Call me crazy, but from a pragmatic point of view maybe this whole #OscarsSoWhite situation isn’t so bad.  Yes, it’s terrible that people of color would seem to be chronically if not systematically underrepresented by The Motion Picture Academy when it comes to the bestowing of Oscar nominations, as well as the actual Oscar award itself.  But at least the reality of the bias, or at the very least the mainstream admission of a rather serious problem is undeniably out there now for all to see –  if we read the volume of coverage in publications as mainstream and varied as The Los Angeles Times, TIME Magazine, and The Washington Post, to name a small but prestigious few.  Certainly, as witnessed by the equal parts admiration and equal parts vilification of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, this sort of general public consensus when it comes to questions of class, race, culture and equality is anything but typical in American society. Assuming that this inequality is the direct result of some sort of unresolved racial bias, not being able to bank on the fact that if you do a stellar job, The Academy will see fit to “see” you and reward you outside of it’s own rarefied climate of 94% white and 77% male is a very vicious form of career homicide.  That this grave injury is being meted out as business as usual by one of the highest and most visible entertainment “courts” in the world is tantamount to a sort of film genocide. Any film industry, national or international in origin,  gathers it’s very life force from it’s ability to be widely known and recognized.  This directly drives all the necessary financing that allows any project, actor or artisan to flourish or flounder.   As such, any practice that knowingly or unknowingly excludes the larger recognition of a creative source based on elements outside of the realm of talent goes way beyond the pale when it comes to a terrible restriction on what the world is freely able to consider art. Closer to home, it’s eerily curious that much of the social media blow back from #OscarsSoWhite hasn’t centered on the constructive identification of specific members of The Academy who have the power to affect change but those outside of the scope of causality and power.  Instead it seems to be peopled by many “nominally” concerned celebrities who would seem in actuality have their own very specific personal agendas and axes to grind.  From Jada Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith, as well as Janet Hubert’s rebuttal of their issues with this year’s Oscar nomination snubs, all the way to the consistently mystifying musings of Stacey Dash,  it would almost seem better not to listen at the risk of falling prey to their various brands of tunnel vision; quixotically to hear them is to assume that the injured party in this dilemma is almost exclusively African American – which it truly is not. To buy into this one-sided view is to be infected by the same myopia and general blindness that allowed the original problem to germinate and thrive within The Academy itself.  Accordingly the “solutions” offered up by these self appointed  “revolutionaries” tend to be as twice borrowed and ill-fitting as the purported degree of their civic outrage.   As a quick example, boycotting The Oscars, as Pinkett-Smith along with Spike Lee, have suggested seems a bit high school reactive, if not something that would work to dubious effect.  Logically, since when did it ever work to shun the popular kids who are already, in fact, shunning you? This just doesn’t seem like anything that The Academy wouldn’t simply weather – especially if we are just talking one awards show.  Pinkett-Smith’s other crack idea? Separate but equal awards. Isn’t that just Jim Crow for the 21st century? Most definitely.  History has unequivocally said no with regards to the merits of that solution.  Interestingly enough, two very unsatisfactory solutions to a problem that Will Smith suggested pre Oscar nominations didn’t exist anyway.  It makes one wonder if anything would have been said from the Smith camp if Mr. Smith had received the one Oscar nomination in what has been a fallow Oscar season for people of color.  This we will never know. As such, to truly change The Academy, it might go a long way to do something different by shining a light on specific Academy members who have the power to change the game.  Make them individuals who are directly accountable versus cogs in an opaque machine.  It would seem that in destroying the monolithic and anonymous nature of The Academy, something new might be achieved much more quickly. True, the president of The Motion Picture Academy is Cheryl Boone Issacs, which could be promising.  She is the first African American Academy president as well as it’s third female president as of her appointment in 2013.  In good form, this month in direct answer to calls for a boycott, she has wisely pledged to “make big changes” and take an active lead in making “ dramatic steps to alter the makeup of (The Academy’s) membership.” But given that this whiteout has happened two years in a row, not to mention well within Ms. Issacs’ tenure, shouldn’t there already be some plans on the books, or at least waiting in the wings to fix this very public problem? Indeed, as recently as this time last year when the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag was born in direct response to the Oscar nomination snub of African American female Director Ava DuVernay for her MLK Biopic SELMA, Issacs flatly denied to New York magazine’s Vulture blog that The Academy had any problems with diversity.  It was then and there that Issacs stated firmly in answer to these questions, “Not at all. Not at all,” in response to the widely held expectation that DuVernay would have been and should have been allowed to make history in 2015 as the first African American woman to ever be nominated for a Best […]