We caught a preview of Ava DuVernay's Selma just hours after the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced, making Oscars' snub of the Martin Luther King biopic even more prominent. Watching David Oyelowo's masterful handling of an icon and DuVernay's theatrical, but not overblown, portrayal, begged the question - what were the Academy thinking?
The film hasn't missed out on the Oscar race completely, picking up nominations for Best Picture and Best Song for John Legend and Common's Glory. While Best Picture is the big one, here it feels like a consolation prize. Up to ten films can be included in the Best Picture category (this year there's eight shortlisted) as opposed to the five in the other main categories, and it feels like the Academy just dropped Selma in after completely overlooking it for the categories it really deserved nods in - Best Director for DuVernay and Best Actor for Oyelowo. And how can a film really be named Best Picture, if it's deemed not worthy enough to make it into the other categories from the technical to acting? DuVernay would have been the well deserved first African American woman ever nominated for the Director gong (a feat she did achieve in the same category at the Golden Globes), while Oyelowo's performance as Doctor King has been raved about (without exception) by critics across the globe. So what's the reason for the snub?
David Oyelowo in Selma
Whitewashing claims
After the noms were announced on Thursday there was a lot of talk about a "whitewashing". The facts can't be disputed. This year's Oscars is the whitest since 1998, with no person of colour receiving an acting nomination. Rewind a year and we had 12 Years a Slave taking home Best Picture, Lupita Nyong'o winning Best Supporting Actress, and Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Barkhad Abdi all receiving nominations. Filmmaker Spike Lee gave an interesting take on the debate to the Daily Beast hours after the nominations yesterday, pointing out that there's still a way to go in terms of Oscars diversity. “It's in cycles of every 10 years. Once every 10 years or so I get calls from journalists about how people are finally accepting black films. Before last year, it was the year [in 2002] with Halle Berry, Denzel [Washington], and Sidney Poitier. It's a 10-year cycle. So I don't start doing backflips when it happens.”
Lee added that we can't forget that the composition of the Academy voting body is a huge factor, being 94 percent white and an average of 63 years old, and even if we have moved forward, the type of films being nominated say a lot about that generation of voters.
Director Ava DuVernay missed out on an Oscar nom
“Let's be honest. I know they're trying to become more diverse, but when you look at the Academy and Do the Right Thing or Driving Miss Daisy, are they going to choose a film where you have the relatively passive black servant, or are they going to choose a film with a menacing ‘;Radio Raheem?'” said Lee. “A lot of times, people are going to vote for what they're comfortable with, and anything that's threatening to them they won't.”
Historical inaccuracies
Lee's subservient reasoning is backed up by Peniel Joseph, a history professor at Tufts University, who's argued that the backlash from historians against the film's supposed misrepresentation of President Lyndon Johnson (played by Tom Wilkinson) is an attempt by white viewers to maintain control over the Civil Rights story. “The real problem many critics have with this film is that it's too black and too strong,” Joseph wrote for NPR. “Our popular reimagining of the civil rights movement is that it's something we all did together and the battle is over; that's just not true.”
Did the film's representation of President Johnson harm its chances?
Based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel, Hosea Williams, and King, DuVernay's movie has attracted criticism for placing Johnson and King on opposting sides. Writing for The Washington Post, Joseph A. Califano Jr., who was Johnson's top assistant for domestic affairs, argued when the film was released in the States last year, that Selma “falsely portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and even using the FBI to discredit him, as only reluctantly behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as opposed to the Selma march itself." Califano concluded that “the movie should be ruled out this Christmas and during the ensuing awards season.” DuVernay was soon hitting back though, taking to Twitter to argue that the “notion that Selma was LBJ's idea is jaw dropping and offensive to SNCC, SCLC and black citizens who made it so.” She added: "Bottom line is folks should interrogate history. Don't take my word for it or LBJ rep's word for it. Let it come alive for yourself. #Selma."
Nobody saw it
Based on the reviews, there's no arguing Selma deserved to be up there with the most notable films of the year, but one major problem could have been that nobody, or no one who mattered, actually saw it. There's reports that the production team failed to send DVD screeners to key voters in time for awards season. Variety reports that Paramount decided to send screeners to the BAFTAs and the Oscars this year, but not to the guilds, so the SAGs etc missed the film off their lists. Reps for the studio have said that it was all down to time constraints, and that makes sense as the Oscars are now held in February, previously the awards were presented in March in April. That means deadlines have shifted for pretty much all the awards shows. Variety say that Paramount received Selma's screeners to send out on November 26, with the winners for the SAGs announced only two weeks later.
The Academy may have skipped over Selma but perhaps DuVernay and her team should listen to Spike Lee, who declares "You can't go to awards like the Oscars or the Grammys for validation. The validation is if your work still stands 25 years later."
