That Old Feeling: The Oscar Race

One of the perks of writing for TIME.com is the stacks and stacks of letters that pile up in my e-mail box. Granted, a lot is spam: offers for Ponzi schemes, marital aids and airline insurance; that’s what happens when your byline is also an e-mail link. But the rest is correspondence from readers of the columns I’ve written. Depending on the subject, I may get ten to 20 messages, virtually all of them engaged and articulate. I try to answer each one.

Lately, answering my e-mail has been a full-time job, because of the response to a critique I wrote of last week’s Academy Awards telecast. I’m overwhelmed, one way or another, not just by the bulk of the mail — more than 50 messages — but by their length and passion. So far, the comments and my responses total 12,000 words. Most of the mail was severely critical, and most of it relating to my remarks about Halle Berry’s emotional speech on receiving the award for Best Actress. The exchanges generated heat and, at least for me, some light. The negative observations (there were only four complimentary ones) fell into three main attitudes.

1. The Race Card: if I criticized a black actress, I must be a bigot. From Two Eagle Eyes: “You have displayed the very kind of racist, cheap and petty response to her efforts that she and other African-American actors have been faced with for decades.” From Motuffsuga: “Is there an underlying reason why you’re so critical of African-Americans?” From Angelette Williams: “It shows you to be a closet racist, or you could outright be a racist.” From h12r10: “The Civil war continues and we know which side you’re on. How you say it, ?Now you Nigras need to stay in your place’ … In the 19th and 20th century human flesh was burned. The 21st century will be different, instead of burning flesh you’ll just minimize our accomplishments and destroy our opportunities of gaining true equality.”

2. Fight sarcasm with sarcasm: some readers peppered their anger with rhetorical questions and sprightly digs. From C. Brenda Davis: “What jobs have you applied for that were denied because of race, not qualifications? What ship did your ancestors cross the ocean on against their will? You are a cynical, [un]sympathetic, not-living-in-reality white boy.” From GDBAL: “For a brief moment, it felt like I was in a place where being black and white meant equality. Thanks for bringing me back to the real America. I appreciate the slap. Now as a black person in American I can put my guard back up.” From A. Stott: “Originally, I wanted to send an e-mail calling you everything but the son of Satan, which you may be. But I will save that language for another day” — before adding, “You should be ashamed for yourself” and calling me “a dumb ass.”

3. Advice to the Wordlorn: A few others — apparently believing that no soul, however malignant, was beyond saving — offered impish counsel. From Rick: “Why don’t you hold your convoluted comments to the 45-second time limit?” From D. Rochelle: “You really need to lighten up. Life is too short. Go have sex or something. It looks like you need it.” From wbiz2000: “I encourage you to keep on doing what you’re doing (even though I question how culturally open-minded you are), or else I wouldn’t have anyone to be pissed off at.” And here’s some advice, from Inspector Gigi, that made my LMAO (laugh my ass off): “When in doubt, pick from the list below: 1. RLH (run like hell); 2. Turn up your hearing-aid; 3. Change the subject to one you understand; 4. LYAO/CYAO, very loudly; 5. Ask Regis to phone a friend; or 6. Simply say, ?I’m in doubt.'”

I’ll get to my Halle Berry remarks and some other responses to them a bit further on. But first let’s look at Oscar’s record with people of color: Hispanic-Americans, Arabs and Arab-Americans, Asians and Asian-Americans, African-Americans and Anglo-Americans. The data, which may be incomplete, holds some surprises.

THE COLOR OF OSCAR

Some nominations for people of color fall easily into ethnic stereotypes. Consider the seven East Asians to whom Oscar has nodded: the one-quarter Mongolian Yul Brynner in “The King and I”; the Japanese performers Sessue Hayakawa in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and Miyoshi Umeki in “Sayonara”; Mako, the Japanese actor playing a Chinese coolie in “The Sand Pebbles”; the Tahitian Jocelyne LaGarde as Queen Malama in “Hawaii” (has anyone else been in just one movie and earned a nomination for it?); the Cambodian obstetrician Haing S. Ngor, a winner as the imprisoned interpreter in “The Killing Fields”; and Noriyuki Pat Morita as the martial-arts Yoda of “The Karate Kid.” These seven citations (in just four years: 1957, 1958, 1967 and 1985) were clearly in the tradition of Oscar’s occasional nods to the world outside — to the mystic, ageless Other.

