Afro-Hollywood, indeed much of black America, was incensed that last year’s Oscar race shut out the African-American community from contention in major nominations. Before that community and the nation celebrate that numerous black artists and their movies not only competed but “Moonlight” won the top prize this year, a few observations might be noted. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this year is serving up the same old soup, just warmed over.
The first African-American to win an Academy Award was Hattie McDaniel for her supporting role in 1939 in “Gone with the Wind”; she played a sassy slave. In accepting her award, she promised going forward to be “a credit to” her race. The first black man to win the best actor Oscar was Sidney Poitier in 1963 for portraying the simple, happy-go-lucky handyman Homer, in “Lilies of the Field.” Beginning with those first two and continuing in the ensuing decades, the mostly stereotypical images of blacks have been rewarded with the golden statuette in the major categories. Far less rewarded have been vehicles and actors whose presentations reflect the richness, roundness and groundedness that are the more prevalent African-diaspora experience.
Between 1929 and 2017, blacks in the motion picture business have won a total of 36 Academy Awards. Black portrayals and tales of drug addicts/dealers, murderers, women of flexible virtue and various other losers overpopulate the ranks of the winners. This does not make the case that the winners were not deserving. By Hollywood standards, replete with subjectivity, racism and sexism, who can say which winner is more/less deserving? The casting couch, nepotism and other traditional influences may have accounted for a project getting green-lighted or a talent getting a part. But the tortured process of securing a nomination and winning an Oscar seems to be out of the reach of these factors. Racism, however, seems never to have been out of reach and does not appear to be today.
Here, as in life, there are exceptions to the rule. Yes, there was Lou Gossett Jr., who won an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1983 for his role as a kick-butt sergeant in “An Officer and a Gentleman.” And there is the 2016 best supporting actress winner Viola Davis, the upstanding Rose character, in “Fences.”
More typical wins, however, went to Denzel Washington, the angry slave soldier in “Glory” (1989) and the homicidal-cop lunatic in “Training Day” (2001), for which he won best supporting actor and best actor Oscars, respectively; Halle Berry, who performed naked in simulated sex scenes, in her best actress Oscar-winning role in “Monster’s Ball” (2001); Mo’Nique, the drug-addled pedophile mom in “Precious,” whose on-screen depravity was rewarded with the best supporting actress Oscar in 2009; and Mahershala Ali, in the role of a drug dealer in “Moonlight,” which won him this year’s best supporting actor Oscar.
One might argue, fairly, that white actors and their negative portrayals and productions win Oscars, too. After all, Frederick March played the despicable title characters in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and won the best actor Oscar for his efforts (1932). This year Casey Affleck won the Oscar for best actor for playing a suicidal loser in “Manchester By the Sea.” And of course bad-girl roles triumphed for Bette Davis in “Jezebel” (1938) and Vivian Leigh in “Gone with the Wind” (1939).
Notwithstanding, the fairly even balance of Oscar-winning roles for white hussies and jerks, sinners and saints, heroes and heroines, as well as the productions that spawn them, depict the sweep of the human condition to a far greater extent than we see in blackness on the big screen.
During the so-called “Blaxploitation” era of moviemaking in America in the 1970s and ’80s, hundreds of African-American pioneers got their starts and learned their crafts in frothy low-budget projects that filled theaters and made money. Black America accepted them with the hope, but not necessarily the expectation, that these were door-openers to the Hollywood establishment. New stereotypical characters — wise-cracking, sexy, cop-killing and/or gang-banging — were accepted in quest of better days. The old stereotypical on-screen depictions of African-Americans as slaves, menial workers, dimwits, servants of white starring-characters and assorted other inconsequential characters in earlier 20th-century roles had been supplanted.
As a fan of musicals since kindergarten, I plan to see this year’s Oscar-winning, mistakenly best picture “La La Land.” In addition, my wife and I were planning to see the actual best picture winner “Moonlight.” Then we read that the plot focused on the life trajectory of a violent, drug-dealing homosexual black thug, whose mother is a whore and a crackhead.
Maybe we will instead go and see again the riveting, multiple Oscar-nominated “Hidden Figures,” that wholesome real-life story of those ingenious, heroic and courageous black women mathematicians who helped John Glenn orbit Earth, and return back home safely, during the last days of Jim Crow America. Of course, it could not win this year’s best picture Oscar, for which it had been nominated.
Robert Hill is a Pittsburgh-based communications consultant (hillr012@gmail.com).
Correction (posted March 2): An earlier version of this column incorrectly included Samuel L. Jackson as an Oscar winner in 1994 for “Pulp Fiction.” He was nominated for best supporting actor that year but did not win.
First Published: March 2, 2017, 5:00 a.m.