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So recently BuzzFeed made a video showing what it would be like if white actors were removed from the posters of the films and weren't in them. It is quite amazing at how many of these films do not feature many different ethnicities. The films that were shown in the video were The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Carol, The Danish Girl, Ex-Machina, The Hateful Eight, Steve Jobs, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Spotlight and finally Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But this then got me thinking about the films and what they are about and maybe to why this has happened. You know other than this thought of Hollywood being a super racist chain.
Now I have to be very careful when talking about this. In absolutely no way am I saying that it is ok for not enough movies to be starring non white actors. I feel it is a lot more complex than some are believing though.
I don't have enough to post links but the title of the video is
Oscar-Nominated Movie Posters With White Actors Removed
Ok so the first film showed was The Big Short with 5 nominations. It is essentially a story about these men who got rich by predicting the global collapse of the economy. The four main leads in this film are Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell and Brad Pitt. Yes they are all white. But The Big Short is based on a real story of something that happened to those men in 2008 at the time of the collapse. And guess what? In real life they were all white. So can you really blame them for having these actors be the main leads of the film. After all they are trying to make them seem as much like the real deal as possible.
Bridge of Spies is the same. It is a retelling of the 1960 U-2 incident during the Cold War where lawyer James Donovan tirelessly for the release of American pilot Francis Gary Powers in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Another true story. And yet again, the characters involved in this film were white. Also most of this film was set in 1960's Germany. I doubt there were many black people in Germany at this time with all of the problems faced after the world war. There aren't even many black people living in Germany in the year 2016 so it was most likely even less back in the 60's. You can't change history, so this is an accurate description.
The Danish Girl is yet another film based on a historical moment. It is the story of Einar Wegener preparing and going through one of the first ever sex change operations. Once again the characters are based off actual people who were once again white. Also the film is set in European countries such as France and Denmark with most of the characters being Danish. Once again Denmark is a predominantly white country so most likely at this time it makes sense to why the leads are white. Especially since they existed.
Steve Jobs is yet another film about things that actually happened. You can't change history. That's who he was. That's who his associates were. They people involved in the actual event were what was depicted. One of the more mainstream stories in which people know of these figures so I don't get it at all if you criticise this movie for lack of representation.
Spotlight is the last true story of the list. You can't change these characters because they actually existed. The video says in it "Spotlight needs an investigation into more diverse casting". How stupid and ridiculous is this? It's a true story. How dumb do you have to be to say that?!
Brooklyn is set in the 50's and is about an Irish womans immigration to New York. Ireland is very much so a predominantly white country and makes sense that the main character is white, to make the character more realistic. The male character as well is from Brooklyn, an area with a lot of Italian Americans and influence from them. So again it does make sense to why these characters are played by these kind of actors. After all Saorise Ronan is an Irish Actress and Emory Cohen is a New Yorker so the choices for the roles were well made.
Carol is one that some people may criticise for not having diversity. It may be argued that the film Carol is representing the Gay community in this film which none of the others seem to have done so. You could say that Carol more so than most is actually more diverse than the others.
The Revenant is set in 1823 America. It doesn't really seem surprising to me seeing no black actors in this. I can't imagine that in this time period, white people would've been ok with black people. But that's history and cannot be changed. There is a great use of Native Americans in this film however which is much more understandable considering when this film is set.
Ex-Machina only has 3 characters in it's entirety. There isn't a reason to why any of these characters could not of been more diverse. The location of the film isn't said in the film but was made in the UK. This could've easily been done with different ethnic characters but for a film with such a small cast I don't think there can be much to be argued.
The Hateful Eight is set shortly after the American Civil War where there was clearly a lot of racial tension. This film did feature Samuel L Jackson which seems to be one of the few exceptions to the case who made it in these movies. Mexican Demian Bichir also features creating more diversity. Tarantino has always had controversy surrounding his films with people having problems with the racial issues. However this film has possibly the most amount of black actors in it than the others. Tarantino also likes to collaborate with those that he has worked with before. So this isn't a recent problem and if you're going to criticise him for this, go back and criticise him for everything else.
Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the most awesome films of all time and is truly incredible that it is up for Best Picture. Mad Max also featured for the most part a female protagonist. This was doing a great job of creating a diverse action hero in Furiosa. But yes, they could of had some more diversity. Oddly this isn't one of the films I've seen criticised for not being totally diverse. Is it because it featured a woman as a female lead? Does that count as enough? I'm not sure why that would be but it seems as if so. The Martian like Mad Max could also of done with more diversity. The main story is on the one character but I guess there is no reason to why there may not of been
And last of all in the list we have Star Wars. But Star Wars had many main characters including John Boyega and also the main lead was Daisy Ridley. There was clear diversity in Star Wars. There were many returning characters who were also main characters. What do you want to do? Change their skin colour?
