We’re all familiar with the recent complaints about the Oscar nominations by the sore-loser quartet — Till director Chinonye Chukwu and lead actress Danielle Deadwyler, along with Woman King director Gina Prince-Bythewood and its star, Viola Davis.
In their minds they all got blanked by embedded white elitism or misogynoir or some other racist variant.
In response Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Michelle Yeoh, a Best Actress nominee, suggested that they should cool their jets and wait their turn.
Prince-Blythewood: “There is no groundswell from privileged people with enormous social capital to get behind Black women. There never has been.” Deadwyler: “We’re talking about misogynoir. It comes in all kinds of ways. Whether it’s direct or indirect, it impacts who we are.”
The essence of the lament seemed to be “we’re looking for some equity here and we haven’t received it…progressive Academy members know that the BIPOC narrative is about giving us the respect and adulation that is our due for the work but also in a payback sense, considering the decades upon decades of racist exclusion in this industry…we know we delivered first-rate work and yet we got shut out…some of you won’t say what happened but we can smell it in the wind…Andrea Riseborough‘s white supporters pushed her though but perhaps at our expense, or so it seems.”
In short, the sore losers were saying that in this time of revolutionary overhaul and the diminishing of Hollywood’s white-male heirarchy, equity needs to count as much as meritocracy (and perhaps even a bit more) in terms of handing out Oscar nominations.
In an exclusive Hollywood Reporter interview with Seth Abramovitch, Andrea Riseborough has addressed the sore losers with two statements — one sympathetic and understanding, and the other a bit more frank.
A.R.’s compassion and sympathy responise: “The film industry is abhorrently unequal in terms of opportunity. I’m mindful not to speak for the experience of other people because they are better placed to speak, and I want to listen.”
A.R.’s plain-spoken statement: “Awards campaigning is as acerbically exclusive as it has always been. I do not yet know which measures will best encourage meritocracy [but] I’ve been working toward discovering them and will continue to.”
