Comparing this year’s pool of Academy Award nominees to last year’s, one major difference is evident: the obvious lack of minorities among the contenders. In fact, this year represents the whitest group of Oscar contenders in the major acting categories in 10 years, since the 73rd Oscars.
« These are some seriously white Oscars, I can’t lie. I kind of imagined Mo’Nique wanting to go all ‘Precious’ upside Tom Sherak’s head with an ashtray this morning by the time they got to the end of the Best Picture category, » says Movieline Editor S.T. VanAirsdale.
One of the reasons minorities were not represented among this year’s nominees, says Hollywood Reporter Film Editor Gregg Kilday, is that there simply weren’t any African American-themed movies that had a legitimate chance to get a nomination.
« The problem with this year [was] there wasn’t a real small, serious-themed movie about African American subjects that the Academy could turn to for nominations, » Kilday says.
Kilday believes that at one point during the fall it looked like Tyler Perry’s star-studded drama ‘For Colored Girls,’ with performances from Kimberly Elise, Anika Noni Rose and Macy Gray, could emerge as a contender.
« But it didn’t get a great critical reception, and it didn’t turn into a crossover hit, » Kilday told PopEater. « Tyler Perry is a very successful pop entertainer who isn’t yet taken as a serious director, and that movie fell by the wayside. It wasn’t a legit contender. »
VanAirsdale adds that Kerry Washington could have been a contender for one of the actress awards, but her two films, ‘Night Catches Us’ and ‘Mother and Child,’ were just too inconsistent to attract serious awards attention.
Denzel Washington, always an Academy favorite, was in two films this year, but both were the kind of genre movie that isn’t typically nominated for an Oscar.
Part of the blame can also be attributed to the way the Oscar process is heavily influenced by publicists and marketers waging multimillion-dollar Oscar campaigns.
« I’m not exactly sure what the Academy can do. On the one hand, they’re a historically lazy group of viewers who aren’t going to discover or nominate anything independently, » VanAirsdale says.
He explains that ‘Precious’ grew into the phenomenon it was because of its Sundance roots, and this year’s big Sundance hit happened to be ‘Winter’s Bone.’
« These films are cultivated that way for months. Their ethnic representation from year to year is dictated by a handful of marketers and publicists, very, very few of whom are minorities. »
Next year could be a different story. Jennifer Hudson is in the process of making a movie about Winnie Mandela that is already starting to generate Oscar buzz before it is officially in the can, and the Academy is sure to take note of the lack of diversity at this year’s awards. Still, that lack of diversity could point to a deeper problem in Hollywood.
« Hollywood is happy to cast black actors like Don Cheadle in ‘Iron Man 2,’ Queen Latifah in ‘The Dilemma,’ but it doesnt make that many serious-themed films that take a serious look at African American themes, » Kilday says. « It doesn’t make that many serious movies of any different stripe or color. »
Check Out the Full List of Oscar Nominations 2011