Overall this video is just plain ridiculous. What they are saying really is, these movies shouldn't be up for Oscars because of the lack of diversity. Nonsense. Most of these films are either true stories or are set in a specific time period or setting where it wouldn't make sense for there to be a lot of diversity. There isn't a problem with that. If they made a film about Scotland in the time of Mary Queen of Scots would you really expect to see a lot of diversity? No because that's not how it would of been like. If they were to make a fictional movie set in Africa many centuries ago, would you expect to see a lot of white people in it? No you wouldn't. If you were going to make a movie about Genghis Khan, you wouldn't expect it to be full of different ethnicities. Sometimes it just makes sense to why there aren't different ethnicities. This is the case with true stories and time periods.
The main point of this video just seems to be that black people should be up for Oscars regardless. Now I think that Michael B Jordan was robbed out of a nomination for an Oscar for Creed. I want to see a lot more diversity in lead roles. But only if they are good enough. Not just getting it for their skin colour. But it just seems that people aren't even taking the movies or actors performances into consideration when moaning about this topic. They are just looking at it and saying "Oh there's no black people in it, RACIST". Most people aren't even seeing the films, they just think they're being nominated for being white and nothing else. No that's not how it works. They don't even care about other ethnicities though. They took everyone who wasn't black out of the posters. They even took out a Mexican. So it's just black people? Why isn't there a fuss about Asian actors? Why aren't they moaning about this?
I was really glad to look in the comments section of this video and see the reaction from all mixed races agreeing that the video was just ridiculous. From talking about the real stories, periods of time and how it is just based on skin colour, the comments are showing how bad and stupid this video is. At the time of writing this the video is currently sitting at 10,234 likes and a whopping 26,109 dislikes.
The Oscars should 100% be performance based. No doubt about it. But to assume that Hollywood is completely racist because of the lack of black leads in films. There is a much bigger picture than that.
I hope you can see the points I was trying to make with this post. I just feel that this video is utterly ridiculous and hope you can see why through my points. What do you think of this whole situation? Once again thank you for reading, it means a lot.
By Angus McGregor
Now I have to be very careful when talking about this. In absolutely no way am I saying that it is ok for not enough movies to be starring non white actors. I feel it is a lot more complex than some are believing though.
I don't have enough to post links but the title of the video is
Oscar-Nominated Movie Posters With White Actors Removed
Ok so the first film showed was The Big Short with 5 nominations. It is essentially a story about these men who got rich by predicting the global collapse of the economy. The four main leads in this film are Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell and Brad Pitt. Yes they are all white. But The Big Short is based on a real story of something that happened to those men in 2008 at the time of the collapse. And guess what? In real life they were all white. So can you really blame them for having these actors be the main leads of the film. After all they are trying to make them seem as much like the real deal as possible.
Bridge of Spies is the same. It is a retelling of the 1960 U-2 incident during the Cold War where lawyer James Donovan tirelessly for the release of American pilot Francis Gary Powers in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Another true story. And yet again, the characters involved in this film were white. Also most of this film was set in 1960's Germany. I doubt there were many black people in Germany at this time with all of the problems faced after the world war. There aren't even many black people living in Germany in the year 2016 so it was most likely even less back in the 60's. You can't change history, so this is an accurate description.
The Danish Girl is yet another film based on a historical moment. It is the story of Einar Wegener preparing and going through one of the first ever sex change operations. Once again the characters are based off actual people who were once again white. Also the film is set in European countries such as France and Denmark with most of the characters being Danish. Once again Denmark is a predominantly white country so most likely at this time it makes sense to why the leads are white. Especially since they existed.
Steve Jobs is yet another film about things that actually happened. You can't change history. That's who he was. That's who his associates were. They people involved in the actual event were what was depicted. One of the more mainstream stories in which people know of these figures so I don't get it at all if you criticise this movie for lack of representation.
Spotlight is the last true story of the list. You can't change these characters because they actually existed. The video says in it "Spotlight needs an investigation into more diverse casting". How stupid and ridiculous is this? It's a true story. How dumb do you have to be to say that?!