Other examples are cloudier. In the years 1948-58, four Hispanics — Thomas Gomez, José Ferrer, Anthony Quinn and Katy Jurado — amassed eight nominations and two wins; but did Hollywood consider these actors of “color”? Even after “Gandhi,” was Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Bhanji) considered primarily an Indian actor? In 1963, Omar Sharif’s nomination for “Lawrence of Arabia” undoubtedly had a “mideast” tinge; but can we say the same about the Best Actor Oscar given 22 years later to Arab-American F. (Fahrid) Murray Abraham for “Amadeus”?

Sometimes actors “pass” as white. Besides Brynner, the only two performers of Chinese ancestry to snag Oscar nominations are Meg and Jennifer Tilly (for, respectively, “Agnes of God” and “Bullets Over Broadway”). Were Academy members calibrating the sisters’ ethnicity? No, because, at the time, most voters were not aware of it. Then there is the strange case of Peter Ustinov, nominated three times and Oscared twice (for “Spartacus” in 1961 and “Topkapi” in 1965). Though he long denied it, Ustinov is, on his mother’s side, a member of the Ethiopian Royal Family. His great-grandfather, a Swiss engineer, married the daughter of Emperor Tewodros II; thus Ustinov is, literally, an octoroon. If that makes him black, then he, not Poitier, must be counted the first man of his race to win an acting Oscar.

Another question: does an Oscar given to a minority member encourage Hollywood to hire other members of the same minority? Puerto Rican-born Rita Moreno was named Best Supporting Actress for playing a Puerto Rican “West Side Story” in 1962 (ten years, by the way, after she had played the very un-ethnic Zelda in “Singin’ in the Rain”). But this prize did not lead to glory days for Hispanic actors. It was 27 years before the next new U.S. Latino face, Edward James Olmos, was nominated. There have been only four since: Andy Garcia (Cuban) in 1991, Mercedes Ruehl (Cuban-Irish) in 1992, Rosie Perez (Puerto Rican) in 1994 and Benicio Del Toro (Puerto Rican) last year. The country’s most populous minority is woefully underrepresented, even compared to blacks, in movie roles and Oscar nominations.

Asians, Arab-Americans and Hispanics have all suffered from the prejudice of the American majority. But they have not been the victims of centuries of sustained, systematic, legally-sanctioned racism. Blacks have. Blacks are also less apt than other minorities to fade into the majority; they wear the history of oppression on their faces. So it’s sensible to consider blacks apart from other people of color in the Academy’s actor nominations and awards. Here is my count of the Oscar nominations to black actors, with the year, category (N for nominated, W for Won) and film:

1940 Hattie McDaniel; Supporting Actress — W; “Gone With the Wind”
1950 Ethel Waters; Supporting Actress — N; “Pinky”
1955 Dorothy Dandridge; Actress — N; “Carmen Jones”
1959 Sidney Poitier; Actor — N; “The Defiant Ones”
1960 Juanita Moore; Supporting Actress — N; “Imitation of Life”
1964 Sidney Poitier; Actor — W; “Lilies of the Field”
1968 Beah Richards; Supporting Actress — N; “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”
1970 Rupert Crosse; Supporting Actor — N; “The Reivers”
1971 James Earl Jones; Actor — N; “The Great White Hope”
1973 Paul Winfield; Actor — N; “Sounder”
1973 Diana Ross; Actress — N; “Lady Sings the Blues”
1973 Cicely Tyson; Actress — N; “Sounder”
1975 Diahann Carroll; Actress — N; “Claudine”
1982 Howard E. Rollins, Jr; Supporting Actor — N; “Ragtime”
1983 Louis Gossett Jr.; Supporting Actor — W; “An Officer and a Gentleman”
1984 Alfre Woodard; Supporting Actress — N; “Cross Creek”
1985 Adolph Caesar; Supporting Actor — N; “A Soldier’s Story”
1986 Whoopi Goldberg; Actress — N; “The Color Purple”
1986 Margaret Avery; Supporting Actress — N; “The Color Purple”
1986 Oprah Winfrey; Supporting Actress — N; “The Color Purple”
1987 Dexter Gordon; Actor — N; “‘Round Midnight”
1988 Morgan Freeman; Supporting Actor — N; “Street Smart”
1988 Denzel Washington; Supporting Actor — N; Cry Freedom
1990 Morgan Freeman; Actor — N; “Driving Miss Daisy”
1990 Denzel Washington; Supporting Actor — W; “Glory”
1991 Whoopi Goldberg; Supporting Actress — W; “Ghost”
1993 Denzel Washington; Actor — N; “Malcolm X”
1993 Jaye Davidson; Supporting Actor — N; “The Crying Game”
1994 Lawrence Fishburne; Actor — N; “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
1994 Angela Bassett; Actress — N; “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
1995 Morgan Freeman; Actor — N; “The Shawshank Redemption”
1995 Samuel L. Jackson; Supporting Actor — N; “Pulp Fiction”
1997 Cuba Gooding, Jr.; Supporting Actor — W ; “Jerry Maguire”
1997 Marianne Jean-Baptiste; Supporting Actress — N; “Secrets & Lies”
2000 Denzel Washington; Actor — N; “Hurricane”
2002 Denzel Washington; Actor — W; “Training Day”
2002 Will Smith; Actor — N; “Ali”
2002 Halle Berry; Actress — W; “Monster’s Ball”

