So apparently the Academy Awards are now the most racist, evil thing in the world, having surpassed the left’s last most racist, evil thing in the world (what was that again? Halloween costumes? Interracial wrestling? It’s so hard to keep track). The tragic fact that for the second year in a row no “actors of color” were nominated in the best performance categories has touched off a wave of garment-rending outrage among “diversity” advocates in politics and the media.
You see, the Oscars are supposed to “reflect America.” Didn’t you know that? Well, apparently it’s true. “You don’t reflect America, your industry doesn’t reflect America,” a coalition of minority activists bellowed last week. Will Smith agreed, telling Good Morning America in a live satellite hookup from his solid-gold mansion under the sea that the Oscars should “reflect” American “beauty.” Al Sharpton, who’s normally so wary of bandwagons, uncharacteristically raised his voice in support, claiming that the Oscars don’t “reflect modern America.” And at a recent event in L.A., actor David Oyelowo claimed that the Motion Picture Academy “doesn’t reflect this nation.”
Wait…Oyelowo is a Nigerian from England (just like 2013 Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor). Exactly what “nation” is he referring to? The fact is, over the past 30 years, over one-third of Best Actor Oscar winners have been foreign. Over one-third of Best Actress winners have been foreign. If the point of the Oscars is to “reflect America,” why has there been no outcry over the disproportionate number of non-Americans who win? I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly swell with USA pride when I see Brits, Canadians, and Australians taking home our precious statuettes, mooching our swag bags, and stealing jobs from great American actors like Eric Roberts (I mean, really, the man did forty-six movies in 2015, and not one single nomination? Not even for The Human Centipede 3?).
Someone call Trump—I think I have the topic of his next press conference.
Of course, the truth is the Academy’s nominees are not supposed to “reflect America.” Entertainment-industry hiring practices in general are not supposed to “reflect America.” They’re supposed to reflect the available talent pool, and nothing else. The notion that Hollywood is supposed to reflect America is a pernicious bit of nonsense that even some conservatives buy into when they counter the current Oscar protests by (correctly) pointing out that black actors get hired roughly in proportion to the percentage of black people in the U.S. However, making that point merely plays into the fiction that “representing America” is somehow the goal. It isn’t. Acting isn’t like food-service work, retail or clerical work, factory work, janitorial work, or customer-service work. No one is ever forced into acting by a bad economy. No man has ever said, “They’re closing the plant and shipping the jobs to India, so I guess that means I’ll have to learn Shakespeare in order to support my family.”
