The uproar grows. Talk of boycotts and so forth. Solutions proposed. Lots of press, back and forth.
No wait, not back and forth.
I've only heard folks condemn the Academy for all those white nominations. I haven't heard anybody speak on the other side.
It seems a universally held belief that the Academy did something wrong.
Does that mean everybody is convinced the list of nominations could not possibly have been the result of "objective" evaluations of movie performances?
Some folks have suggested the main problem lies not in the Academy but in the current system of green-lighting movie projects. Either the old-guard white producers are racist, or they too often kowtow to the market when deciding how to cast their projects.
(I touched on this in my previous post on the subject.)
More and better roles for black actors might have an impact on the nominations. But not necessarily. It's not like Powerball, you know, where—assuming no fraud—winners are truly random.
Picking an actor is insufficiently objective. If it were objective, then any group of nominators would come up with pretty much the same short list of actors and directors.
And that's the problem with the solution proposed by some concerned people: the call for an increase in the diversity of the nominating group.
It's true the majority of voters are elderly white men. But unless you can prove that makeup naturally creates bias, there's no point in augmenting the population with more people of color.
On the other hand, if it could be proved those elderly white guys are racially biased, it would not help to simply add a pack of black guys in there to even things out. You'd have to add black bigots to the group, guys (and gals) who are prejudiced in favor of black actors.
Because if the new guys were fair and objective, they could never counteract a majority of biased white guys. And the short list would go unchanged.
What's more, you'd have to add a serious crapload of those biased black guys, or the overwhelming number of white performances would probably always swamp the nominations.
If an objective system of judging actors could be developed, maybe a computer could be programmed to create the nomination list. (At least, until Skynet takes over; then only other computers would get nominated.)
Barring that, here's my proposal: announce fifty nominations for every category. Read all their names at the awards show, then say goodnight and go home.
Lots of nominations, but no winners.
If there really is bias in the Academy this system might not work, but it would be a lot harder for those guys to come up with a list without any persons of color on it.
Or give in and create a new Academy just for minorities (in conjunction with the BET awards, maybe).
Or stop trying to honor movie folk. Let the box office be their award. (Everybody involved in a film should get a piece of the action—and with an honest accounting from the studio.)
What doesn't help is the attitude that if you don't get what you want the deck must be stacked against you.
Any given category of human endeavor may be corrupt, but in the absence of proof, it might make more sense to let it slide. Better for your blood pressure, too.
People like to say the world isn't fair. That may be true, but it doesn't always follow you have to do something about it.
Just kidding. Of course you have to act. You know what you know and you can't be wrong. What's more, everything you see proves you right.
It's who we are.
The fact we're wrong about most of it simply doesn't enter into it.
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