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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
From Internet message boards to barbershops, African-Americans are abuzz with debate over Halle, Denzel and Sidney's history-making moments. Is "Monster's Ball" a racist film or a breakthrough? Do blacks wield any real power in Hollywood? Was the Oscar "blackout" more than a whitewash?
Mar 29, 2002 | All the world's a film set, and the major players on it are now black, if you believe the hype following Oscars 2002. The 74th Academy Awards will be remembered for Cirque du Soleil's loops and spins, Gwyneth's droopy twins, and, of course, historic wins, the so-called sweep by not one (gasp!) but two (choke!) African-Americans, who took Oscar home for the first time in, like, millennia.
When Halle Berry's name rang out on Sunday night, I flung myself into the air, kicking my heels together like an extra from "The Wiz." Then Julia Roberts read out "Denzel Washington," and I had a total "I'm the king of the world" epiphany right there in my living room. This sense of collective victory wasn't mine alone. Earlier, Will Smith told reporters that, if Washington won, he would go up with him because Washington "would be winning for all of us."
In post-show interviews, Eric Benet, Berry's husband, admitted he nearly bum-rushed the stage. Even Sidney Poitier looked like he might either bungee-jump from his balcony, or do the Roberto Benigni chair-hurdle for a group hug on the podium with Berry and Washington. News clips that night showed black people in churches, community centers and schools (including Denzel Washington's high school drama teacher) simply losing it. "I felt elated," says film critic Rose "Bams" Cooper, "and, in a communal sense, vindicated."
Cooper, an editor at 3BlackChicks Film Review, admits that she thought Tom Wilkinson should have won the best actor award for "In the Bedroom," but says it was about time Denzel got his due. "Denzel's best work, in 'Malcolm X,' wasn't rewarded," says Cooper. "So if it was good enough for Al Pacino to win for 'Scent of a Woman' instead of 'The Godfather,' it's good enough for Denzel Washington."
But now that the fairy dust has settled, reviews of the night are more mixed. Some media reports are a little sniffy about the whole affair, as if Oscar's "blackout" was political correctness pushed to an extreme. In letters to newspaper editors, and more openly, on the Internet, many white viewers seem confused, uncomfortable, even annoyed about all the fuss. Why make such a big deal over two black winners, if society's supposed to be colorblind? And, deeewd, did Halle Berry really have to play the race card in her speech?
Meanwhile, the black community has its own misgivings. Even before the awards, African-Americans were cynical about how the night would unfold. "It's the way it was packaged," says Frances Turner, an attorney in Manhattan. "Whoopi hosting! Denzel! Will! Halle nominated! Sidney honored! The ushers are black! People are gonna wear black dresses! Instead of it just being about honoring actors who gave great performances that deserve Oscars."
After decades of frosty treatment from Hollywood, many found it hard to get excited just because Oscar and black America had a one-night stand. Was the Academy's vote based on merit alone, or a lame attempt to make us forget the 74 years we weren't counted, even when we stood up?
"I think, overall, the Academy didn't do much to honor black cinema," says Esther Iverem, a film critic and editor at SeeingBlack.com. "It still managed to avoid giving a big award to a film or performance centered on the black experience. If Will Smith had won for 'Ali,' now that would have been historic."
For many African-Americans, the principal issue is not whether Halle or Denzel deserved to win, but why the Academy chose to reward them for these particular roles. A quick flashback through black Oscar winners reveals a questionable pattern in the characters endorsed by Hollywood's major league: Hattie MacDaniel as mammy ("Gone With the Wind"), Denzel as slave ("Glory"), Cuba Gooding Jr. as athlete/buffoon ("Jerry Maguire"), Whoopi Goldberg as a Miss Cleo-type mystic ("Ghost"). Now Washington gets props for playing a dirty cop and Berry's the center of attention after her character makes the beast with two backs with the white racist executioner who killed her black husband.
"You have to wonder if this is what it takes for a black woman to be named best actress," says Iverem. "Who was the last 'best actress' who did a nude sex scene?" (Actually, that would have been Paltrow and her twins again, in "Shakespeare in Love.") Iverem continues: "Ultimately, 'Monster's Ball' uses the legacy of racism in an unconvincing manner to belittle its impact, and its historical and present-day consequences."
The "Monster's Ball" debate is still raging. African-American bulletin boards on the Internet are filled with expressions of outrage, mostly beginning with, "I haven't seen the film but ..." According to Iverem, scores of black men are boycotting the film, which they believe insults, and even cuckolds them by placing Berry in bed with Billy Bob Thornton. On the SeeingBlack.com message boards, Miles Willis bemoans having to "watch fine black women gettin' down with mangy, white redneck 'billybobs'" (conveniently forgetting that Berry herself is biracial).
Willis, a radio DJ, writes: "Imagine the seething indignation that a Jewish man might feel while watching a story in which the widow of a Nazi concentration camp victim has an intimate relationship with the SS officer that shoved her husband into one of those ovens at Auschwitz!"
Stanley Tatum, a dailies producer who has worked on films such as "The Laramie Project," "K-PAX" and "A Beautiful Mind," has a less inflammatory but nonetheless stinging critique of how race relations play out on the big screen. "It's amazing the vacuum black people exist in cinematically, having no options, let alone a developed character," he says. "So the white character [in 'Monster's Ball'] can come in like Sir Galahad, giving the downtrodden Negress a lifeline: a ride to work, a place to stay and cunnilingus." He adds, however, that Berry's performance "rose above the material and the subject matter."
