I do not understand why people rush home or to their friends or families houses to hover around the TV and watch the Academy Awards?? This is not an awards show that is meant for us minorities..let's just keep it real. African Americans in Hollywood have to knock down doors just to play a stereotype or to play a minor role in an "All American" movie to have their name not even typed during the opening credits. Most of our movies don't even make it to film, they go straight to DVD and most of the movies are better than what they put out in the theaters. I have not and do not watch the Oscars, but decided to write this blog about our history in this "American" ceremony. Some people say I'm watching it for the fashion...you can watch the E channel to see the fashion on the red carpet and not support this shit!! I am not about knocking what people choose to watch and support but we really need to think about the message we are sending to our children and the future minorities. The first person to win an Oscar was Hattie McDaniel who played Mammy in Gone With the Wind. Now I am definitely not knocking her hustle because back then African Americans had no chose but to play what African Americans were in America at that time. But this was the beginning of what we were expected to play and what the Oscars for looking for in African Americans to even qualify in their minds,ears and eyes to even be nominated. Diahann Carroll was nominated for her role as an African American single mother living on welfare trying to live the best she can and raise her children in Claudine. She lost but this shows what I am talking about, when we are playing a role that shows us in a positive manner or trying to make a will without a way on our own, we get ignored, but when we play the African American stereotype characters we get praised no wonder why we continue to act like fools!! Dorothy Dandridge nominated for an Oscar, but she was basically a gold digger using men. Sidney Poitier in The Lilies of the Field was an African American building a church for German nuns, he wasn't a bad man, but he was still doing something to empower them, not himself. Even though he found GOD I guess towards the end. Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy was a African American chauffeur for an uppity white woman who was verbally abusive. This might has well have been a modern version of Mandingo and the slave master's wife. Denzel Washington in Malcolm X won for playing one of America's most wanted and a stereotype of a angry Black scary man that hated white people..HE DID DESERVE TO WIN FOR THIS BECAUSE THIS WAS NOT A STEREOTYPE BUT A DEPICTION OF A BLACK LEADER WHO WAS ADORED AND LOVED BY MANY!! But his role in Training Day was a typical stereotype of a corrupt Black cop abusing his powers. Laurene Fishburne in What's Love Got To Do With It. He was nominated for playing an angry Black husband that abused drugs, alcohol and women, even though I guess in real life that was his real life. Halle Berry winning an Oscar for her role in Monster's Ball; she played the wife of a prisoner that was executed and ends up having an affair with a white racist prison guard that actually executed her husband. Now Monique wins for her portrayal as an abusive mother living in the projects raising a teenager that can not read or write and is being abused by her husband; her daughter's father. I know she did an outstanding job in the film and this issue happens in America and around the world, but if she was playing a single mother like Claudine would she have won?? Why don't you ask Diahann Carroll. What other minorities have won Oscars????? ARE YOU STILL THINKING???!!!!!Sistas we need to take a look at what we are supporting and what type of message that is conveying to us and our children??
THIS IS JUST MY 2 CENTS..I DO NOT KNOCK ANYONES CHOICES FOR WATCHING THIS AWARDS SHOW BUT JUST WANTED TO VENT AND MAKE SOME PEOPLE THINK.....
RONI
(image sourced from yahoo image search image Spike Lee's Bamboozled)
No comments:
Post a Comment