I said that I had hoped this year would be different. However, when the Academy announced its nominations, I was not surprised.
Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. This is an updated infographic after Nyong’o’s win last year. We won’t get to add “Historical Civil Rights Icon” as a category in 2015. Click to enlarge.
Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.
It’s fairly clear what roles Hollywood is most comfortable with: for Black characters, passivity, tired stereotypes, and villainy get the highest awards. Complex, powerful Black characters–especially those who appear threatening to white supremacy in some way–typically get passed over.
I hoped this year would be different. This year, institutionalized, implicit American racism seeped out of the pores of American cities and psyches post-Ferguson. This year, Ava DuVernay directed Selma, 5o years after the Selma to Montgomery march that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The film is brilliant in its own right–DuVernay’s direction and David Oyelowo’s portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr. are incredible. Certainly the power of the film within the historical context would make the Academy sit upright and give credit where credit is due.
Instead, we got more of the same. Selma was recognized widely in Golden Globe nominations–best picture, best director, best actor, best original song (John Legend and Common’s “Glory,” which took home the award). And then, as always, the Academy turned up its white nose. While it’s up for best picture and and original song, DuVernay and Oyelowo were passed over.
“Why am I calling this year’s Oscars, on February 22nd, the ‘Caucasian Consensus,’ when Selma is one of the eight nominees for Best Picture? Because that landmark film about Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 civil-rights march has only one other nomination, for Best Song. Not one person of color appears among the 20 nominees for acting. Apparently, the Academy thought it gave last year when it awarded 12 Years a Slavethe gold. The message from white voters? Don’t get uppity.”
Not one person of color.
I said that I had hoped this year would be different. However, when the Academy announced its nominations, I was not surprised.
I had to drive over an hour to watch Selma on the big screen, because none of the theaters in the small towns around me screened it (and they still haven’t).
Writers had to defend DuVernay’s portrayal of an imperfect L.B.J.
In an interview, late author Chinua Achebe quoted the following proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” This proverb perfectly, painfully illustrates Hollywood’s–and America’s–hegemonic forces at work.
The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.
Selma challenged that narrative. Oyelowo–who felt destined to play King–and DuVernay dared to glorified the lions.
It is appropriate, when celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., to recall Dr. King’s words to Nichelle Nichols, as she considered quitting ‘Star Trek’ in frustration at the limitations of her role: “You can’t leave!… For the first time on television, we are being seen as we should be seen every day. As intelligent, quality, beautiful people … who can go into space.” Dr. King’s words show that he clearly understood the value of a token image, as a symbol, a precedent and a possibility model for future progress.
Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.
After seeing Selma, I’ve finally stopped yelling “Ava DuVernay was robbed! Robbed, I tell you!” long enough to jot down some thoughts. Let’s be clear: Ava DuVernay was robbed because her work on Selma turns familiar history into a gripping story, humanizes Martin Luther King Jr. while honoring his legacy, and captures the sweep of history without sacrificing the resonance of individual lives. It was inspirational history, the kind the Oscars typically reward, executed with supreme skill. Though her representation of L.B.J. was criticized, DuVernay’s characterization accurately reflected his wider shift from obstructing to supporting civil rights, while taking artistic liberties with the timeline of that shift. If Ron Howard could win Best Director for the blatantly inaccurate A Beautiful Mind, DuVernay was obviously due a nomination for Selma. Minimum.