Brooklyn is set in the 50's and is about an Irish womans immigration to New York. Ireland is very much so a predominantly white country and makes sense that the main character is white, to make the character more realistic. The male character as well is from Brooklyn, an area with a lot of Italian Americans and influence from them. So again it does make sense to why these characters are played by these kind of actors. After all Saorise Ronan is an Irish Actress and Emory Cohen is a New Yorker so the choices for the roles were well made.
Carol is one that some people may criticise for not having diversity. It may be argued that the film Carol is representing the Gay community in this film which none of the others seem to have done so. You could say that Carol more so than most is actually more diverse than the others.
The Revenant is set in 1823 America. It doesn't really seem surprising to me seeing no black actors in this. I can't imagine that in this time period, white people would've been ok with black people. But that's history and cannot be changed. There is a great use of Native Americans in this film however which is much more understandable considering when this film is set.
Ex-Machina only has 3 characters in it's entirety. There isn't a reason to why any of these characters could not of been more diverse. The location of the film isn't said in the film but was made in the UK. This could've easily been done with different ethnic characters but for a film with such a small cast I don't think there can be much to be argued.
The Hateful Eight is set shortly after the American Civil War where there was clearly a lot of racial tension. This film did feature Samuel L Jackson which seems to be one of the few exceptions to the case who made it in these movies. Mexican Demian Bichir also features creating more diversity. Tarantino has always had controversy surrounding his films with people having problems with the racial issues. However this film has possibly the most amount of black actors in it than the others. Tarantino also likes to collaborate with those that he has worked with before. So this isn't a recent problem and if you're going to criticise him for this, go back and criticise him for everything else.
Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the most awesome films of all time and is truly incredible that it is up for Best Picture. Mad Max also featured for the most part a female protagonist. This was doing a great job of creating a diverse action hero in Furiosa. But yes, they could of had some more diversity. Oddly this isn't one of the films I've seen criticised for not being totally diverse. Is it because it featured a woman as a female lead? Does that count as enough? I'm not sure why that would be but it seems as if so. The Martian like Mad Max could also of done with more diversity. The main story is on the one character but I guess there is no reason to why there may not of been
And last of all in the list we have Star Wars. But Star Wars had many main characters including John Boyega and also the main lead was Daisy Ridley. There was clear diversity in Star Wars. There were many returning characters who were also main characters. What do you want to do? Change their skin colour?
Overall this video is just plain ridiculous. What they are saying really is, these movies shouldn't be up for Oscars because of the lack of diversity. Nonsense. Most of these films are either true stories or are set in a specific time period or setting where it wouldn't make sense for there to be a lot of diversity. There isn't a problem with that. If they made a film about Scotland in the time of Mary Queen of Scots would you really expect to see a lot of diversity? No because that's not how it would of been like. If they were to make a fictional movie set in Africa many centuries ago, would you expect to see a lot of white people in it? No you wouldn't. If you were going to make a movie about Genghis Khan, you wouldn't expect it to be full of different ethnicities. Sometimes it just makes sense to why there aren't different ethnicities. This is the case with true stories and time periods.
The main point of this video just seems to be that black people should be up for Oscars regardless. Now I think that Michael B Jordan was robbed out of a nomination for an Oscar for Creed. I want to see a lot more diversity in lead roles. But only if they are good enough. Not just getting it for their skin colour. But it just seems that people aren't even taking the movies or actors performances into consideration when moaning about this topic. They are just looking at it and saying "Oh there's no black people in it, RACIST". Most people aren't even seeing the films, they just think they're being nominated for being white and nothing else. No that's not how it works. They don't even care about other ethnicities though. They took everyone who wasn't black out of the posters. They even took out a Mexican. So it's just black people? Why isn't there a fuss about Asian actors? Why aren't they moaning about this?
I was really glad to look in the comments section of this video and see the reaction from all mixed races agreeing that the video was just ridiculous. From talking about the real stories, periods of time and how it is just based on skin colour, the comments are showing how bad and stupid this video is. At the time of writing this the video is currently sitting at 10,234 likes and a whopping 26,109 dislikes.
The Oscars should 100% be performance based. No doubt about it. But to assume that Hollywood is completely racist because of the lack of black leads in films. There is a much bigger picture than that.
I hope you can see the points I was trying to make with this post. I just feel that this video is utterly ridiculous and hope you can see why through my points. What do you think of this whole situation? Once again thank you for reading, it means a lot.
By Angus McGregor
