Tupac.… It doesn’t matter what they do mine will be better.… Tupac was much more than a hip hop artist.… He was a black man guided by his passions.… Of most importance was his love of black people and culture.… Something the people involved in this movie know nothing about.… Real talk! How you gonna make a movie about a man when you suing his mother to get the rights to tell his story?! They have no true love 4 Pac so this movie will not be made with love!”27
Both Wilson and Singleton are tuned into the rampant misrepresentation and stereotyping of African Americans that occurs on U.S. screens. For Wilson, knowledge of culture is paramount in the execution of movies about African American communities. For Singleton, love and appreciation of Black culture and people is a key ingredient in making a movie that is not only antiracist but also respectful of popular Black artists. The intentions, awareness, and empathy of the director make a difference in the outcome of the film and portrayals of characters and stories.
The assumption underlying most calls for increased representation of marginalized racial groups is that more representation would lead to more humanizing images on-screen. Although directors’ presence or absence behind the camera does not necessarily mean that less stereotypical or more multidimensional and complex racial representations are sure to follow, there is reason to believe that people of color behind the camera would improve on-screen images. For example, Robert Townsend remarks, “When you look at my career, I’ve tried to stay on course in my mission to uplift people of color.”28 Black Americans’ employment in high-paying and lucrative occupations in a competitive industry such as Hollywood holds immeasurable weight for the well-being of broader communities beyond the benefits it bestows on any single individual.
Cultural Bell Ringers
Another pressing concern is how underrepresentation in the film industry undercuts rights to citizenship. Citizenship rights are additional facets of representation in Hollywood that deserve recognition. Assessing the level of representation in media is one method of gauging a racial group’s access to cultural citizenship, which includes standard components such as voting rights and free speech but also the right to produce and be recognized in a nation’s dominant cultural myths, narratives, and images.29 In this sense, African Americans have been disenfranchised during Oscar season when the film industry votes for the highest awards for creative talent of the previous year.
Awards ceremonies are as much cultural as they are political and geopolitical. Awarding a movie with an Oscar sends a symbolic message to people across the globe. Earlier, we heard one Hollywood insider, Laura, lament that 12 Years a Slave might send out an “uncomfortable” global “message” that whites in America “are or were terrible people.” She called Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members “American cultural bell ringers.” Symbolically, their awards function as a sounding board that calls attention to certain art works and, in doing so, labels some movies and not others shining examples of American culture. Laura recalls, “The Academy consists of approximately 6,000 white 60-year-old-men who are educated, experienced filmmakers who take their voting power seriously. They are all fiercely patriotic and very aware of our day by day international standing politically and culturally.”30 Laura’s mention of fierce patriotism demonstrates how movies, beyond their significance as individual art forms, embody national cultural representations and are intended to speak to the world about the American cultural canon. Interestingly, Academy voters understand that their movie choices should reflect the nation’s “international standing politically and culturally.” Part of regular business practice in the film industry involves deciding what movies travel to other parts of the world, with foreign-market distribution determining the relative ease or difficulty movies have in entering international markets. Those subjective assessments, which are racially skewed to favor whites and disadvantage Blacks, demonstrate the immense power that Hollywood insiders possess to define what counts as American cinematic culture on a global scale.
Having few voices in Hollywood and little representation in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, African Americans are unable to vote in proportional numbers for industry awards, which play an integral role in enhancing visibility and bolstering careers. A Los Angeles Times survey of 6,028 Oscar voters in 2012 showed that 93 percent of Oscar voters were white. Future predictions project the Academy membership to be 89 percent white, at its most diverse outcome, by 2023—which still means that Black, Asian, Latino/a, and Native Americans, who currently stand at 36 percent of the U.S. population, collectively would have only 11 percent of Academy votes.31 With few Oscar ballots, these groups have diminished rights to representation in the voting process for the film industry’s annual awards ceremony.
On several occasions, the dearth of racial minorities recognized at the movie industry’s annual awards ceremony has raised protests, in both the physical and virtual worlds. During the 2015 ceremony, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite became a trending topic on Twitter, as social-media users reacted to the dearth of Black, Asian, Latino/a, and Native American nominees.32 Some Academy members did not empathize with the calls for inclusion. In response to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, one disgruntled white female Academy member ranted anonymously, “When a movie about Black people is good, members vote for it. But if the movie isn’t that good, am I supposed to vote for it just because it has Black people in it?”33 With criticism and approbation for popular cinema come high levels of subjectivity—which is all the more reason why it is important that African Americans and members of other marginalized racial groups realize their rights to include their subjectivities on decisions made in the Academy Awards program in particular and in Hollywood more broadly.
Methods of acquiring membership to the Academy, and thus attaining voting power, are problematic, in that they privilege whites who have existing connections to Hollywood and to the Academy. Directors and other creative personnel can become members by receiving an Oscar nomination, getting a recommendation from two existing members, or getting an endorsement from an Academy membership committee or staff. Barriers to entry make it difficult to achieve racial equality in Academy representation.
Recent amendments to the voting rules have led to more diverse incoming cohorts, though diversity in leadership at the helm of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also affects who is able to vote for awards and ultimately shapes who is nominated and wins. Cheryl Boone Isaacs was the first African American president of the Academy, elected in 2013 to serve for four consecutive one-year terms. During her tenure, she prioritized increasing diversity in the Academy, inviting a record 683 people, 41 percent of whom were racial minorities. During this wave, more Black talent received invitations to join, including several Black directors: Keenan Ivory Wayans, Dee Rees, Ice Cube, Ryan Coogler, and others. The viral #OscarsSoWhite hashtag of 2015 described an extreme lack of diversity, with white actors receiving all twenty acting nominations. Subsequently, as a result of critical changes in the Academy’s organizational structure, with an infusion of people from various racial backgrounds as members of the Academy with voting power, Academy nominations and awards have become more diverse.
The sociologist Darnell Hunt lauds the changes that have taken place to enable a more racially inclusive awards program and organization. Hunt says, “The Academy is now talking about the issues in major ways as opposed to apologizing for them, which is what they had done prior to that. They actually made some changes in terms of the voting rules, and they’ve been bringing in much more diverse new members every year, and a lot of that was under [Cheryl Boone’s] leadership. There’s no question she’s made an impact. The question is, will [the Academy] continue to move in this direction under new leadership, and will they continue at the same pace?”34 Black representation in key leadership positions proved to be of immense importance for achieving greater recognition at the Academy Awards. Boone’s leadership demonstrates that racial representation has tangible outcomes with regard to opportunities for people of color. It remains to be seen, however, whether the momentum for inclusion can continue after Boone’s tenure as president comes to an end and other presidents preside over the Academy.
Cultural citizenship includes the right to participate in shaping a nation’s cultural narratives. The
