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Last Updated: Apr 6th, 2009 - 12:06:48 |
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| The cast and crew of "Slumdog Millionaire" accept the Oscar for Best Picture. |
Let’s face it. It’s easy to have a love-hate relationship with the Oscars and this year is no exception. Let’s start with the love:
Hooray!
It’s easy to love, to be amazed, that a film like “Slumdog Millionaire,” which exposes caste-, color- and religious-hatred in India, can not only make it to the big screen but win for Best Picture of the year.
Even though she didn’t win, it’s easy to love the fact that Viola Davis was nominated in the category of Best Supporting Actress. Davis has run the treacherous gauntlet for Black actresses in Hollywood. She has come out on the other side, in a sense victorious anyway, for giving such a brief but powerful performance in “Doubt,” as the mother of a boy who is integrating a Catholic school in the Bronx in the early 1960’s.
The thing I love most about Davis’s nomination is that it gave her the opportunity to show—in real life—how beautiful she is, in comparison to the raw, beaten-down women she played in both “Doubt” and “Antwone Fisher.” Both are brief but memorable performances and they both had to involve her being ashy, with something coming out of her nose etc. As a drug addict in “Antwone Fisher,” she didn’t utter a word.
She was been able to strut in front of the cameras—I saw her on “The Tonight Show” and on one of those evening celebrity shows. But, so far, there isn’t a place in Hollywood for a woman who looks like her—tall, dark and built like a brick house—to be beautiful on the big screen.
The same love can be extended to Taraji P. Henson, even though she was last featured at the Oscars performing the controversial but award-winning song “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp.” That song was the theme song for “Hustle and Flow,” in which Henson played a prostitute who lives in a house with other hookers and a pimp in Memphis. She also lost in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role as Queenie, a caretaker in a retirement home, in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
Speaking of big pimpin, there is also what is easy to hate about the Oscars. Despite our bit inclusion for bit roles in movies like “Doubt” and “Button,” the Oscars are usually a testament to our erasure, the erasure of our stories and so therefore our lives on the big screen.
Boo!
We can’t show up in the awards if we don’t show up in films, or show up in films recognized by voting members of the Academy. Davis’s performance in “Doubt” is very brief—putting her at a significant disadvantage to other actresses in her category, including Penelope Cruz, who walked away with the trophy. The same is somewhat true for Henson. Much of the public didn’t even know that there were any Black people in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” All we saw in trailers was Brad Pitt rising around on a motorcycle and maybe some shots of Cate Blanchett.
Our stories about our own lives, and so our performances and scripts, do not touch these members of the Academy in the same human way. Historically, Blacks are more likely to be recognized at the Oscars for roles that are a backdrop for the lives of Whites. “Trouble the Water,” the documentary that follows a Black couple during and after Hurricane Katrina, couldn’t snag a win. “The New Boy,” a short film about a South African boy, who integrates a school in Ireland, lost in its category and “The Class,” a film from France that tackles issues of assimilation, lost in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
And so the love-hate continues.
© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com
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