So, tonight was The Oscars.
It’s the first time in probably 25 years that I haven’t watched them. Not interested in seeing Trump bashing and endless virtue signaling by feted Hollywood elites.
It looks like it was a very Diverse™ evening and that the #OscarsSoWhite jihad has paid off.
At Entertainment Weekly, they’re ecstatic and busy counting the Diversity Pokemon Points:
Mahershala Ali and Viola Davis just capped a landmark year for diversity in the awards race.
Both performers took their first Oscar trophies in the supporting categories Sunday, marking the first time since the 2007 ceremony that more than one black actor has won a competitive Academy Award on the same night; Mahershala Ali triumphed for his work in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, while Davis nabbed her first Oscar for her co-starring turn as Rose Maxson in Denzel Washington’s August Wilson adaptation Fences — a role that won her a Tony Award in 2010.
Washington previously made Oscars history in 2002, when he and Halle Berry became the first black performers to win both of the Academy’s lead acting awards on the same evening. Since then, the Academy has awarded more than one actor of color on the same night three times; in 2005 (Jamie Foxx for best actor, Morgan Freeman for best supporting actor), 2007 (Forest Whitaker for best actor, Jennifer Hudson for best supporting actress), and 2017…
Ali and Davis won their Oscars amid the Academy’s increasing attempts to evolve its voting ranks following the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, as AMPAS President Cheryl Boone Isaacs spearheaded a campaign to diversify the organization’s membership in January 2016. As part of the ongoing initiative, the Academy invited a record number of new participants, extending offers to 683 film industry professionals from 59 countries. Forty-six percent of invitees were female, while 41 percent were people of color.
Yawn.
I hope their ratings were inversely correlated with their affirmative action genuflection and Political Correctness.
Wake me up when an #OscarsSoBlack campaign starts.
Update: We mustn’t lose the apt metaphor inherent in the Best Picture snafu. La La Land (i.e., a film about an idealized Hollywood and how a white man tries to ‘save jazz’ from the black jazz world selling out to commercialism) was wrongly announced as Best Picture. This was quickly corrected with the correct winner: Moonlight, a film about a gay black ghetto man coming to terms with his homosexuality. How wonderfully poignant as a commentary on the state of Hollywood today. Celebrate Diversity!
