Behind the Nomination
The Oscars are arguibly the most anticpated award show on television today. Every year once nominees are announced, people place their bets on which celebrity will bring home the gold. But how are these people nominated? What makes one actor and movie a better preformance than another?
Nominees are selected through the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or AMPAS. Members of the AMPAS belong to one of seventeen groups including actors, casting directors, costume designers, producers etc. and have to apply to sit on the board to vote for different films, soundtracks, and preformances that will ultimatley become that years nominees.
The issue however, begins with the demographic of AMPAS members. According to the Los Angeles Times, Oscar voters are nearly 94% Caucasian and 77% male. In addition, Blacks are only about 2% of the academy, and Latinos are less than 2%, leaving a disturbing room for unconscious bias when it comes to awarding actors and actresses. In regards to actors of color who are nominated and are even so fortunate as to win, their representation and opportunties in cinema continued to be limited. Often times, actors and actresses of color are made to fit different tropes that were established during slavery and seemingly normalized during the 19th centruy and even beyond so their prescence in films is digestable for white cinema and its audience. An example of this is the character "Mammy". Mammy portrays a domestic worker who had undying loyalty to her slaveholders, as caregivers and a motherly figure, normalizing the desire to stay enslaved. Examples of winners in Hollywood include Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind, Viola Davis in The Help, and Margo Moorer in Forest Gump.
The graphic above shows the common roles actors of color are typically assigned and how prevelant that is in today's movies. Only 5 actors of color have won between 1982 and 2013, and yet, every role they have won has been the portrayl of either an existing celebrity/historical figure or a racist slave trope. It seems that the already small opportunity to recognize black actors for the accomplishments has to be assigned to them rather than allowing for free expression of creativity.