They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?

Stage Three Begins With a Bang and a Whimper

By J. Don Birnam

January 18, 2016

Yep, we sure are all pretty white.

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Me, a white Hispanic gay man, a stats and finance nerd, respected and enjoyed Straight Outta Compton and Creed and Beasts of No Nation, and would have voted for not one of the three for Best Picture - not one of them made my top ten list of the year. Instead, my favorite movies revolved around a troubled genius (Steve Jobs), lesbians (Carol), indigenous Maya culture (Ixcanul), and nerdy, procedural reporting (Spotlight). The movies that resonated with me all had elements that, for whatever reason, were relevant to my own personal experience.

The voters of the Academy are no different. It is, simply put, unfair to malign them for being such. Indeed, the calls for growing the ranks of the Academy to include a more diverse makeup (which I support wholeheartedly, more on that in a second), implicitly acknowledge as much - how else, otherwise, would increasing the diversity of the makeup result in greater diversity in the nominees?

Rather than the oversimplified #OscarsSoWhite meme, it is #HollywoodSoWhite that really should be making the rounds. Spike Lee nailed it in his reactions to the nominations, blaming not the Academy, but noting instead that it is the locked-and-keyed Hollywood boardrooms that have succeeded in shutting out women, minorities, etc. This does and should bother us as a culture - the Oscars and, by extension, Hollywood, are supposed to reflect our cultural consensus, and we are a richly varied and diverse culture. For the same reasons we protested when Crash ousted Brokeback Mountain, we should care that Hollywood has for so long been insensitive to the existence of other types of stories.





But, to blame the sweet old codgers of the Academy - the septuagenarian, anxious about legacy, hopelessly myopic and endearingly sheepish voters - is like blaming your ailing grandpa for global warming.

In any case, I do believe a shift is coming. Hollywood has taken notice (of this and other important issues, like pay disparity between men and women), particularly as different demographic groups have flexed their dollar/muscle. Compton and Creed each out-grossed Brooklyn, Room, and Spotlight combined. The last word on this subject, I suspect, will not be that of Twitter — it will be the movie-going audience's.

Better yet, the shift will happen much less violently than the increasingly loud debate over the #OscarsSoWhite issue would lead you to believe - I doubt there will be much, if any, resistance from within the Academy to this change. In fact, I believe they will welcome it. Like the Church they spotlight in Spotlight, an institution of this venerability does not last this long without being able to self-examine. They think in millennia.

That aside (for now at least, expect the topic to come back with a vengeance on Oscar night), we can turn to the business of prognosticating.


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