The Brits Are Not The Problem
Some of the people who bemoan the Best Picture win of “The King’s Speech” are crying in their milk again this morning that Hollywood is too quick, always, to make a colonial genuflection before the ex-Mother Country: Britain. Stop whining, people. The Brits aren’t the problem. The real problem with the Oscars vis-a-vis the world is that the show is regularly, punishingly, ridiculously white. No amount of Halle Berry hailing Lena Horne can disguise the fact that the show this year did an especially poor job of reflecting the fact that the United States, not to mention the world, isn’t an all-white production anymore. That final number, “Over the Rainbow” sung by a Staten Island kids choir, was closer to the truth. As wonderful (and free-form) as the pupils were, they were a multicultural afterthought pasted on the show by producers who know the truth: Hollywood remains a stultifyingly white world.
