Jimmy's Oscar Rant: Show Me the Color

03.26 - Posted by Editor

Jimmy's Oscar Rant: Show Me the Color

AsianAmericanFilm.com is thrilled to present Oscar coverage from Jimmy, the cantakerous ghost of Academy Award winning cinematographer James Wong Howe, whose rants can usually be found on theworkshop.org.   3.26.2000 -- by Jimmy   When the smoke machines went into overdrive and Issac Hayes disappeared from sight while singing the theme from "Shaft," this bitter ghost began to suspect that the stars had aligned against us colored folks at this year's Academy Awards. The final tallies, alas, seem to prove me right.     M. Night Shyamalan, the South Asian American filmmaker nominated in both the Directing and Original Screenplay categories for "The Sixth Sense," lost both races to the creators of "American Beauty." "The Sixth Sense" also lost the race for Best Picture to "American Beauty" and its diminutive star Haley Joel Osment lost the race for Best Supporting Actor to Michael Caine ("Cider House Rules"). To add insult to insult, "Stuart Little," which Shyamalan wrote, lost the race for Best Special Effects.     It was a good year for acting nominations for African Americans, but actual wins remained elusive. Denzel Washington lost the race for Best Actor to Kevin Spacey ("American Beauty") and Michael Clarke Duncan ("The Green Mile") lost to Caine in the Best Supporting Actor showdown.     Documentary features "Buena Vista Social Club" and "On the Ropes," both of which featured people of color (Cuban musicians and African American and Latino boxers, respectively), lost to "One Day in September." And "Snow Falling on Cedars," which deals with Japanese American internment issues, lost the race for Best Cinematography.     So is all of this proof that the Man out to get all of us poor colored folks? Not entirely. "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "Anna and the King" were pretty crummy movies -- the fact that they lost their cinematography/art direction races doesn't exactly disturb me. And hey, we might as well admit that Billy Crystal is a better host than Whoopie Goldberg.     But the Academy's embrace of the wildly overrated but firmly whitebread "American Beauty" indicates to this weary ghost that the Establishment remains the Establishment, suckers for the painfully conventional weaknesses and fantasies of the film's aging white male hero.     Progressives may take heart that Hilary Swank, gender-bending star of "Boys Don't Cry," beat out Annette Benning for Best Actress. But it's worth noting that "Boys Don't Cry" features an all white cast, despite the fact that one of the main players in the real story upon which the film was based was an African American man who was murdered at Brandon Teena's side. Sure, the process of fictionalization and adaptation requires simplification and compression. But why is it the colored man who always gets compressed out of the picture?     On the plus side, Chow Yun Fat made an appearance as a presenter. And George Lucas's "Phantom Menace," infamous for its racist depiction of slant-eyed aliens with Japanese accents and big-lipped aliens with Carribean accents, won exactly zero Oscars, while "The Matrix," starring everyone's favorite hapa actor Keanu Reeves, picked up every Oscar for which it was nominated (Editing, Special Effects, Sound, Sound Editing).     Now all we have to do is get Keanu to come out as Asian and we'll really have something to get excited about.     All right. That's my two cents. You got a few of your own? Post away, amigos, at either theworkshop.org or AsianAmericanFilm.com's Message Boards.     Later for you.     Back to top