J-Speaks: The Oscars Were "Rocked"

There are moments when something is about to happen you want to be front and center to see it unfold. You want to either see it on the small screen or in person if you can. Take in what is about to take place, especially if it is something that has been talked about at great length; has been a hot topic of discussion for a lengthy period or something that has become a rallying cry or a point of emphasis. That is what this past Sunday’s 88^th Annual Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre on ABC with no African Americans nominated in any category for the second consecutive year. It was something that many hoped host and comedian Chris Rock would tackle in a major way and he did so with full force.

He began his opening monologue by saying, “Hey! Well, I’m here at the Academy Awards, otherwise known as the white People’s Choice Awards.”

Rock then proceeded to take a jab at himself as the host by saying, “You realize if they nominated hosts, I wouldn’t even get this job. Y’all be watching Neil Patrick Harris right now.”

Rock really expressed the displeasure of many African Americans from the Twitter campaign that began back in January #OscarsSoWhite by saying, “This whole no-black-nominees thing has happened at least 71 other times. OK? You’ve got to figure that it happened in the ‘50s, in the 60s…I’m sure there were no black nominees some of those years and black people didn’t protest. Why? Because we had real things to protest at the time. We were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer… When your grandmother’s swinging from a tree, it’s really hard to care about best documentary foreign short.”

For this Academy Awards season, people did care that people of color were not recognized like Idris Elba, Michael B. Jordan or Will Smith. So much so that Smith, his wife Jada Pinkett, filmmaker great Spike Lee and even Rev. Al Sharpton vowed to stay away from the ceremony which they did. They even urged people to not watch the ceremony. 

Lee and his wife were not even in the state of California. They were at Madison Square Garden to see the New York Knicks (25-37) get their doors blown off 98-81 by the Miami Heat (35-26) this Sunday night.

He even called out the Smiths. First Will, who was in the acclaimed film “Concussion” by saying, “It’s not fair that Will was this good and didn’t get nominated. You’re right. It’s also not fair that Will was paid $20 million for ‘Wild Wild West,’ OK?

Rock took a jab at Will’s wife Jada by saying, “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited. That’s not an invitation I would turn down.”

While it might not have been the best of the jokes in his monologue, to me it illustrated a very important point. This awards show is the cream of the crop during awards season. Only the best of the best, get invited to this. It is an opportunity for the world to see you, hear you when you get interviewed on the red carpet. Above all else, it a chance to be celebrated for the grind, focus and energy that the best of the best put into the greatest form of artistry in the world both in front of the camera and behind it.

This Oscars show had only 34.5 million viewers this past Sunday night, which is the lowest mark since former Comedy Central host of “The Daily Show” John Stewart hosted the 80^th Academy Awards, which was viewed by 31 million back on Feb. 24, 2008.

In New York, protestors crowded the outside sidewalk of the WABC/Channel 7 Studios on the Upper West Side at Columbus Circle trashing the Oscars.

There were even protest that took place just blocks away from the Dolby Theatre that was attended by Rev. Sharpton.

“We gave them the benefit of the doubt last year,” the host of “Politics Nation” on MSNBC Sunday mornings said on Sunday before attending the protest.

“They said they’d make changes. It never happened. We decided that we are going to escalate with some of the advertisers. We’re starting today to say, yes, shouldn’t enter into new negotiations for next year unless some concrete changes are made now.”

The real burning question is Hollywood racist?

Rock in continuing with his opening monologue said, “You’re damn right Hollywood’s racist. But it isn’t the racism you’ve grown accustomed to. It’s sorority racism.”

He used the example of a lady named Rhonda and said that the powers that be like you, they just do not think you are the kind of person to be a Kappa.  

The fact that no people of color were nominated should make the brass of Hollywood stomachs turn inside and out. It is an embarrassment that the only black and brown people to grace the stage on Oscar night were presenting certain awards and Rock, who many called by a lot of his peers to step down as host. He made his feelings very clear on that.