By my tabulation, that’s 38 in 74 years. All right, let’s play with stats. Eight of the 38 nominations have led to victories, which is approximately one in five, or the odds when five finalists vie for one prize. Seventeen nominations, nearly half the total, have come in the past 15 years; five of the eight wins have come since 1990. Washington has the most nominations (four) and wins (two), which is four and two more than the most popular black actors, Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor — but then Oscar rarely rewards comedians. Of the first 20 nominations, through 1986, actresses gleaned 12, to eight for actors; of the most recent 18 nominations, women have received only four.

That last disproportion may simply reflect phallocentric Hollywood, which makes it tough for actresses in general, and more so for blacktresses. But since the Academy nominates the same number of actors and actresses each year, we have to look deeper. Black men can play heroes, villains and several shades in between. They can also play athletes; three of the last four nominations have been for a football player and two boxers (as was Jones’ for “The Great White Hope”). The equivalent for black women should be performers. Ross (Billie Holiday) and Bassett (Tina Turner) earned nominations; but Berry’s fine turn as Dandridge was a TV movie, for which she won an Emmy and a Golden Globe. Oscar would have to wait.

WHO WANTS TO WIN AN OSCAR?

I say this all the time but I can’t say it enough: Oscars mean nothing. They are not the Nobel Prize for movies; they are an industry giving prizes to itself. Oscar Night is a big convention that, for reasons beyond my ken, 800 million other people feel obliged to watch. It’s a long, stuffy party, and the Oscars are the party favors. As for the Motion Picture Academy, it’s a club: old, rich and exclusive. The Oscar balloting is a process by which the club’s 5,739 eligible members — including 368 press agents, 409 sound technicians, 430 executives and 217 visual effects specialists — vote on the admission of actors (of any color) and other artists into the Oscar elite. The winner gives an acceptance speech, not just to say thanks but to mark his or her acceptance into that elite.

That the prizes are determined not by critics or scholars but by presumed peers is Oscar’s cachet, but also its limitation. Critics typically vote their prizes on what they see as merit; their choices may be goofy, but they aren’t personal. Academy members have friends in the competition, and perhaps enemies; they may have scores to settle. But even assuming the process is approached with benign disinterest, one still has to ask whether are these artisans, money men and flacks are ideal folks to judge the quality of acting. Groucho Marx’s joke about not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member should apply to those who believe the Academy Awards are crucial to the esteem or future employment of black actors.

The Academy Awards are the plaything of people from a narrow societal stratum: mostly white, yes, but also rich, Jewish and old out of all proportion to the U.S. population. Their view is unapologetically chauvinist, pro-Hollywood: in the ceremony’s 74 years, no foreign-language film has won the top Oscar. They have indeed ignored many fine performances by black actors, but also, lately and notably, by Asians. In 1988 “The Last Emperor” won all nine of its nominations, including best picture; but none went to the Chinese cast. Last year, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was up for 10 awards and won four; again, no Chinese actors were nominated. (Poor dears: they must be thespically challenged.)

The most damning evidence against the Academy Awards is the awards themselves. Consider the artists who never won a competitive Oscar: Charles Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese; Greta Garbo, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck. (I won’t even mention the great European and Asian filmmakers whom the Academy has ignored.) Garbo’s greatest performance, in “Camille,” was aced out by Luise Rainer, an Austrian playing a Chinese peasant, in “The Good Earth.” “Citizen Kane” was deemed less worthy for the 1942 Oscar than “How Green Was My Valley”; that same year, Stanwyck wasn’t even nominated for “The Lady Eve,” arguably the smartest, most seductive comic turn ever. Twice, Scorsese made brilliant films that lost, in both the Picture and Director categories, to movies by first-time helmers: in 1981, “Raging Bull” to Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People”; in 1991, “Goodfellas” to “Dances With Wolves.”

