0 For 11
There were 23 Academy Awards handed out in 1985 honoring the
best films of that year. 23 awards for each of the respective categories. Best
Actor, actress, screenplay and so on.
Imagine being nominated for 11 of those 23 awards. Now being
nominated in itself is an honor right? And by being nominated for 11 awards
should mean that you have a pretty good shot at winning at least one right?
Then imagine losing. Every. Single. Award you were nominated
for. No big deal, it happens all the time probably, right?
No. That almost never happens, except for two rare
occasions. Once in 1977, the film The Turning Point was nominated for 11 awards and didn’t
win any.
Then it happened one more time as well. In 1985 as The
Color Purple went home
empty-handed.
The Color Purple
is a film directed by Steven Spielberg and when this film lost all of the
awards it was nominated for, the Oscars were instantly criticized for snubbing
the movie and being racist because the film features an almost entirely all
black cast.
The film itself is hard to watch because of the themes it
deals with such as racism, sexism, and misogyny. The fact that the film was
overshadowed by Out of Africa is not as big of a deal compared to the fact that it went 0 for
11.
That is simply ridiculous. Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey
both gave performances worthy of Oscar gold. The film should have won best
adapted screenplay at least. That would have been proper respect to both the
film and Alice Walker since the movie was based off of her bestselling book of
the same name.
It is simply ridiculous that the academy could shun a film
which is so
important. The film gave a look into southern black life, and it pulled no
punches. It was graphic and raw.
A common theme in my posts have been that audiences are
scared to see anything too real. People go to the movies to be entertained. No
one wants to see something too sad or too graphic. But let's be real, life is
graphic. Real life is full of tragedy and when we see this pain onscreen we do
get scared. We do cringe, but there is beauty and importance in it.
The Color Purple should
not have been shut-out. Hollywood is racist. The Academy is racist. America
itself is a country built on racism and the exploitation of ethnicities other
than white people. Racism is nothing but a social construct designed to keep
groups of people in line. In 2012 the Los
Angeles Times did an investigation
on the Academy. They found that the Judges for the Academy Awards were 94%
white and 77% male. I don’t know the demographics for the 1985 ceremony, but I don’t
believe it was any more diverse.
 |
| Voters from the first Academy Awards held in 1929 https://trendyreel.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/countdown-to-the-academy-awards-show-history/ |
But I do believe that over time America and Hollywood
have gotten better in dealing with everyone fairly. But the 1985 awards will
forever be stained. They will forever be known as the time when racism
prevailed. That’s the only excuse for going 0-11.
Sources
Imbd.com
By E. Lacey Rice
By John Horn, Nicole
Sperling, and Doug Smith
Image
December 18th,
2007
https://trendyreel.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/countdown-to-the-academy-awards-show-history/
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