President of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs came on stage to talk about the future. She told the audience that as members of the Academy, there were able to influence others in the industry. She also said that the Academy Board of Governors took concrete action to help solve the diversity problem.
However, a lowlight of the night came when Rock introduced a skit involving three Asian children in a reference to the stereotype of Asians being good at math. Rock then followed this up with the line: “”If anybody is upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phone, which was also made by these kids,” this time a reference to the stereotype of child labour in Asia.
Courtesy of Wenner Media
There was a reason the hashtag that circled the web was called #OscarsSoWhite, not #OscarsEverythingButBlack. As shown above, the lack of diversity extends not just to African-Americans, but also to Latinos and Asians. It seems the Academy did not get this fact, causing many critics to speak out, one such being actress Constance Wu, who tweeted: “To parade little kids on stage with no speaking lines merely to be the butt of a racist joke is reductive & gross. Antithesis of progress.”
In conclusion, Rock did his best to address the “elephant in the room” in terms of racial diversity, though he missed the point at times. People at home also showed their support of diversity by not watching; some 34.3 million Americans watched the ceremony, an 8-year low. On social media, however, the Oscars were a hit, generating 24.2 million tweets globally, according to Twitter, with the most buzz being about Leonardo DiCaprio’s win. This was also the case for Facebook, with 24 million people engaged in 67 million interactions related to the Oscars, according to Facebook. It remains to be seen if this awareness of racial diversity will actually lead to future change.