Oscars So White

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About

#OscarsSoWhite also known as Oscars So White or Oscar Whitewash, is a hashtag used to protest the underrepresentation of people of color in the annual Academy Award nominations. The hashtag came into use during the 2015 award cycle, and re-appeared in 2016. The hashtag is used to make a joke in the following structure: "#OscarSoWhite he [did something only a white person would do]."

Origin

The hashtag was coined on January 15th, 2015, immediately after the 2015 Oscar nominations were announced, by the blogger April Reign.^[1] Reign called for a boycott of the ceremony by those who cared about the fact that, besides a best picture nod for the Martin Luther King, Jr biopic Selma and a best director nomination for Alexander Iñarritu, there were no people of color in nominated in any of the major categories.^[2] In an interview with MTV about the hashtag's necessity, Reign said,^[3]

"It’s not because there’s a lack of quality films that star or feature people of color; that’s not the issue. There was an article in The Atlantic recently which indicated who the Oscar voters are. They are 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and the average age is 63 years old … and they might not be as interested in seeing ’Selma."

Precursor

While the lack of ethnic diversity in the American film and TV industry has previously come under criticism through several bouts of "racebending" controversies that arose from the casts of specific films, including the 2010 live action film adaptation of The Last Airbender and the 2015 epic space opera film Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, one of the most notable satires directly aimed at the predominance of white actors and actresses in high-profile projects can be attributed to New York-based comedian Jordan Mendoza's single topic blog All White Ppl^[13]. Launched in February 2015, the blog curates a series of movie poster parodies in which the title of the films are replaced with the phrase "White Ppl" (shown below).

Spread

In 2015, the hashtag was used thousands of times to protest that award cycle; in 2016, when the awards were announced on January 14th, the hashtag re-appeared when again, no actors of color were nominated. The hashtag's popularity skyrocketed again, and it began trending in the United States that day.^[4] In addition, the hashtag also began trending on Facebook.^[5] its popularity prompted various news outlets to write articles about the tweets, including Vanity Fair,^[6] Forbes^[7] and the New York Daily News.^[8]

Various Examples

All White Ppl

In the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite protests, Jordan Mendoza, the author of the Tumblr project All White Ppl, also ran a new set of photoshopped parodies of promotional posters for all-white cast films that have been nominated for the 2016 Academy Awards.

Impact

Celebrity Boycott

On January 18th, 2016, director Spike Lee posted a photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Instagram,^[11] along with an announcement that he would not be attending the Oscar's ceremony in protest of the underrepresentation of people of color at the ceremony (shown below).

"My Wife, Mrs. Tonya Lewis Lee And I Will Not Be Attending The Oscar Ceremony This Coming February. We Cannot Support It And Mean No Disrespect To My Friends, Host Chris Rock and Producer Reggie Hudlin, President Isaacs And The Academy. But, How Is It Possible For The 2nd Consecutive Year All 20 Contenders Under The Actor Category Are White?"

The same day, actress Jada Pinkett Smith released a video on Facebook^[10] calling for a boycott of the ceremony (shown below, left). Within 48 hours, the video garnered more than 256,000 shares and 225,000 likes. Also on January 18th, actress Janet Hubert released a video in which she criticized Pinkett's call for a boycott as self-serving and hypocritical (shown below, right). The following day, Redditor Gordopolis submitted Hubert's video to /r/videos,^[9] where it received upwards of 5,800 votes (89% upvoted) and 5,600 comments in two days.

On January 20th, Lee appeared on the talk show Good Morning America, where he claimed to have never called for a boycott of the Academy Awards and called the outrage over the ceremony a "misdirection play" (shown below).

Official Response

On January 19th, Cheryl Boone Isaacs , the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, released a statement via The Academy's official Twitter account to address the controversy surrounding the lack of diversity on the list of nominees, in which she acknowledged the widespread criticisms and pledged to make necessary improvements.^[12]