Spike Lee, left, won
an Oscar on Sunday for best adapted screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman,” and
Mahershala Ali won best supporting actor for “Green Book.”CreditCreditMonica
Almeida for The New York Times
By Brooks Barnes
LOS ANGELES —
Something seismic was happening during the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday
night. The Hollywood establishment, excoriated for its longtime exclusion of
women and minorities, recognized African-American production design and costume
virtuosos for the first time. Asian-American filmmakers were honored. A movie
about a gay rock star collected four trophies.
“I want to thank the
academy for recognizing a film centered around an indigenous woman,” Alfonso
Cuarón said as he accepted the award for best director for “Roma,” about a domestic
worker in Mexico City.
But then came “Green
Book.”
In a choice that
prompted immediate blowback — from, among others, the director Spike Lee, who
threw up his hands in frustration and started to walk out of the theater — the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave the best-picture Oscar to a
segregation-era buddy film. While admired by some as a feel-good depiction of
people uniting against the odds, the movie was criticized by others as a
simplistic take on race relations, both woefully retrograde and borderline
bigoted.
It was the ultimate
Lucy-pulling-away-the-football moment for those who had hoped the film academy
was going to reveal itself as a definitively progressive organization. That the
2017 selection of “Moonlight” as best picture wasn’t a fluke. That the efforts
to diversify its membership — albeit still 69 percent male and 84 percent white
— had been transformational.
Adding to the anger
over “Green Book” were the other choices available. Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther”
was a cultural and commercial phenomenon, shattering a myth about the overseas
viability of movies with Afrocentric story lines. “Roma,” a nuanced examination
of class that was made by an almost entirely Latino cast and crew, had been
showered with honors at the pre-Oscars award shows.
“Green Book” was
made by a team that was predominantly white, including its director and writers.CreditNoel
West for The New York Times
And Mr. Lee’s
“BlacKkKlansman,” about an African-American police officer who infiltrates the
Ku Klux Klan with the help of a Jewish surrogate, was a chance for the academy
to recognize one of cinema’s singular, groundbreaking filmmakers — one who had
been repeatedly overlooked in the past.
“A lot of people may
have allowed their expectations of the academy to become too great,” said Todd
Boyd, a cinema and media studies professor at the University of Southern
California who focuses on popular culture and race. “We can see some signs of
changes, but there has not been a full transformation.”……………….
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/business/media/green-book-spike-lee-reaction.html