Not pictured: Steve McQueen and Kathryn Bigelow
It is because DuVernay’s work was brilliant, beyond her race and gender, that we must ask why a Black woman was snubbed. Did 12 Years A Slave‘s triumph at the 2014 Oscars influence the snubbing of Selma‘s director and actors? Recall Kathryn Bigelow’s win for Best Director in 2010. The moment Barbra Streisand stepped out to present the award, it was clear Bigelow’s name would be called. Though Bigelow’s acceptance speech never referenced being the first woman to win, Streisand’s presence shrieked, “It was time we gave it to a woman,” even as the hypermasculine Hurt Locker hardly challenged the Academy’s preference for male stories. Or recall 2001, when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry made their historic wins at the same ceremony as Sidney Poitier’s lifetime achievement award, a synchronicity that shrieked “It was time we gave it to Black performers,” threatening to overshadow Washington and Berry’s individual excellence. The Academy is not exactly subtle in framing minority wins as token gestures. If Bigelow resisted the symbolism of her win, Berry embraced it, using her speech to honor Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox, and Oprah Winfrey. Tokenism is uncomfortable, but it’s still visibility. Tokens are symbols, precedents and possibility models (as Laverne Cox might put it). If we read Oscars partly as tokens, the question arises: was Ava DuVernay snubbed because, as a Black woman, the Oscars of Steve McQueen and Kathryn Bigelow collectively represented her category?
The African American feminist Ana Julia Cooper wrote “Women versus the Indian” in 1891, criticizing white suffragettes who viewed women as a separate category, in competition with racial minorities for their rights (see also Sojourner Truth’s “Ar’nt I a Woman?”). Those who mentally isolate categories of oppression seek to maximize mainstream approval in their choice of spokesperson: the straight man of color for racial justice; the white, cis woman for feminism; the white, straight-acting gay man for LGBT causes. Each individual choice of “representative” collectively upholds the overall superiority of the straight, white male perspective (add wealthy, educated, able-bodied etc.). Because this pattern channels subversive impulses into a collective reinforcement of dominant ideology, dominant culture rewards it. One symptom is the repeated use of white women and Black men to collectively represent Black women – “the Captain Uhura snub.”
Not pictured: Captains Sisko and Janeway
It is appropriate, when celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., to recall Dr. King’s words to Nichelle Nichols, as she considered quitting Star Trek in frustration at the limitations of her role: “You can’t leave!… For the first time on television, we are being seen as we should be seen every day. As intelligent, quality, beautiful people … who can go into space.” Dr. King’s words show that he clearly understood the value of a token image, as a symbol, a precedent and a possibility model for future progress.
Nichelle Nichols’ Lieutenant Nyota Uhura should be an icon to every woman who is underemployed and unappreciated at work. Her mouth said, “Klingons on line one, Captain,” but her eyes said, “I should be running this place.” Within the limitations of her role, representing both token Black lieutenant and token woman, and thereby freeing a seat for another white guy, Nichols took every opportunity to demonstrate Uhura’s intelligence, charisma, courage and sex appeal. When allowed to banter with Spock, in scenes that inspired their romantic relationship in JJ Abrams’ reboot, Uhura revealed herself to be Spock’s respected intellectual equal, with the skills to man the helm, navigation and science station if needed. In combat with Mirror!Sulu, she revealed potential as an action heroine, anticipating Pam Grier (whose groundbreaking stardom in blaxploitation inspired a trend of white action heroines, instead of mainstream opportunities for Pam Grier). Uhura was cool under pressure and commanding. Though the original Star Trek‘s “Turnabout Intruder” episode claimed that women were not emotionally capable of captaincy, Uhura disproved that claim on the animated (and female-authored) “The Lorelei Signal.”
