The Guardian- Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling has claimed the current campaign to boycott the 2016 Academy Awards over claims of a diversity deficit is racist to white people.
Rampling, 69, is up for the best actress prize for her role in the British drama 45 Years, from director Andrew Haigh, where she will compete against Room’s Brie Larson, Carol’s Cate Blanchett, Joy’s Jennifer Lawrence and Brooklyn’s Saoirse Ronan. Asked for her take on the current furore over all-white lists of nominees on French Radio network Europe 1 on Friday morning, the British actor did not mince her words. “It is racist to whites,” she said. “One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list,” added Rampling. Asked if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should introduce quotas, a proposal which no current advocate of increased diversity has mooted, she responded: “Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted ... People will always say: ‘Him, he’s less handsome’; ‘Him, he’s too black’; ‘He is too white’ ... someone will always be saying ‘You are too’ [this or that] ... But do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?” Be honest, did you get a little confused reading that headline? Don't feel bad, I almost confused myself writing it. That's how you know this was the perfect response from Charlotte Rampling. I can't say I am enough of a movie buff to know whether or not a deserving amount of black people were awarded Oscar nominations. Maybe there was a hint of prejudice in the selection process, maybe there wasn't. Who's to say really? I do know that there are only a few ways to respond to allegations of racism, and quite possibly the best way is to claim reverse racism. You see what Charlotte just did? She muddied the waters. Looks like we are in quite the segregative stalemate. Fire meet fire. The only time racism has ever met it's match is when it was staring in the mirror. Even sexism can't hold a candle to the wrath of racism. Talk about an evenly matched fight. It's basically a pick 'em. I guess you could say the blacks are favored, but the whites have home field advantage for sure. Either way, this matchup belongs on primetime. The rivalry game to end all rivalry games. Seriously though, this is 2016. We don't do moderation here. You either love the Oscars or the Oscars are racist. Take your pick, but don't you dare try to sit on that fence. You may not like what Charlotte Rampling had to say, but at least she's saying something other than "I don't know". Plus, she really had no choice. She nominated for an Oscar. She was going to be sitting in that crowd. She had to defend the honor of everyone else that was going to be sitting there with her. She's not going to bite the hand that feeds her. She'd rather bite the black hand that's desperately waving to the bouncer to let them into the Academy Awards. It may have been an extremely misguided move to invoke the help of a term as accusatory as "racist" to describe the criticisms of a bunch of predominantly white people sitting around an amphitheater drinking champagne in expensive suits. However, that's what you get when you put her on the spot. She's an actress, she does her best work when she has a script to read from. I don't think that calling the Oscars racist against black people is racist against white people, but I don't think a lot of things are racist, and if I have learned anything over the last year it's that I am usually wrong. P.S. I google imaged 'charlotte rampling black people' to see if I could find a funny, out of context picture and it returned zero pictures of her next to a black person. I'm not saying, but I'm saying....
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2020
|