Did you watch the Oscars last night?

I did not. But I did keep up with the winners via Google and Twitter.

I had many conflicting feelings about it and maybe award shows in general.
I was super-happy for all of the winners, while trying to also hold that the value of one's art is not dictated by the granting of awards that are only sometimes based on recognition of skill--
--but more often on personal taste as molded by white supremacist capitalist patriarchal standards of what is "excellent."
But I know that these governing bodies and I don't agree on what excellence is or means because I didn't see nominations or wins for Rahdha Blank and THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION, which was the best film of 2020.

Fight with your Uncle Jake about that, but not me. 🙂
I was utterly joyful that Korean actor Youn Yuh-jung won Best Supporting Actress because that was an example of someone winning for the actual skill they displayed (her work in MINARI was above reproach).
But I was offended by the idea that the Academy should be pat on the back for granting an Oscar to an Asian woman in that category for the first time since a Japanese-American woman, Miyoshi Umeki, won in 1957.
I was over the moon for Daniel Kaluuya whose performance in JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH was utterly SUBLIME and was, perhaps, the best performance in a film last year.
But it is flat-out wild to me that both he and LaKeith Stansfield were nominated in the Supporting Actor category when the production company asked the Academy to consider Stansfield as Best Actor and Kaluuya as Best Supporting Actor.
How and why did the Academy decide that they both should be supporting--and if they are BOTH supporting, then who was the leading actor in that film?
I mean, if in ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD they can recognize Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead and Brad Pitt as the supporting, what's different about JUDAS other than the race of the principals?
Sometimes, Black actors who want to win Oscars ask their production companies to campaign for the supporting roles because their chances of winning are greater there. That's what Viola Davis did with FENCES.
Although she was the lead actress in that film, she campaigned to be nominated for Best Supporting Actress because even though her performance that year blew every other performance in film out of the water...
...she knew she would lose in the Best Actress category to someone giving an inferior performance.

And she was right. Davis lost to someone they had already given the Best Actress award to twice before, for a total of three times.
If you look at the Best Actress category, the only actor to have EVER won in that category that wasn't white was Halle Berry.
And here is what Berry told Teen Vogue about what that win means now: "Wow, that moment really meant nothing. It meant nothing. I thought it meant something, but I think it meant nothing."
(As an aside, I also feel bad for white actor Glenn Close because that woman has put in That Work and they stay overlooking her and voting for people who can't touch the hem of her garment.
So I wonder if she has somehow betrayed white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in some way because...)
Only two women have ever won Best Director and only one is a woman of color. Two. In 93 years. In a world where Julie Dash, Ava DuVernay, Radha Blank, Dee Rees, Penny Marshall, Barbra Streisand, and Ann Hui exist. Wow. But congratulations to Chloe Zhao!
A lot of media is reporting how the show ended on the most crushing and sorrowful note imaginable when previous Best Actor winner Anthony Hopkins beat the favorite, Chadwick Boseman.
I wouldn't call that a crushing and sorrowful note. I would call that an American note. That is emblematic of what the United States, and thus whiteness, does:
It makes itself the most important person in the room, even when it's outshined. It dictates the rules; constructs the parameters; determines the definitions; appoints itself judge, jury, and executioner; and glorifies its own "good works."
So even though Boseman gave a performance that reached the height of heights, a star that burned so bright that it became light itself; that, in doing so, he, himself, glimmered until he could not do it anymore, and left us for another kind of existence...
...giving everything he had and leaving us to weep over it--they covered their eyes and returned to where they found comfort: In the bosom of the old white cisgender heterosexual non-disabled man, who they believe to be the architect of reality.

Sad, but not surprising.
I always root for the marginalized. So even if the institution granting the recognition is steeped in white settler-colonial patriarchal philosophy, I am happy for whatever benefits, monetary or otherwise, it might bring the marginalized recipient.
I know that's irreconcilable, hypocritical, and contradictory. I'm just being honest.
But we in the future, y'all. This is the whole 21st century.
If they still out here feeling good about "The First Korean!™ The First Black!™ The First Woman!™ The First LGBTQIA+!™ The First Disabled!™" and not feeling ASHAMED that they are so BEHIND in the evolution of human artistry, then the ignorance has more layers than Trident.
Giving a singular, exceptional award to a person of marginalized identity after years of overlooking their brilliance isn't a sign of white progress; it's a marker of white lethargy.

And you don't have to believe me. Believe the science, though.
You KNOW someone is committed to anti-Blackness if in a capitalist society they'd rather lose a GANG of money than treat Black people equitably.
"The study concluded that America’s film industry is the country’s least diverse business sector and that its systemic anti-Black biases cost it at least $10 billion in annual revenue. Black content is undervalued, underdistributed and underfunded, the analysis found.
"It also found that Black talent has been systematically shut out of creator, producer, director and writer positions.
Shout out to every marginalized person who won an Oscar last night: H.E.R., Travon Free, Mia Neal, Jamika Wilson, and everyone else that I haven't mentioned.
(EDIT: Anthony Hopkins is autistic. So he doesn't exactly fit that mold in the literal sense, though he might in the white imagination as autism can sometimes appear invisible to non-disabled people.)
Wait y'all?

They had Glenn Close out here doing Da Butt?

YOU A LIE!
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