In time, society progressed and its vision of the future evolved. Dr. King’s dream of television normalizing inspirational Black leadership came true for the Trekverse, when Captain Ben Sisko of Deep Space Nine took command, combining professional skill with hands-on fathering. The aspirations of feminists paid off when Kate Mulgrew’s swashbuckling Janeway helmed Voyager. But while evolution in Star Trek‘s racial and feminist politics produced a few token promotions of Uhura’s rank, it left her marginalized supporting role unchanged. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura occupies roughly the same position in Star Trek reboots as Nichelle Nichols did on the original show. Black women can be judges, police chiefs, or politicians on our screens, at statistically disproportionate rates, but only in tokenist supporting roles that serve to discredit the reality of discrimination. When the time comes for diversity among aspirational heroes, those heroes become white women and Black men. That, in a nutshell, is the Captain Uhura snub, the intersectional finger trap of representation politics. Nichols herself aged regally and with no diminishing of spirit in the later Star Trek films, but Sisko and Janeway substitute for the unique icon that Nichols’ Captain Uhura could have been, not only as a Black woman but as a woman who paid her dues in limited and sexualized roles before showing what she was capable of. Voyager drew a sharp line between the asexual (or rather, not overtly sexualized) competence of Janeway and the spandex-clad sex-bot Seven of Nine. Captain Uhura would have straddled that line, challenging the assumed incompatibility of being a sexual object with being an aspirational hero.
Not pictured: Captain Marvel and Black Panther
Ororo Munroe, a.k.a. Storm, is an icon. As a member of the X-Men, she fights for the rights of the mutant minority, against those who fear what they cannot understand. As an ally (and sometime wife) of Black Panther, she defends the sovereignty of Wakanda against colonial forces. Oh, and she also flies, bends the elements to her will and shoots lightning. 20th Century Fox owns the rights to X-Men, so Marvel Studios cannot be directly blamed for scheduling Captain Marvel and Black Panther to headline instead of Ororo (though they can easily be blamed for taking a decade to produce diverse superhero films). But upcoming plans to film starring vehicles for Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel have put female superheroes on the agenda. Why hasn’t this prompted 20th Century Fox to greenlight a solo outing for Wind-rider Storm, despite the rich source material of Greg Pak’s popular solo comics and the fact that the woman shoots lightning? Storm’s role in Bryan Singer’s X-Men franchise screamed “Lieutenant Uhura,” providing visible diversity while being constantly marginalized by the plot. Pak has the last word: “Storm’s the embodiment of fierce, raw power – and deep abiding empathy. She’s the most powerful woman in the Marvel Universe — incredibly exciting and elemental — even dangerous.” Movie, please.
Not pictured: Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers
In an earlier post, I discussed evidence for regarding Loretta Mary Aiken, better known as Moms Mabley, as the pioneer of modern stand-up comedy. Evolving from vaudeville monologues, Jackie Mabley was nicknamed “Moms” because of her nurturing attitude to other performers. Her tackling of taboo topics such as race, gender, sexual double standards, poverty, and substance abuse, defined the truth-telling role we associate with the art of stand-up today. Moms herself said that everyone stole from her apart from Redd Foxx, and she was older than Redd, too.
In particular, Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers, many decades younger than Mabley, both recognized her as a major influence. In pop culture, Pryor is often hailed as the “Godfather of Comedy.” The tendency of Black comedians to recognize Pryor as the most significant pioneer of Black comedy comes at the expense of Pryor’s own acknowledged debt to Mabley, as does the tendency of feminists to cite Joan Rivers as the groundbreaking pioneer of female stand-up. Moms is often totally omitted from lists of top stand-ups, despite her claim to being the original. These choices of “representative” diminish the unique contribution of Moms Mabley, and the visibility of Black women as innovators of world culture.
Not pictured: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
As we prepare for Barack Obama to step down from the U.S. presidency, all indicators point to the next Democratic nominee being a white woman, with Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren as the frontrunners. When we celebrate womankind finally getting their shot at global leadership (Angela Merkel aside), let us take a moment to remember the candidacy of Shirley Chisholm (not to mention that Ana Julia Cooper should clearly have been running the country in the 1890s).
A founding member of the 1971 National Women’s Political Caucus, as well as the first Black congresswoman, Chisholm actively mentored an all-female staff, took political stands in favor of reproductive rights and against the Vietnam war, and fought against social exclusion on the basis of class, race and gender. Her political philosophy may be summarized by her 1972 presidential campaign slogan: “Unbought and Unbossed.” She was the first woman to win delegates for a major party nomination and the first Black candidate to run on a major party ticket. Chisholm’s voting record shows exceptional integrity and political courage, matched by the intelligence and determination to rise from a background of poverty and intersectional discriminations. Chisholm was an exemplary candidate. The fact that her career trajectory – breaking boundaries for both women and Black candidates before being snubbed for leadership – mirrors a fictional Star Trek character, hints at the power of the collective imagination to shape reality.