The choices are every bit as depressing for black actors. I think that, in 1995, Oscars should have gone to both Freeman (barely, over Tom Hanks in “Forrest Gump”) and Jackson (by a mile, over Martin Landau in “Ed Wood”). I’m chagrined that in 1959 David Niven won, for “Separate Tables,” over Poitier (or Tony Curtis) in “The Defiant Ones.” Either Tyson or, perhaps, Ross were more deserving of the 1973 Actress Oscar than Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret.” Caesar’s performance in “A Soldier’s Story” was scarily fine and, in my view, Oscar-worthy. I suspect that the non-professional Ngor was voted the Supporting Actor prize that year as much for his own incarceration and torture at the brutal hands of the Khmer Rouge — and for reliving his own ordeal on film — as for his artless, exemplary “acting.”

Oscar is a sentimental soul. In doling out acting prizes, he sometimes rewards superior craft, sometimes emotional grandstanding; sometimes he picks his friends, sometimes strangers with a poignant story. Ngor was one of those. So was Harold Russell, a non-actor who had lost both hands while training with explosives, and who appeared in “The Best Years of Our Lives.” In 1947 Russell was given a Supporting Actor award and an honorary Oscar — the only person to be honored with two Oscars for the same performance. Marlee Matlin, another disabled person (deaf since infancy) making her movie debut, was named Best Actress in 1987 for “Children of a Lesser God.”

Sometimes the members act like stern but loving parents; they enjoy giving atonement awards to actors who have misbehaved and then undergone penance. In the late 50s, Elizabeth Taylor had angered Hollywood by stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds; but then a bout of pneumonia and an emergency tracheotomy had her flirting with death. At the next awards ceremony, Taylor got an Oscar for “BUtterfield 8” (not her best performance) — and there she was, the prodigal daughter forgiven, her “rehab” Oscar” in her hand, her neck scar shining like a merit badge. Academy members are in the drama business; why wouldn’t they write a Hollywood ending for their own special night?

Conversely, the Academy can withhold Oscars from worthy actors who have acted up off-screen. They may have done so this year, after hearing that Russell Crowe, the clear front runner on Nomination Day, had pushed and shouted at a BBC producer who cut part of his British Academy Award acceptance speech for the delayed-broadcast TV show. (Antics like that might have made me vote for the naughty Aussie, just to see what fireworks he’d bring onstage with him.) It’s conceivable that Crowe’s tantrum not only cost him the Oscar, but handed it to Washington.

In this year’s Best Actress competition, Sissy Spacek was at first as clear a front runner as Crowe had been. Then, just before ballots were to be mailed in, the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Spacek appeared in just 39% of her movie, “In the Bedroom.” The implication, that Spacek was essentially a supporting actress, allowed members to think more seriously about Berry’s performance. And as they thought, they might be touched by the complex personal history of this beautiful, talented woman. She had been mistreated by men; then she apparently found a good man. She pleaded no-contest to leaving the scene of an accident; then she learned to stand up for herself and her sisters. She had been a luscious ornament to films; then she threw herself into one, body and soul. Whether or not Berry’s Oscar was a “rehab” prize, all those personal factors may have contributed to her win. It’s in the grand Academy tradition.

And, yes, Berry is black. And, yes, she gave a very emotional acceptance speech.

GLORY, GLORY, HALLE BERRY

And now, back to our argument. Here’s some of what I wrote in the TIME.com story I wrote the morning after Oscar Night:

Not that Berry’s looks and pluck aren’t laudable, or that she didn’t do good work in “Monster’s Ball” … But can we see the big picture for a second? The 74-year history of the Academy Awards, let alone the scourged history of U.S. race relations, was not leading up to the moment when a former Miss Teen All-American with a white mom and a knack for finding the company of abusive black men was voted an acting prize from a bunch of industry alterkockers. … The real black movie heroes and heroines are from an earlier, sorrier era. … Thanks to them, and white producers willing to cast them, the picture for black actors has got much better, though not perfect. … [Berry] was the beneficiary, not the victim, of white members’ votes. … [Denzel Washington’s acceptance speech allowed the audience] to share his pleasure — whereas, for Berry, one could feel only embarrassment. … Berry’s Oscar may not even have been about race; it could have been a rehab prize for the hit-and-run perp who made a smart, little-film career move.

Some of that reads a little sharp; and I certainly underestimated the pain it might give readers who had invested themselves so deeply in the first Oscar for Best Actress awarded to a black woman. But I do believe my thoughts and feelings were and are valid. And I do believe some of my correspondents were a little free with the word “racist.”

To reiterate what I’ve told many readers: I like Berry; I like her work in “Monster’s Ball”; I wrote two admiring stories about her in the January issue of TIME; it was fine by me that she won the Oscar. I didn’t like her speech.