“They said, ‘Chris you should boycott, Chris, you should quit.’ How come it’s only unemployed people that tell you to quit something? No one with a job ever tells you to quit.”

Rock said that he thought about quitting. He gave a lot of thought to it, but it dawned on him that the show was going to go on without him. It is not going to be canceled because he did not want to host.

“And the last thing I need is to lose another job to Kevin Hart,” Rock said.

What Rock did in his opening monologue is remind everyone of his greatness as not just an African-American comedian, but one of the greatest comedians ever. What we saw this past Sunday night was his greatness, somewhat tame from of his raw, coming right at you, no apologies blockbuster HBO comedy concerts like “Bringing the Pain” and “Bigger and Blacker.”

A perfect example of this is Rock told a quick story about when he attended a Hollywood fundraiser for President Barack Obama, where only four African-Americans were present, which included himself, Quincy Jones, “the usual suspects.”

Rock said as he was about to take a photo with Mr. Obama, “Mr. President, you see all these writers, producers and actors? They don’t hire black people and they’re the nicest white people on Earth. They’re liberals. Cheese.”

In that one story, Rock just drew a picture of how all minorities do not even get the opportunity to be nominated to even be in the running to win an Academy Award, whether they are in front of the camera or behind hit.  

All minorities want is the opportunity to be recognized. To let it be known that they are just as good as their Caucasian counterparts whether they are in the picture itself or behind the scenes of that particular film.

“I’m tired of the whitewashing in Hollywood, I’m tired of seeing African and Egyptian gods being portrayed by Swedish or European actors,” Khadija Amon-Ra, a 45-year-old makeup artist from Chelsea, NY said this past Sunday while protesting on the Upper West Side in New York, NY. “We all should be represented and be rewarded for what we do.”

A lot has to change. For starters, I learned over the course of this process that those who are responsible for nominating who will be in the running for an Oscar are golden age folk. If films like “Concussion” or “Creed” ever have a chance of getting nominated in a category, it will take Hollywood having younger individuals and more diversity as well of those who do the nominating.

What also has to happen is Hollywood must make it a point to greenlight the kinds of projects where the story of minorities is told on their terms. For instance, “Straight Outta Compton” is the kind of film that depicted how the group NWA created lyrics that were controversial and tough to swallow. It also depicted a time where the authorities and the African American community were at odds. It sure was not the kind of movie that Caucasians might have been shocked to see, but it was the kind of film that brought a reality of what life was like, particularly in the tough parts of Los Angeles and how the group N.W.A. wanted to give a voice to the voiceless and they not only became the group that many rallied behind, but they created legendary Hip Hop music that took the world by storm and again brought to light issues that were swept under the rug and minorities were suffering.  

It might not be Oscar worthy, but this movie was a story about something very relevant back in the late 1980s into the 1990s and very real and is just as so today.

Rock brought that point up in his monologue when he spoofed that, “In the memoriam package, it’s just going to be black people that were shot by the cops on their way to the movies.”

It was hard not to have any African American not be nominated at the Oscars for the second straight year. Chris Rock made it a point to bring that to the attention of those in the Dolby Theatre and those that did watch on television and he was magnificent. People protested on both the East and West Coast. The pressure is now on Hollywood to change its act, no pun intended. They are front and center and how they react to this will decide a lot in the years to come.

Information and quotations are courtesy of 2/29/16 Daily News article, “Rock-In The Joint,” by TV Editor Don Kaplan; 2/29/16 New York Post articles “Protest Got Rock-Rolled,” by Kyle Smith and “Chris Turns Race Into a Serious Laughing Matter,” By Kate Sheehy and David K. Li; 2/29/16 Newsday article “Rock’s Jabs Land Laughs,” by Verne Gay and “Protestors, Actors Demand Diversity,” by Laura Figueroa; www.espn.go.com/nba/standings; http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/80th_Academy_Awards.