cool folks done wrong
Here’s a phrase I thought I’d never utter: I am upset for Whoopi Goldberg. This year’s Oscar’s show featured a montage of previous Oscar hosts. Goldberg, a four-time host, was omitted. Today, I watched a clip of Goldberg on The View, and she handled what must have been a painful situation with poise. Her response made me like her a little more than I already did because she showed herself to be real and allowed the general public to see that yes, famous people get their feelings hurt and the entertainment industry can be ugly.
Some critics might argue that the Oscars have a limited time for broadcast and can only show a limited amount of material. I call bullocks on that. Goldberg was the first female host, the first Black host, and the first Oscar-winning host. She, along with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Liza Minnelli, and Barbra Streisand, is one of only a few people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony award. Those are incredible feats. Then again, the Oscars haven’t been known to be friendly with Black entertainers.
There’s only been one Black person to ever have been nominated for Best Picture (Quincy Jones for 1985’s The Colour Purple), one Black nominee for Best Director (John Singleton for 1991’s Boyz n the Hood), only one Black winner for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Halle Berry for 2001’s Monster’s Ball), only three Black nominees for Best Writing for Original Screenplay (Spike Lee for 1989’s Do the Right Thing, John Singleton for 1991’s Boys n the Hood, and Suzanne de Passe for 1972’s Lady Sings the Blues), and a fifty-one year gap for a Black woman to win Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Hattie McDaniel for 1939’s Gone with the Wind and Whoopi Goldberg for 1991’s Ghost ).
At least the Oscars have been a little better to Black men. There’s been four winners out of seventeen overall nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Sidney Pointier for 1963’s Lilies of the Field, Denzel Washington for 1991’s Training Day, Jamie Foxx for 2004’s Ray, and Forest Whitaker for 2006’s The Last King of Scotland) and four winners out of sixteen overall nominees for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Louis Gossett, Jr. for 1982’s An Office and a Gentleman, Denzel Washington for 1989’s Glory, Cuba Gooding, Jr. for 1996’s Jerry Maguire, and Morgan Freeman for 2004’s Million Dollar Baby). For Freeman, it took him seventeen years from the time of his first nomination (1987’s Street Smart) to actually win it in 2004 for Million Dollar Baby. In reviewing Oscar history, I see many similar slights.
For instance, Goldberg got robbed of the Oscar for The Colour Purple; getting it for Ghost was all right, but it was a film where she was a supporter, not a character commanding the film’s direction like she did as Celie in The Colour Purple. The Colour Purple is one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Goldberg was stellar, as was the entire cast. The first time I saw it, I was getting ready to check out of a hotel, and became fascinated by the characters of Celie and Shug. I paid a late check-out free so that I could sit in that distant little hotel room, watching Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey tell stories of human history and heartache.
When I look back at my knowledge of cinema (which is pretty deep, although most people don’t know that about me because it’s a little secret pleasure I like to take and keep as I see fit), I see how groundbreaking The Colour Purple was. Instead of focusing on Black folks propping up white stories (such as in the insulting Gone with the Wind with the “yes massah” brand of character portraiture), The Colour Purple showed Black women leading rich, complex lives. Black women carried the picture without lessening themselves to do so.
See, the other thing with American cinema is that women are often relegated to being girlfriends, wives, or victims. We’re not often portrayed as being anything other than an extension of our mates or stupid enough to always be in peril and needing rescued. Women are seldom shown as having their own stories and lives, like in The Colour Purple or the wonderfully whimsical Amélie. What is interesting about this is that women’s bodies are often used to draw moviegoers, such as when Halle Berry famously bared her breasts for Swordfish or Denise Richards in just about any awful film she’s starred in. The message that studio heads seem to be sending is that women are not good for carrying story, just for being the icing. Some studios, like Warner Brothers, have passed down directives saying that “chick-flicks” are money-losing ventures. Warner Brothers’ president of production, Jeff Robinov has gone on the record saying, “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead."
The sad thing is that most cinema plotlines could be universal, allowing either gender (or many races) to play a leading role. It’s just that Hollywood chooses, more often than not, to place a white male in the protagonist role. Imagine “Indiana Jones” as a female. One studio did and came up with “Laura Croft,” after the Tomb Raider video games. Uma Thurman’s high-kicking, revenge-seeking “The Bride” in Kill Bill could have easily been Black, Chinese, or any number of other races. The need for revenge is common in human history; just ask every civilisation that’s ever gone to war.
What is interesting about all of this, too, is that many of the top grossing films of all time prominently feature women (1965’s The Sound of Music, 1973’s The Exorcist, 1997’s Titanic). Bollywood cinema in India is built on ravishing, talented leading ladies. Then, there’s films like Thelma and Louise, which was one of the top grossing films of 1991 or Ghost, which showed that women could carry movies and do it damn well. I appreciate a film that shows that women have their own powerful stories, that there is a history and strength to our wombs and the grief we carry. We are bred into physical pain. We overcome and shine through that pain. We nurture and provide comfort, sometimes steal or lie, make adventures and change worlds, pretend to be something we’re not and hide, teach nations and worship the earth. We are so many things, all of them complex. We are more than the offshoot of some man’s life.
I remember being a little girl and wanting a heroine that could give me hope and make me see that being female was being influential and not being prey to bad plots. I wanted to see women who loved women and not just men, women who had dark skin and kinky hair or almond-shaped eyes and fierce smiles, instead of the quiet, subservient little Asian maids I saw in films. I wanted to see American Indians that healed the land instead of shooting businessmen on trains and scalping cowboys on the Plains. I wanted to see African goddesses raising civilisations with their power and beauty instead of shucking cotton and singing ill-educated-sounding songs. I wanted to see Black fathers and scholars, instead of low-rider G’s or gigolos out to pimp their Black sisters.
I wanted an actress like Whoopi Goldberg, who still makes me laugh and cry, and reminds me that life, although strange, is made of mighty and monstrous joy. They should have done her better than that. She deserved more from the Academy than what she got.
We all did.
Sister Sparks-in-Her-Britches
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muse) wrote,
