For many actors and films, the question of whether they will get nominated for an Oscar is truly anyone’s guess. You can pretty much leave it up to a coin toss; it is just that unpredictable.
This isn’t the case, however, for white Hollywood’s darling Meryl Streep. It is almost a guarantee that Streep’s name will appear on the ballot.
She received her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1979 for her role in the film The Deer Hunter and has since been nominated 19 times, 15 for Best Actress and 4 of Best Supporting Actress. Of these, she has won 3 times: Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Best Actress for Sophie’s Choice (1982) and Iron Lady (2011).
Her latest nudge is a nomination in the 2015 Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the movie Into the Woods (2014).
She has similarly racked up nominations for the Golden Globe Awards Program, where she is the most celebrated performer in its history.
So what to make of these awards ceremonies, or should we call them: The Meryl Streep Spectacles?
More than Meryl Streep’s nomination being part of a big fat, long-running joke, the Oscars is actually the biggest joke.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization whose members annually vote on talent and films for the Oscars, remains mostly white and mostly male, just as it was in the good ‘ole Jim Crow days of 1927 when it held its first organizational meeting.
Statistics of the Academy’s racial and age demographics reveal numbers that are strikingly lopsided. In 2012, there were 5,765 voting members in the Academy. Of the voting members, 94 percent are white, 2 percent are black, and less than 2 percent are Latinos. People older than the age of 50, those who were born before 1962, are a whopping 86 percent of voters.
So basically the Oscars is just the “Here’s What The Old Whiteys Think” Awards Show.
Meryl Streep’s nomination is simply old White men’s message to all of us that the Oscars isn’t at all about honoring the best talent of the year. It is about White people showing that they are in control over the voting process, and they will impose who ever they choose to be in the face of the masses. Meryl Streep just happens to be that person who fits the bill.
In fact, Meryl Streep can play a black woman in a horror movie, die in the first minute, and still get nominated for that 60 seconds she was on the screen.
This isn’t to take anything away from Meryl Streep’s acting, but it is quite apparent that the Oscars are a jarring symbol of segregation era America, when only whites made decisions about the country and all everyone else could do was shut up and listen.
We only need to look at the actions of two white police officers—one who shot and killed a fleeing black teenager with a dozen bullets, the other who strangled a black man who was surrounded by a gang of white onlookers—and the actions of majority white juries, in both cases whose white members chose not to indict the police officers, to understand that we cannot ever have morality and impartiality when white people make decisions for us.
The Oscars is no different. There is no diversity in Hollywood.
So rather than people being all up in arms about no African Americans or Latinos receiving a nomination in a major category, we should more so analyze the situation and conclude: well, did you expect anything different?
If we did expect the Oscars to be more than a Meryl Streep show, then should we take umbrage at the 94 percent White Academy’s decision to promote one of its own, or should we be upset with ourselves for believing that there would be a different outcome?
And even if there had been African Americans or Latinos on the ballot, should we be satiated and say that those White people finally got it right? Or should we still demand that there are 36 percent Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans in America, and so we should be 36 percent of the voting members in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?
We’ve come to a point in America that most people who are not white are just tired of hearing only about what white people think, and most important, that decisions about Americans, whether significant ones about foreign policy or more lighthearted ones like who wins Best Animated Feature, should take a multiracial village and not a uniracial white exclusivity to arrive at a judgment.
To say that the 87th Academy Awards nominations for the 2015 Oscars was uneventful is an understatement.
We have historical trails, extending over hundreds of years long, of whites making decisions and calling them the choices of all Americans.
The monotony of the Academy Awards and American politics will end when others join in making decisions about the Oscars and about the nation.
I think this is a diplomatic way of saying that white people in America are racists. And for some reason we aid them in their mouth-service of liberalism while nothing changes. The Oscars are a ridiculous rendition of what happens in greater America.
Its about time they called the Oscars the Whiters! Simple. It send home the message better.
I can turn to Fox, MSNBC, CNN, BBC to hear what whites think. I don’t need to watch the Oscars to here what whites think. Its a ridiculous collection of racist liberals.
Meryl Streep is a shining example of whiteness in America. It stinks!
The world is a bigger place than America. Perhaps African Americans should join the African Movie Awards instead continue in this game of catching white people with wining awards. Africa is ready to welcome African American Films with open arms – we are the people. We accept all because we gave the world life and then we gave it civilization. Come to us dear cousins in America.
The message this old white men on the voting board at the Oscars are sending is simple: we are white and we are the smartest things the planet has ever known. And they believe that crap. Only when a Black person is in the room and they get all uncomfortable. Why? They are not that smart!
Very true. Why would you be uncomfortable if you are the smartest person in the room? If that were the case, you would not be uncomfortable.
These Oscar records that white voters wish to set and entrench in antiquity is vain and fleeting. One day nobody will even puke at these records. These things are only ephemeral. The real talented people will outlast the racism and the hate that white civilization has shown the world. Need I add more?
The power of the Jewish Cartel in America is strong but it is also pungent. They paint themselves as survivers of the Holocaust, seek sympathy, take over people’s livelihoods and cry my beloved country Israel all while they discriminate against others and are intent on taking the food out of your mouth!
I hear that!
Meryl Streep is the running joke in Holloywood. No but adoubt that.