First, I was flummoxed by Berry’s wracked astonishment when her name was called out. It’s not as if this award came out of the blue; she had already been named Best Actress for “Monster’s Ball” by the Screen Actors Guild, the National Board of Review and the Berlin Film Festival. And she was one of five finalists for the Actress Oscar. Surely she knew this — she was sitting in an aisle seat. For Berry to be convulsed by surprise must mean she did not believe a black woman would ever win as Best Actress prize. For once in its history, someone underestimated the Motion Picture Academy.

Berry’s speech certainly had an arresting dramatic arc: beginning in hysterics, ending in exultation and gratitude, as she seemed to channel all black actresses before her. Then she shouted to the timekeeper: “74 years here, I’ve got to take this time!” In fairness leaning toward indulgence, I might describe the speech as a powerful performance that polarized viewers — either overwhelmed or embarrassed them.

For an Oscar acceptance speech is a performance: the actor playing that role of a lifetime, himself or himself. For the majority of those watching, it is the face, the voice, the most seductive ad campaign for both the performer and the movie. Berry was speaking that night to an audience of 800 million TV viewers — perhaps 100 times the number that will see “Monster’s Ball.” She was the writer, director and actor, the auteur of her speech. And I was the critic; I felt as entitled to disapprove of her emoting there as I did to praise her performance in the movie. I thought she was as open to criticism as Sally Field, Warren Beatty or Roberto Benigni in previous years. Race had nothing to do with it.

But then a white person would say that, wouldn’t he? He is so comfortable in his skin, and takes that comfort so for-granted, that he doesn’t realize the anguish people feel in theirs. As Lorinel Johnson of Princeton University wrote me: “It is next to impossible to have an intelligent and honest discussion with a white person about race unless this person is familiar with the concept of white-skin privilege.” Perhaps I’m being racist — “profoundly racist” is Ms. Johnson’s term — when I criticize one five-minute speech by a performer I’ve often lauded. But then what am I when I commend Halle Berry? Or stick it to actors and moviemakers who happen to be white? I thought all my arguments proceeded from the premise that people were individuals, not ethnic blocs. But, my own critics, would say, that’s just white-skin privilege talking. I must have been blind to think I was color-blind.

I do think we’re all trapped and armored in our own skins, souls and notions. I do believe Halle Berry is as accountable as any other performer, of any color, for the character of her acceptance speech; and that I am as accountable as any rap artist for the things I write. Keep the brickbats and bouquets coming, people — to me and to anyone else who stirs your passion or rancor.

THE FUTURE OF OSCAR

That night, Berry thanked “every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.” That rhetoric had potent reverberations among some viewers. As CutiePie4 wrote me: “You can not even begin to grasp the emotion that all of us black women felt when her name was called. For us it means hope. Berry’s win means that young black girls who dream of being actresses can finally see that they will be rewarded for their talent and hard work.”

Another of my eloquent correspondents, Rahman Henderson, said of the Berry Oscar, “Her win will also make Hollywood think twice before denying a black women for a challenging and potentially ‘Oscar-worthy’ role. Studios tend to cast actresses they believe will ensure the commercial or critical success of a film. In the past, producers have openly denied roles to black women for one or both of those reasons. That may not be the case any more.”

I wish that were true. But the history of Oscar and Hollywood inclines me to be wary. First of all, Berry didn’t vote herself the award; the overwhelmingly Caucasian academy did. That’s another white-skin privilege: to make minorities feel good by giving them prizes. Second, it’s tough for black women to get good roles, but then it’s tough for all women. Hollywood movies are a man’s, and a boy’s game, even more than they are the privilege of whites. The question isn’t whether black actresses will win more Oscars, but whether they’ll get more and better roles. And, again, that’s up to the white folks who run Hollywood.

And third, the early Oscars given to people of color — to McDaniel and Poitier, Umeki and Moreno — didn’t lead either to a slew of Oscars or a slew of good roles for minorities. Halle Berry will get attractive roles because she is, by any cultural definition, attractive. But Hollywood loves to stereotype, regardless of race or because of it. Black men can be saints or gangstas, but you’ll rarely see them as either Indiana Jones or all the Ordinary Joes in offices and factories. Black women can be babes or victims, but rarely the millions of middle-class moms and workers who keep the country moving.

Maybe those roles, those movies will come. Maybe soon an award to black, Asian and other film artists will be seen as having no racial meaning whatsoever. But that will be in a different Hollywood, a different America — when people of all colors will have such access to equality that they forget what color they are.

Next time: The First Black Movie Heroes