[1595] in peace2
deconstructing race in the usa (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Wed Mar 27 14:05:27 2002
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To: peace-announce@mit.edu
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Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 14:04:54 -0500
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
reminder, peace-list is now peace-announce
the following was sent to peace-list:
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>Black Nominees Are Hollywood Pawns
>--------------------
>
>By Armond White
>Armond White is a film critic for the New York Press and the author
>of "The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World."
>
>March 22, 2002
>
>SADLY, this year's Oscar hype would have the public believe that the
>lead-performance nominations for three black actors is a national
>milestone. It reduces an ethnic group's social status to a showbiz
>contest, as if Hollywood popularity and acceptance were good for
>black people.
>
>Fact is, these particular nominations - if you actually look at the
>roles being considered - are an embarrassment to every thinking
>American. Denzel Washington in "Training Day" plays the screen's
>most heinous, law-breaking police officer as a black renegade -
>scene by scene refuting the headline truth about Los Angeles' recent
>Ramparts precinct scandal and New York's Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo
>and Patrick Dorismond cases. Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball" plays a
>single mother subject to endless humiliation, verbal, physical and
>psychic abuse; she's a veritable welfare icon who literally begs to
>be taken care of. Will Smith in "Ali" merely impersonates the
>legendary Muhammad Ali, reducing the '60s-'70s phenomenon to a
>vague, charisma-less enigma.
>
>These characterizations offer a discomforting racial throwback. Each
>is a sign of that national epidemic surrounding race: political
>denial.
>
>While many Americans profess movie-going as a means of escape,
>sometimes movies reveal the country's subconscious as well as
>celebrate its ideals. To judge by the Academy Awards, last year's
>films issued more fantasies of African-American crime,
>demoralization and - what stereotype is left? - celebrity. At the
>movies, African Americans cannot escape opprobrium, and we all get
>our racial fears reinforced.
>
>The Oscars perpetuate this biased, simplistic thinking by rewarding
>actors who function within the industry as ideological pawns. In the
>absence of a social movement that might produce widely recognized
>leaders and a united front among enlightened Americans, this year's
>Oscar nominees are no more than tokens - a Wanted poster icon, a
>pornographic pin-up and a pop star - as the measure of
>black-American experience. How many people understand the insult of
>these limited portrayals?
>
>These distinctions were clearer nearly 40 years ago, when the Motion
>Picture Academy voted Sidney Poitier Best Actor - making him so far
>the only African American to win a lead category Oscar. (This year,
>the Academy is honoring Poitier with a career-achievement award.)
>Poitier's first win came on the crest of the Civil Rights movement -
>as well as made up for his acclaimed but overlooked performance in
>the classic "A Raisin in the Sun." If there was a whiff of Academy
>self-congratulation in that prize, it was related to the larger
>social sense of doing the right thing, of white America's one-time
>belief in equality. For Poitier, careerism and activism, moral
>conviction and personal ambition were one in the same.
>
>In the years since, Hollywood movies have become more or less
>visibly segregated, yet black screen portraiture has accommodated
>even more nefarious stereotypes, making racism more entrenched in
>the filmmaking system. The result: Last year's most scandalous black
>performances are emblems of the country's racial regression. To
>applaud Washington, Berry and Smith's self- abasement is to accept
>the hard-hearted fallacy that racism no longer exists. See, now we
>can defame black people and not feel guilty about it. They're even
>willing to victimize themselves.
>
>None of the films represented by these nominations deals honestly
>with the statistical facts of police corruption, the nightmares
>faced by unskilled women in the workforce, or the controversy - the
>shock - of Ali's or any black individual's public ethical choices
>(the latter failing goes back to Spike Lee's turning the thorny
>Malcolm X into a marketable commodity). And it's no surprise that
>shills promoting this year's Oscar hopefuls have not dealt honestly
>with the current state of black movie-star careerism. The
>do-anything-for-a-role practices of Washington, Berry and Smith
>separate them from the principled career maneuvers, the belief that
>movies can ennoble black-American life, that still make Sidney
>Poitier a standard bearer as well as a great actor.
>
>Our climate of anti-political correctness promotes distaste for
>images of black heroism and rectitude. That may be why in recent
>years the Academy ignored such outstanding performances as Eddie
>Murphy in "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps"; Danny Glover, Oprah
>Winfrey, Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise and Beah Richards in
>"Beloved"; Vivica A. Fox in "Two Can Play That Game"; Jamie Foxx in
>"Any Given Sunday"; Charles Dutton in "Cookie's Fortune"; Gloria
>Foster in "The Matrix"; Sanaa Lathan in "Love and Basketball"; Harry
>Lennix in "Titus"; LisaRaye in "The Players Club"; Djimon Hounsou in
>"Amistad." These performances - rare examples of black actors
>blending talent with principle, politics with artistry - were in
>Poitier's creative and self-respecting tradition. But none of the
>actors were invited to the party.
>
>"Who are you wearing?" - the question most often asked celebrities
>on the red carpet - helps promote clothes designers, yet never
>interrogates actors' motives. But imagine what valiant images
>Washington, Berry and Smith might produce if they put on Poitier's
>armor.
>
>The sad fact is, despite the rhetoric of today's hip-hop culture,
>politics are out of fashion for black artists in Hollywood. No one
>should watch the Oscars this year without making demands, or at
>least asking, Why?
>
>Copyright (c) 2002, Newsday, Inc.
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