Oscar controversy.

[Viazon]

I'm surprised there hasn't been any discussion about this on here. I'm sure you would have heard about it. There has been some uproar that all of the best actor/actress nominees are white. Personally, I think it's all a load of bullshit.

Now, do I think there is a diversity problem in Hollywood? Honestly, yes. I'm not that naive. I don't think the problem is with the Academy though. I'm willing to bet that white actors are more likely to be cast in major roles than other actors. I think there in lies the problem. But I don't think that all the nominees this year is a race problem. I mean, blacks are still a minority in America. So white actors are always more likely to be nominated. If the top five performances in that year were all by white people, shouldn't they get nominated? Blacks and other races shouldn't be nominated just for the hell of it.

I think some of the people protesting are being hypocritical. Like Spike Lee for example. He has been nominated for an Oscar twice and just last year was awarded an Academy Honorary Award. Now he is trying to claim the Academy is racist. Also, Jada Pinkett and Will Smith are boycotting the ceremony this year. Even though Will Smith has been nominated twice and in fact lost both times to other black actors. How can they complain about the Academy being discriminate?

[Everlong]

I think people who are spending their time complaining about the Oscars don't seem to understand that the Oscars aren't the problem, they're just a symptom of the problem. For the most part they get it right when it comes to recognizing some of the best performers of the year. There are always going to be snubs, that's unavoidable, but rarely are there any real "what the fuck?" kinda nominations.

The real issue is there simply not being enough roles for non-white actors or movies about non-white people in Hollywood. It's not the Oscars that are too white, it's movies that are too white.

So people can boycott the Oscars all they want, but they're really misplacing their outrage IMO.

[DBSoT]

I agree with you both, but I would also add that Will Smith not getting anything for "Concussion" is justified because his performance in that movie was average. I am not sure if Hollywood itself is racist or if Hollywood is placating to the upper middle class white people who tend to have more expendable income.

[Ali]

I think racism is overblown. I think it would be much stupider to have a "token black nominee" than what we have now. Are there performances that could have been nominated? Sure. Michael B. Jordan in Creed, the cast of Straight Outta Compton, Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation, among others. But this is mostly a controversy out of nothing, to be quite honest. And in fact, I have to say something else here.

If any minority, be it black, Asian, Latino, Indian, whatever, want to be better represented in the film industry? GET INVOLVED IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.

I'm not talking about the Big Four here: acting, directing, producing, and writing. Oh, we all want to do those because those are the big faces. But let me say that I want to see more diversity in PRODUCTION. Editing, cinematography, set design, costume design, visual effects, sound design, animation... these are the things that are not seen as "sexy", but they are VITAL to the film industry, and that's how you change things, from the ground up! Get involved that way, learn the TRADES of filmmaking, break in, and change things from behind the scenes. It's nice to be a face, but it means more to be the heart and soul.

[Hanley!]

If any minority, be it black, Asian, Latino, Indian, whatever, want to be better represented in the film industry? GET INVOLVED IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.

This opinion comes up in a lot of these debates, but it seems very naive to me. It presumes that minorities have the same opportunities in the film industry and just haven't been bothered pursuing them. I don't think that's the case at all.

I think Viazon is half right here, in that the bigger part of the problem is that there aren't as many roles for minority actors in Hollywood. They probably have a harder time succeeding as producers and directors also. It's hard to figure out a solution to this sort of thing other than the passage of time. I think there's already plenty of evidence that movies with non-white stars can make a hell of a lot of money. But Hollywood apparently doesn't want to see it that way just yet.

However, I don't think the Oscar controversy is completely overblown either. It would be one thing if there weren't any obvious minority candidates this year, but that's simply not the case. It wasn't the case last year either. Two years in a row, most of the more noteworthy Oscars snubs have been for minority actors or directors, or female directors.

It was even more noticeable last year. There were actually a bunch of minority actors who were being talked about coming up to award season, and a few female directors also and all of them got the shaft. People expected Selma to clean up at award season, and it didn't do nearly as well as people had expected. And to take this year's Best Actor award as an example, Michael B. Jordan, Idris Elba or Oscar Isaac all received Oscar talk, yet none of them received a nomination. And it hasn't even been a particularly strong year in that category. And while I love Bryan Cranston, I have yet to hear a critic say that he deserved a nomination for his performance in 'Trumbo'.

So I don't think the controversy is completely over nothing. And I don't think it's a bad thing for people to talk about. The Academy should be encouraged to nominate more people of colour, because it validates the decision to give minority performers these important roles, which will lead to more diverse casting practices, and hopefully one day that will lead to us not needing to have this conversation anymore. But until things are all equal, I think it's still a conversation worth having.

And if the Academy has a shortlist of ten potential nominees and one of those nominees is black and the rest are white, I honestly do think that they should find a spot in the top five for that black nominee, to show a little diversity. It doesn't do any harm. If they can find a spot for Meryl Streep almost every damn year, no matter what shite she might be in, they can surely provide one spot for the majority of the human race.

[KaiserGlider]

This smelled like BS to me too. 12 Years a Slave won several oscars a few years back and they were given to black people. And I read somewhere that Beasts of No Nation didn't get nominated because it was released through Netflix and the academy didn't want to promote it. Or something like that. It seems to me that this was just a year where the snubs happened to go to the blacks. The Oscars shouldn't be taken that seriously anyway. If it truly is harder for non-whites to get ahead in Hollywood, then by all means let's work towards fixing that. I just don't want this to turn into a situation where at least half the roles in every single movie will be given to blacks whether they deserve it or not, just because everyone will be terrified of being called racist.

[SortaCreative]

If it truly is harder for non-whites to get ahead in Hollywood, then by all means let's work towards fixing that.

You seem sceptical

[Everlong]

If any minority, be it black, Asian, Latino, Indian, whatever, want to be better represented in the film industry? GET INVOLVED IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.

Easier said than done when the industry doesn't offer any real roles for them, or at least leading roles.