Change will come. After establishing her reputation with Grey’s Anatomy, which introduced a dynamic, multiracial cast behind the commercial appeal of white protagonists, Meredith Grey and Dr. McDreamy, Shonda Rhimes has created compelling, multi-faceted Black heroines (or antiheroines) who dominate Scandaland How To Get Away With Murder. Whoopi Goldberg has directed a documentary on Moms Mabley, while Shola Lynch directed one about Shirley Chisholm’s presidential bid. Last year, directors Amma Asante and Gina Prince-Bythewood offered Gugu Mbatha-Raw starring roles as fully realized protagonists. But these are all examples of Black women directors, fighting alone for better screen representations. Yes, Ava DuVernay has demonstrated talent and ambition with Selma that cannot be destroyed by a mere Oscar snub. Yes, she will probably continue to make great films until her achievements are officially recognized (am I the only one rooting for a biopic of Queen Nzinga starring Lupita Nyong’o?). But it’s high time that the “progressive” mainstream, from the Academy to Star Trek to white feminist commentators, started opening doors without waiting for them to be beaten down.
DuVernay has said in interviews that when she inherited Paul Webb’s screenplay, she altered it to decenter its focus on President Lyndon B. Johnson (even though the controversy surrounding the film managed to once again re-center the story on white male power and its portrayal). Rather than criticize the director for shifting her gaze away from whiteness (or for getting certain historical details wrong), it may be more useful to consider the difference a woman behind the camera—and a Black woman in particular—brings to a motion picture.
This guest post by Janell Hobson previously appeared at the Ms. blog and is cross-posted with permission.
Last year was a stellar one for Black women filmmakers. First, there was Amma Asante’s exquisitely filmed Belle (starring an impressive Gugu Mbatha-Raw), followed later by Gina Prince-Bythewood’s emotionally layered Beyond the Lights (also starring Mbatha-Raw). The year finally closed out with Ava DuVernay’s critically acclaimed historical drama, Selma.
However, while Belle was summarily dismissed by movie critics as a “black Jane Austen drama,” and Beyond the Lights received more favorable reviews but was nonetheless ignored at the box office, DuVernay has a real shot at becoming the first Black woman to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar (having already made history with her nomination at the Golden Globes). Of course, there is something to be said for women receiving critical acclaim when the films they direct focus on the lives of men, but that’s another story. Nonetheless, the acclaim she has received is absolutely earned.
Selma is a rather subversive take on historical events: part sweeping epic drama, part intimate and domestic storytelling in its rendering of the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 (led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and played in the film with an understated grace by David Oyelowo). DuVernay imbues this Civil Rights-era film with a black woman’s sensibility, which makes the storytelling all the richer.
There is the opening shot, featuring King practicing his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, before he is joined by his wife Coretta (played by Carmen Ejogo in an uncanny resemblance to the late icon) fixing his tie. Here, an international milestone is seamlessly intertwined with the space of domestic intimacy, just as the following scene depicting the four girls in Birmingham decked out in their finest Sunday best—as they gossip about how Coretta Scott King does her hair while descending into a church basement—resonates on the most mundane level. Although we have the benefit of history, it is still jarring when the bomb explodes, and, as occurs throughout the film, each death is doled out in slow motion, the camera (aesthetically positioned by the accomplished cinematographer Bradford Young to capture the brilliance of dark skin) refusing to turn our collective eyes away from the bloodshed and the casualties of “racial progress.”
DuVernay has said in interviews that when she inherited Paul Webb’s screenplay, she altered it to decenter its focus on President Lyndon B. Johnson (even though the controversy surrounding the film managed to once again re-center the story on white male power and its portrayal). Rather than criticize the director for shifting her gaze away from whiteness (or for getting certain historical details wrong), it may be more useful to consider the difference a woman behind the camera—and a Black woman in particular—brings to a motion picture. Because of the rewrite, we not only get a redirection on King and how his Southern Christian Leadership Conference group came into conflict with the younger Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but women are also added to the picture, including movement participants like Freedom Rider Diane Nash (played by Tessa Thompson), Amelia Boynton (Lorraine Touissant) and Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey). They are still marginal to the main story, but at least they are visible and part of the grassroots movement critical to King’s leadership.
We also see certain feminist approaches: from how the movement men can descend onto a woman’s home and make themselves quite comfortable as their very masculine dominance takes over her kitchen space (a subtle critique of the ways progressive men constantly rely on and exploit women’s labor, all wrapped up in the warmth of black Southern domestic comfort) to a scene featuring Amelia Boynton and Coretta Scott King discussing the struggles of activism and the challenge of maintaining hope (a scene Touissant has noted was DuVernay’s own conscious attempts at passing the Bechdel Test by including a scene where women are not talking about men). Through Coretta’s story, DuVernay also highlights how the iconic hero that we celebrate through King does not translate to admirable husband and father. King’s infidelities, however, are included not to tarnish his image but to undergird the real difficulties of committing to both a political movement and the personal sphere. King’s political involvement (including long stays away from home) also brings the constant fear of death, a fear Coretta quietly yet persistently underscores throughout her scenes.
More than anything, Selma is what we get when we intersect the personal with the political, the epic with the intimate, the historical with the present day (e.g. because King’s speeches were off limits, what we also get in the film are double entendres of what the Selma movement meant for 1965 and what present-day struggles mean for us here in 2015).
While the film’s budget is tiny by Hollywood standards ($20 million), what DuVernay does with the film is a real triumph in not only quality filmmaking but in accomplished storytelling, where black people and their allies stand in all their brilliant humanity and where women’s stories hold equal weight against the heavyweight often accorded men’s histories. Let us hope her triumphs will open the doors wider for other women filmmakers.
Of course we may find solace on smaller screens, where diversity reigns and where Shonda Rhimes dominates Thursday television with her Black women leads and multiracial casting. Nonetheless, there is a power that is felt when viewing images in a much larger medium with its expansive and colossal screen and booming soundtrack. DuVernay has shown why Black women still matter on big screens and why they matter more so behind the camera.
In so many ways, this film reflects the current moment, while also highlighting how things have and have not changed since the King family and their allies risked their lives to secure rights for all. Scenes in the film will jolt you into the present: watching Jimmie Lee Jackson’s mother grieve in 1965 for the son she will never see again made me immediately think of the family of Tamir Rice, the young black boy who was murdered by police officers this year for toting a toy gun in Ohio. ‘Selma’ is now.
This guest post by Nijla Mu’min previously appeared at Bitch Media and is cross-posted with permission.
Historical dramas often stick to a tried-and-true formula: Important figures face struggles, then they triumph, becoming the great people we know today. We can usually count on a scene from their conflicted childhood, scenes showing their romantic troubles, any issues with drugs or alcohol, and how they persevered through it all to deliver whatever divine message or artistic gift they possessed.
Ava DuVernay’s new Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, Selma, avoids this formula—much to its benefit. It is one of the most effective, well-crafted historical biopics that I’ve ever seen because it goes off the traditional narrative about the Civil Rights Movement, giving us a moment in history that feels immediately familiar to the moment we are currently living in.
Selma captures the tireless efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and a group of black activists attempting to secure equal voting rights for black people. These efforts led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The film takes its name from the series of marches that King and his followers embarked on at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. One of those marches was infamously known as “Bloody Sunday,” after police and deputized locals descended on the protesters with nightsticks and tear gas. DuVernay and Director of Photography Bradford Young capture that march in all its terror in a scene where young and elderly marchers are clubbed and chased by angry police on horses. Selma certainly doesn’t cast the history of the Civil Rights Movement in feel-good soft focus.
