MCN Columnists
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

20 Weeks To Oscar: #GlobesSoWhite

The irony is profound.

Last year, while Oscar was pounded to a pulp for not nominating one of a small handful of black actors and films, somehow, by including Will Smith, The Globes didn’t get pounded. And oh, yeah, no one takes them all that seriously anyway, except as the world’s most dramatic photo op.

This year, with four serious Best Picture candidates “of color,” The Globes remind us what racism in Hollywood actually looks like. They included the one “black” film that is on top of every list of every awards group and prognosticator and tea leaf reader in town. Moonlight. Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, Score. All 6 looking sure to be Oscar nominated.

The other three “black” films? Fences was good enough for its two big stars of color to be nominated. Loving was good enough for its two likely Oscar nominees to be nominated. Hidden Figures was good enough for its Oscar-winning star to be nominated along with, uh, Best Score.

THIS is what racism in Hollywood looks like. It’s not a big ol’ snub, where no black actors get in for two years. That is not the real shape of this problem. It is the lack of opportunity overall. And then, when there is a real opportunity, it is a half-open door, welcoming only the most familiar.

I’ve written before that this award season will not be “#OscarSoWhite” because of the product in the marketplace, not because The Academy membership is any more or less racist than they were last year or the year before. And I stand by that. 6000 or 7000 members of the industry are not making choices based on color in any kind of direct way. The Academy, which has always been a nearly-exclusively white group of people from inside the bubble of Hollywood because that is what the bubble demographic has looked like for over 100 years, leans against stories of racial struggle in America. It is silly to dispute that.

But 2016 represents one of the rangiest groups of “films of color” that The Academy (and everyone else) has had to choose from in a while. Each of the four films being focused on has something very different to bring to the table. And that is great. I don’t suspect you will see such a feast next year. But hopefully, in time, with attention being paid, it won’t be long before we have another year with this much color and this much range of tones and styles and stories are there to be picked from again.

The hard part about writing about bias in awards is that it seems to be putting down the other nominees… and even the nominees who are getting in under a biased group’s system. That is truly not my intention. None of the Globes movie nominees this year are shocking to me. There is no giant movie star whose film was a disaster sneaking in. And perhaps the group’s most significant snub was Silence.

But Moonlight has been the hottest title of the last couple months. It got 6. All that kept it from equaling La La Land was a song.

And then… Denzel, Viola, Octavia, Pharrell (for Score, not Song)… and Ruth and Joel, who have been touted as sure nominees for months.

Sorry, but it’s quality, not quantity to me. And it’s not likely a coincidence that Hidden Figures and Fences and Loving were all shut out from the rest of the categories.

Honestly, it shows too much respect to what is an inherently dishonest organization to spend time arguing about the details of what they decided to nominate. Can’t get behind Jackie or Silence? Fine. That reflects on who they are as a group. Typical. Sully hasn’t had enough heat. Expected. I’m even pleasantly surprised by Aaron Taylor-Johnson getting recognized for his work in Nocturnal Animals, which hasn’t been discussed much before now.

But that’s how they get you. You start talking about the details. And the surprises. And the “snubs.’

And you never really consider how corrupt this organization is. How many tens of millions are spent annually on courting these 80-something half-ass journalists who are considered the second-most valuable marketing tool in Oscar season because they have a TV show that works.

You never really consider how racially biased this group tends to be and how disinterested they are in the art form of filmmaking (unless it makes them seem influential).

HFPA is still a group that wants credit for wearing a Jackie Robinson t-shirt five years after he had integrated baseball.

HFPA is still a group that sells itself.

HFPA runs one of the single greatest cons in America… and it airs on national TV!

But that party is so much fun, we just look away and mainstream mediocrity into a process of honoring the best. Then we raise it higher and higher in perceived significance because… well… everyone is getting a ride on the gravy train and the more cars on the train where some money can be made, the better for the economy of award season and thus, the economy of industry media, etc.

That is how we all participate in devaluing not only awards, but our personal principles, little by little each year. Up the ridge we go.

And I am not Desmond Doss myself. Throwing a little mud now and again ain’t putting much skin in the change game.

But how does one fight an 800-pound gorilla? This was the question of the 2016 presidential election as well. People want to have fun and when the nuclear option is the only one that might work, no one wins. And so, we all tend to try to focus on the positives on the surface and pretend the rest isn’t really happening.

All that said, I offer a true “congratulations” to everyone who was nominated. Every nominee is a part of something bigger and more significant than The Globes. I know it feels good to be recognized. Nothing wrong with that. And all of these people have earned it. No one got here being a mediocrity or not giving of themselves deeply.

But the system is broken. Long live the system.

Be Sociable, Share!

9 Responses to “20 Weeks To Oscar: #GlobesSoWhite”

  1. Glamourboy says:

    I’m so tired of all these vague accusations on the Globes….if people have information they should just spill it. Do people BUY nominations and awards? Ok, how do they do it and for how much? There must be more than the nominated actors or films that want to get the nomination….is it a highest bidder situation? Why doesn’t anyone (including Dave) come forward with a real expose?

  2. John E. says:

    This column feels like it would have been written no matter how few or how many people of color got nominated.

  3. David Poland says:

    It wouldn’t have. I am not a statistician, but I would guess that the odds of having so many “black movies” in active Academy play overlooked by The Globes in the same way is pretty low. I am not one to call racist. I thought it was wildly overstated re: The Academy (and Globes, along with it) last season. The problem is an industry problem. But 1 for 4 in Best Picture, Director, Screenplay??? No. This is how the subtle racism of this industry works. Against women too, but not in this season.

  4. Rod says:

    I would totally agree with this article if all 4 movies were very well received but besides Moonlight, the other three aren’t.

    Fences is at 67 on Metacritic, Hidden Figures is at 66 and Loving has been missing from most top ten lists, including AFI. They are all good movies but not good enough to be top 5 IMO.

  5. Karl says:

    Forget it, Jake. It’s HFPA-town.

  6. Bradley Laing says:

    The Oscar shortlist of 15 Documentary Feature nominations was a week ago, but I cannot seem to find any ideas about which of the 15 are seen as likely to reach the five nominees list.

    If I was choosing, it would be “Zero Days” or “The Ivory Game” for the statue. But I have no idea what the Academy membership is likely to vote for.

    Could you say something on the weblog about the 15 Documentary feature nominations?

  7. drake says:

    yeah this is ridiculous. davis and Mahershala Ali are gonna win best supporting actor and actress. are you going to write an article about how racism is keeping them in supporting categories? silliness.

  8. Daniella Isaacs says:

    I’m one of the people who thought there was some sort of racism involved (maybe at the studio awards campaigning level, rather than the awards-voter level) in CREED and STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON being so sidelined last year, but I have to say, having just seen LOVING, it got the only two Globe nods it deserved. It’s an actors/theme driven film and not much more. I can’t speak to FENCES or HIDDEN FIGURES yet.

  9. Robert Fuller says:

    Is there racism in Hollywood? Sure. There’s racism everywhere. But a group of foreign reporters participating in a meaningless movie poll and ending up with a list of five dramas that isn’t 80% movies about African-Americans is not an act of racism. Do you not realize how insane you sound?

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon