by Ben Arogundade
On March 15, 2021, there was a shock when the nominees for the 93rd Academy Awards were announced. The list was the most diverse of all time, with nine artists of color from the 20 acting nominees — the highest total ever (45%), with three in the Best Actor category alone.
For the first time in history, all four acting categories could conceivably be won by a non-white actor. Four films featuring actors or directors of colour were also selected for Best Picture, while two Asian filmmakers were nominated for Best Director. Further nominees featured in the writing and technical categories also. What was happening? Why was there such a sudden influx of diverse talent? Was it the result of the Academy’s more inclusive membership list taking effect? Or was there something else in play?
Ten months earlier, on May 25, 2020, a 46-year-old Black man named George Floyd was murdered on a Minneapolis street by white police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd was initially arrested after a store clerk suspected him of passing a counterfeit 20-dollar bill. Chauvin, one of four officers who arrived on the scene, placed Floyd on the ground and pressed his knee upon his neck for a total of nine minutes and 29 seconds, until Floyd’s life was extinguished from his body. His dying words were, ‘I can’t breathe.’
Magazines put Black faces on their covers, just as they did in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, while others scrambled to make diversity pledges and to grant opportunities to Blacks.
A video of his slow death, shot on a smartphone by Black teenage bystander Darnella Frazier, went viral. The police didn’t recognize Floyd as a human being, but people around the world did. Their attention, which at that time was fixed on the coronavirus pandemic, suddenly diverted, as the global meditation that was lockdown made space for them to ponder and consider Floyd’s murder in ways they would not have otherwise. Frazier’s video sparked outrage, demonstrations and protests against police brutality directed at Black citizens.
Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, became the spearhead for the tsunami of responses to Floyd’s death. Corporations around the world, shamed into analysing their own discriminatory cultures, suddenly began to think Black. Magazines put Black faces on their covers, just as they did in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, while others scrambled to make diversity pledges and to grant opportunities to Blacks. This is what it took to get change: the world had to stop, and a Black man had to die – on camera.
The Academy posted a statement on its social media accounts: ‘We stand in solidarity with our black members, colleagues, storytellers, artists, and with all black people across our nation because we know Black Lives Matter. The Academy adds its voice to the call for justice. We must shine a brighter light on racism and do our part to step up to this moment.’
Simultaneously, the reaction from celebrities within the entertainment industry was fierce. It was the first time since Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963 that Hollywood’s megastars, Black and white, came out in protest against racism. In those days it was Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston and Judy Garland in attendance. This time, it was everybody, from Beyoncé to Timothée Chalamet – and instead of the protests being in one location, they were global, driven by digital civil rights movements. Celebrities attended protest marches, gave speeches, expressed outrage across social media, donated money to civil rights organizations, bailed protestors out of jail, or simply ‘took the knee’ in solidarity and defiance.
It was against this backdrop of intense global outrage, trauma and pain over Floyd’s murder that the record-breaking numbers of non-white acting nominees were announced in March 2021.
But could supporting Floyd and #BlackLivesMatter potentially damage the careers of Hollywood’s Black actors? Remember, some white Academy members did not like it back in 2014 when David Oyelowo and Ava DuVernay mixed entertainment and politics at the New York premiere of Selma, by protesting the murders of unarmed Black men by police. NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s career was also shuttered after he ‘took the knee’ in protest against police brutality and racial inequality. The possibility that joining the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations could potentially be career-ending certainly crossed the mind of John Boyega. ‘I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this but, fuck that,’ he told the massed crowd at a rally in London’s Hyde Park, where he gave a speech.
It was against this backdrop of intense global outrage, trauma and pain over Floyd’s murder that the record-breaking numbers of non-white acting nominees were announced in March 2021. Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis were nominated for Best Actor and Actress, for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield both made the list for Best Supporting Actor, for Judas and the Black Messiah; Leslie Odom Jr joined them, for One Night in Miami . . .; Andra Day was included for Best Actress, for The United States vs. Billie Holiday; Koreans Steven Yeun and Yuh-jung Youn were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, for Minari, while British Pakistani Riz Ahmed featured for Best Actor, for Sound of Metal. Behind the camera, Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao was nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, for Nomadland, while Hong Kong director Derek Tsang made the list for Best International Feature, for Better Days. African American writer Kemp Powers was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, for One Night in Miami . . .
The Academy had never seen a list like it. But how many Oscars would they actually win? The answer was eight in total – two in the acting categories (Kaluuya and Youn); two in the filmmaker categories (Chloé Zhao, Best Director and Best Picture), and four in the technical and subsidiary categories. Notable in the latter section was Two Distant Strangers, by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe. The film, which won Best Live Action Short, was directly influenced by Floyd’s death in its subject matter, which told the story of a Black New Yorker who is killed by a police officer, after which he becomes trapped in a Groundhog Day-style time loop where he repeatedly relives the experience.
By the end of Awards ceremony it was clear — Floyd’s death had affected the Oscars in ways no one had imagined, galvanising Academy voters to pay attention to the once overlooked talents of minorities and women. But the question was — would it last, or would compassion fatigue set in — again?
This is an excerpt taken with permission from the book “Hollywood Blackout: The Battle for Inclusion at the Oscars.”
Ben Arogundade is an award-winning author, journalist, and broadcaster from London. His writing has featured in The Times, The Guardian, The Evening Standard, Elle, and GQ, amongst others. He has authored and edited 12 works of fiction and non-fiction, including Black Beauty: A History and a Celebration, which was honored by the New York Public Library and adapted into a three-part BBC documentary. He also writes and presents radio shows for the BBC World Service.
Source: Seattle Medium
