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Jewish World Review April 2, 2002 / 20 Nisan, 5762

Diana West

Diana West
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Acting, equality and the Academy

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | You could tell Denzel Washington was uncomfortable watching his brand-new Oscar for Best Actor morphing from a token of his peers' esteem into a token of something else -- racial politics.

After being crowned this year's King of Hollywood, Washington did what he could to deflect the line of questioning from racism to acting. Citing composer Randy Newman's string of Oscar shutouts -- the composer was 0 for 15 going into the ceremony on Sunday when he won for the first time -- Washington asked, "What would he say on the 15th time when he lost? Was that racism?"

Newman, by the way, is not only white and male, but also bona fide Hollywood royalty. (His Uncle Alfred won nine Academy Awards for composing and was head of music at 20th Century Fox.)

"There's been a lot of talk about race," Washington said. "This is an award to an actor." Poor Washington. I'd like to agree with him, but that would just make two of us. The conventional-wisdom crowd is behind Halle Berry, Hollywood's new queen, on this one. Berry, of course, just became the first black woman to win the Best Actress award, sobbing, throbbing and accepting her statuette on behalf of all black-actress-Oscar-hopefuls as a kind of reparation for racial slights, grievances and injustices past, real and imagined.

"This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll," Berry gasped. "It's for the women who stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox, and the nameless, faceless women of color who now stand a chance tonight because the door has been opened. I thank the Academy for choosing me to be the vessel ..."

The vessel? If Washington is best actor and Berry is best vessel, no wonder there's confusion about what really happened Sunday night. The casual viewer might think that two coveted acting awards went to a pair of highly regarded actors who are black, while the year's honorary Oscar went to a grand, oldish man of Hollywood, Sidney Poitier, also black. But that would be too simple -- and nothing about this year's Oscars was simple. Even before the ceremony, civil rights leaders were, as they say, "voicing their concerns" that too many nominees were black -- honest -- reason being, as The New York Times explained it, that "so many black nominees might convince Hollywood that its racial problems had been solved." (Don't think about that too hard; it hurts.)

The burning question now seems to be whether wins by Berry, Poitier and Washington constitute what NAACP president Kweisi Mfume called "a sign that Hollywood is finally ready to give opportunity and judge performance based on skill and not on skin color ..." or, whether, as he continued, they are just "a momentary flash in a long history of neglect." Of course, even if the news turns out to be good, it's bad. As Berry put it, "I hope this means they won't not see our color."

Assuming the enlightened position just isn't as easy as it used to be. Should we be colorblind, or blinded by color? One thing is certain: Washington's instinct to accept his Academy Award as a well-deserved tribute is hopelessly retro now that Berry has refashioned her Oscar as a weird, new entitlement. If, as she implied, racism deprived her peers of their rightful Oscars -- racism that Berry, as "vessel," now redresses with her own statuette -- only an uninterrupted streak of black Oscar wins will keep such racism in check. As black director Spike Lee said, "The real test comes in what happens next year or five years from now."

It sounds as if the Lala-land crapshoot of winning the Oscar just became the latest yardstick of justice for all. Needless to say, this doesn't bode well for either justice or the Oscar. Meanwhile, just for fun, consider a few biggies Oscar overlooked during stellar careers: Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Kirk Douglas, Rosalind Russell and Groucho Marx all had to wait for their retirement years to receive "honorary" Oscars, while Robert Mitchum, Steve MacQueen, Errol Flynn, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, John Barrymore, Richard Burton, Marlene Dietrich, Peter O'Toole, and W.C. Fields are, you might say, still waiting. So is Tony Curtis, who just this week told The Washington Post that he thinks his personal state of Oscarlessness is due to anti-Semitism.

Why not? It probably makes him feel better than thinking his peers didn't like him or his acting (or both) quite enough to crown his mantelpiece with golden bric-a-brac. But it does sound cranky. And it goes against the ideal of individual achievement that an Academy Award is at least supposed to signify -- and which Washington, for one, would like to uphold. Congratulations to the lucky winners.

JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Up


03/31/02: Speeding to conclusions
03/25/02: Hard to remove blood (libel) stains
03/21/02: The tale of Nixon's tapes --- again
03/19/02: The Big Lie lives on
03/15/02: The tunnel vision of '9/11'
03/13/02: The American Auschwitz?
03/08/02: Hating the indoctrination of hate
03/05/02: Clinton and Enron: Old friends
03/01/02: Pickering doesn't polarize, the process does
02/26/02: Destiny's prefabricated child
02/22/02: The White House heist
02/20/02: Making the grade
02/11/02: Studying student visas
02/06/02: Understanding arrogance
02/04/02: The professor's war
01/29/02: Disconnected dialogue
01/23/02: Anti-Indiscrimination
01/18/02: How much is enough?
01/15/02: Oh brothers, where art thou?
01/10/02: Air on the side of caution
01/04/02: Blacks seeing red at Harvard
01/02/02: Clinton's campaign continues
12/26/01: A tale of two exhibitions
12/24/01: Taliban Idyll
12/19/01: Right is right
12/17/01: Hillary strikes out
12/13/01: Lost files, lost presidency
12/10/01: Revolutionaries never grow up
12/05/01: Immigration reform talk is not just for 'haters' anymore
12/03/01: A new symbol of justice
11/30/01: Beyond morality
11/26/01: Can't keep a good man down
11/20/01: Tough talk at the United Nations
11/19/01: Hollywood's other battle
11/14/01: What's the matter with Sara Jane?
11/09/01: A beef with bin Laden's Beef Noodles
11/07/01: Facing up to the FBI's past mistakes
11/02/01: A school that teaches patriots to shutup
10/30/01: The gap between Islam and peace
10/26/01: The ties that bind (and gag)
10/24/01: This war is more than Afghanistan
10/22/01: The fatuous fatwa
10/19/01: Left out
10/16/01: Whose definition of terrorism?
10/11/01: Post-stress disorder
10/08/01: How the West has won
10/01/01: Good, bad or ... diplomacy
09/28/01: Drawing a line in stone
09/21/01: Prejudice or prudence?
09/14/01: When our dead will finally rest in hallowed ground
09/07/01: We want our #$%^&*() audience back!
08/24/01: The transformation from Green Mountain State to Green Activist State is all but complete
08/17/01: Enlightenment at Yale
08/10/01: From oppressors to victims, a metamorphosis
08/03/01: Opening the dormitory door: College romance in the New Century
08/01/01: How-To Hackdom: The dubious art of writing books about writing books
07/20/01: Hemming about Hemmings
07/13/01: Justice has not been served in the Loiuma police brutality case
06/22/01: When PC parades are too 'mainstream'
06/22/01: When "viewpoint discrimination" in our schools was not nearly so gnarly a notion
06/15/01: Lieberman flaunts mantle of perpetual aggrievement
06/07/01: Is graciousness the culprit?
06/01/01: The bright side of the Jeffords defection
05/29/01: Campus liberals should be more careful
05/18/01: 'Honest Bill' Clinton and other Ratheresian Logic
05/11/01: Dodging balls, Bugs, and 'brilliance'
05/04/01: Foot in mouth disease and little lost Tories
04/20/01:The last classic Clinton cover-up
04/20/01: D-Day, Schmee-Day
04/06/01: For heaven's sake, a little decency!
03/30/01: The sweet sound of slamming doors and clucking feminists
03/23/01: America's magazines and the 'ick-factor'
03/09/01: Felony neglect
03/02/01: Who's sorry now?
02/23/01: 'Ecumenical niceness' and other latter-day American gifts to the world
02/16/01: Elton and Eminem: Royal dirge-icist meets violent fantasist
02/12/01: If only ...

© 2001, Diana West