In a recent interview I conducted with DuVernay, she discussed the way she approached the humanity of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., including his suspected infidelity. She was most interested in how this information affected his wife, Coretta Scott King, and how Martin Luther King would respond in the moment when questioned by Coretta. This emphasis on the intimacy in their relationship, rather than the scandal that the FBI sought to publicize, is something that informs the core of the film.
DuVernay is not interested in showing us montages of the unfaithful hero, his mistress, and the scorned wife, as was done in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. She is interested in the complex spaces of love and pain between two people. Coretta Scott King, played with an uncanny resemblance by Carmen Ejogo, takes on a central role in this film, not only as a wife and mother, but as a key player in the movement as she faces daily death threats made against her and her family. The attention and specificity paid to her character and her relationship to King is another gift that DuVernay brings to this film.
Further, there are so many ways this film could’ve become an extension of the Hallmark image that we see of Martin Luther King Jr., one that replays the same “I Have a Dream Speech” and tells us that nonviolence is the only way. While those elements are important, they are often overemphasized at the expense of the other work he did.
That is where Selma fills in the blanks. In this film, we get to know a methodical, intelligent, human Martin Luther King Jr; a man who just wanted to sit down at the end of the day and smoke a cigarette, or call Mahalia Jackson in the middle of the night to hear her sing a soothing gospel song. In the film, he invokes nonviolence but also cleverly provokes outward hatred in his opponents, helping people around the world witness this physical racism in the media. His tactics were risky, his negotiations with the likes of LBJ were grueling, and he was often put in positions of extreme discomfort, along with the many people he worked with.
This is not a film about a man and his followers, but about how a man’s work is informed by the respect he has for the people he works with—and even those he doesn’t. It reflects the movement by emphasizing distinct traits in each of the civil rights leaders it documents, from the youthful resistance of Jimmie Lee Jackson (played powerfully by Keith Stanfield), to the gentle persistence of Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch), who appeals to Coretta Scott King in a beautifully rendered scene. That scene and others completely reverse the rhetoric we’ve been fed about who these people were. The warring ideals between Malcolm and Martin aren’t the focus of this narrative, but rather how Malcolm X may have actually intentionally pushed many black people to follow Martin Luther King Jr., helping to strengthen the movement after all. Again, DuVernay utilized Coretta Scott King in a way that shows her role in the movement beyond being a supportive wife. She serves as a sort of peacemaker here.
In so many ways, this film reflects the current moment, while also highlighting how things have and have not changed since the King family and their allies risked their lives to secure rights for all. Scenes in the film will jolt you into the present: watching Jimmie Lee Jackson’s mother grieve in 1965 for the son she will never see again made me immediately think of the family of Tamir Rice, the young black boy who was murdered by police officers this year for toting a toy gun in Ohio. Selma is now. It lets us into the interior spaces of pain, progress, and movement that no formulaic historical drama could ever capture.
Selma opened Christmas Day in Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, and Atlanta. It opens nationwide Jan. 9.
So what can women do about these smear campaigns directed at films by women? Go see films directed by women, support these filmmakers any way you can, whether it’s by filling theaters or participating in social media campaigns. We may not be able to change Academy voters’ minds, but we can continue drawing attention to gender disparities and focus on the positive changes.
This guest post by Lauren Byrd previously appeared at her blog and is cross-posted with permission.
Oscar nominations haven’t been announced yet, but there’s already a campaign to dethrone an Oscar hopeful. Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay, is a solid choice for film critics (100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but in the weeks following its release, the film has come up against criticism for its portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
During a time when the holiday season detracts from awards season, historians and former members of the Johnson administration voiced their concerns with the film.
