What the Fuck Just Happened?
Credit to Author: Alex Zaragoza| Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2019 06:10:56 +0000
As Fiona Apple once said, “This world is bullshit.” Green Book winning Best Picture at the Oscars really exemplifies that feeling. As does this tweet:
The film has been mired in controversy during this awards season for a smorgasbord of offenses. There’s its white savior narrative, co-star Viggo Mortensen dropping the n-word during a screening, writer Nick Vallelonga’s history of Islamophobic tweeting, and the family of Dr. Don Shirley, the pianist played by Mahershala Ali in the film, accusing filmmakers of spreading lies about Shirley. It’s all a bad look.
With this hanging over the filmmakers’ heads, director Peter Farrelly said this during their acceptance speech: “The whole story is about love. It’s about loving each other despite our differences, and finding that the truth about who we are—we’re the same people.”
Sounds good in theory, but doesn’t address the racist elephant in the room. While this Oscar night was groundbreaking in many ways, including awarding an Iranian-American woman for the first time and handing statuettes to the most individual Black winners in its 91 years (Regina! Mahershala! Spike! Ruth! Hannah! Ahhh!), topping it all off with Green Book as the Best Picture winner feels not just disappointing but like a slap to the face for all the POC that won or were nominated tonight. The Academy stays loving films where POC stories are centered around white people.
Anyway, at least it’s over. Put me to bed.
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This article originally appeared on VICE US.