Three days before the film’s release, Mark K. Updegrove, the director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, wrote a piece in Politico, titled, “What Selma Gets Wrong”:
In the film, President Johnson resists King’s pressure to sign a voting rights bill, which—according to the movie’s take—is getting in the way of dozens of other Great Society legislative priorities. Indeed, Selma’s obstructionist LBJ is devoid of any palpable conviction on voting rights. Vainglorious and power hungry, he unleashes his zealous pit bull, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, on King, who is determined to march in protest from Selma to Montgomery despite LBJ’s warning that it will be “open season” on the protesters. This characterization of the 36th president flies in the face of history. In truth, the partnership between LBJ and MLK on civil rights is one of the most productive and consequential in American history.
Updegrove makes his argument about what is and isn’t right about this portrayal, but what the articles about the “Selma controversy” in The New York Times, The Wrap, and other media sites haven’t mentioned is that Updegrove also states that much of the film is correct and an accurate portrayal of the events of that time.
A former aide to Johnson Joseph A. Califano, Jr., wrote a similar piece in The Washington Post and on New Year’s Eve, The New York Times highlighted the charges of inaccuracy against the film in a piece by Jennifer Schuessler, which quoted several LBJ focused authors and historians.
Ava DuVernay on set of Selma
DuVernay isn’t standing silently in the face of the recent criticism. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, she said, “I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie; I was interested in making a movie centered on the people of Selma.”
It’s hard not to compare the sudden firestorm of controversy surrounding a potential Oscar hopeful to the controversy in the 2013 Oscar season that befell Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.The debate about that particular film was based on its portrayal of torture and whether the film showed enhanced interrogation techniques producing intelligence that led to Osama bin Laden. Many journalists who had covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as national security, thought the film glorified torture, while film critics classified the film as an accurate depiction of the dark decisions made by the U.S. government during the murkiness of the post-9/11 decade.
It’s even more difficult not to note that both these films are directed by women. While questions about accuracy were also brought up about Lincoln during the 2013 awards season, which was directed by a man Steven Spielberg, the backlash against Zero Dark Thirty drowned out any questions around Spielberg’s film. As a result, Bigelow did not receive a Best Director nomination while Spielberg did. The inaccuracies in Argo, of which there were many, were not as widely discussed, and both Ben Affleck and the film went on to win Oscars.
Selma
This year, another film directed by a man, Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, has recently undergone criticism from Mark Schultz, one of the brothers whom the film is based on. But FlavorWire has already written a piece defending the film against Schultz’s remarks.
Compared to Foxcatcher, which has been in theaters since November, the controversy around Selma has received more media play and it’s possible the charges of inaccuracies from historians will affect how future audiences view the film. (It opens nationwide on Friday.)
These smear campaigns against films helmed by women are yet another sign of the disparity of the treatment of men and women in the film industry. So are these smear campaigns a gender issue or simply a coincidence?
As someone who knows enough about the industry to know that the Academy Awards are certainly not based on merit or artistry, but rather on money and publicity, it was still hard to believe smear campaigns were a reality until the 2013 Oscar race when Zero Dark Thirty‘s awards season chances quickly diminish.
Kathryn Bigelow moderating a Q&A with Ava DuVernay after a screening of Selma
So what can women do about these smear campaigns directed at films by women? Go see films directed by women, support these filmmakers any way you can, whether it’s by filling theaters or participating in social media campaigns. We may not be able to change Academy voters’ minds, but we can continue drawing attention to gender disparities and focus on the positive changes. Michelle MacLaren directing Wonder Woman, for instance.
While it’s unclear what effect the controversy will have on Selma and DuVernay’s Oscar chances, let’s hope that in the future, audiences and Academy voters learn how to think for themselves rather than be carried away by the most recent awards season smear campaign. Man or woman.
Lauren Byrd has a master’s degree from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. She’s worked in television and recently worked as part of the education team at Brave New Films.
