Black and fab. 22. Libra. ENFJ.
Bay Area. Media Studies Student @ UC Berkeley.
Writer, artist, illustrator, producer, critic.
Benevolent Media Proprietor in training.
I #E*TonesOrBust.
It's also my business standard.
“It is a pity the young Pi was not nominated There’s not much you can do. He’s an Indian actor and nobody knows him so he was easily overlooked.
With peer voting, people will vote for their friends or based on their impressions. He’s a newcomer and we often said he had never acted before—that’s a disadvantage to getting nominated. But I do think his performance was the purest performance.”
"Taiwanese director Ang Lee noting Hollywood’s tendency to overlook Asian actors to a Chinese radio station. Ang Lee was disappointed that Suraj Sharma was not nominated for Best Actor for his performance in The Life of Pi. Lee added that he felt Irfan Khan should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and that Zhang Ziyi was not nominated either for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, nor were any actors nominated for Slumdog Millionaire.
What’s a guy gotta do to get an Oscar? Here’s some trivia about Sharma’s work on the film, from FirstPost.com.
- Sharma beat out 4,000 other applicants (Ang Lee decided from the start the role would not be whitewashed.)
- Sharma had never acted prior to this so Ang Lee assigned him a pile of homework and made him act scenes from Teneesse Williams and other playwrights just for practice.
- Sharma didn’t know how to swim when he was cast for the role. When he first started out he could only hold his breath for 14 seconds. In the end he was able to go for one minute and a half.
- Sharma spent most of the movie filming in a pool emoting in front of a blue screen to an invisible tiger.
- Sharma lost 20% of his body weight for the role, eating a diet that mostly consisted of tuna fish, just like his character, so his ribs would show.
- Sharma cut himself up frequently while working on the boat and used those injuries in his acting. He would allow himself to get flipped along with the boat.
- The production was banned from speaking to Sharma. Ang Lee and Sharma agreed that he would not to talk to other people for almost two months so he would understand what isolation was like.
1. This kid is badass.
2. When white actors like Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio do stuff like lose 20% of their body weight or cut themselves and keep acting everyone cheers uproariously.
3. It is weirdly dismissive when films about characters of color get nominated but their actors do not. Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Slumdog Millionaire, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Last Emperor, etc.
4. As FirstPost points out, a lot of the Oscar snubbed actors that people are talking about like Leonardo DiCaprio have plenty of other opportunities to star in other big movies. When is the next big project for an actor of South Asian descent coming up?
(via racebending)
That Movie Based on a YA Novel Starring White People that Whitewashed PoC
That Movie Based on a Comic Book Starring White People and a Token PoC
That Movie that Reinvents a Fairytale Starring White People
That Movie Set in a Fantasyland with A Surprising Lack of PoC
That Beautiful Romantic Movie Starring Two White People in Love
That Movie Starring a Scruffy White Guy Who Does Things
That Movie where a White Guy plays Savior to a Native People
That One Very Special Movie about Racism
That Animated Movie in Which PoC’s only voice the Sidekicks
That Movie Where Apparently It’s Okay For a White Guy to play a PoC
That One Movie Where Denzel Washington or Will Smith Die for a White Guy
That One Movie Based on a Foreign Movie Re-Invented with White People
That Movie Set In a New York City where Only White People ExistsReblogging because the oscar winners is also this list
It’s true doe….
If you want to see how sexism and racism operate, think about how many people had to approve the script for tonight’s Oscars. How many people had to read over MacFarlane’s jokes (because none of those were improv, all of this was written beforehand) and think “Yeah, it’s okay to insult a 9 year old and it’s okay to make an entire song about objectifying the female body.”
THANK YOU.
I hate when people see horribly bigoted material in the media and disregard how many desks it passed before reaching them. Managing Directors, Executive Directors, Directors of PR, etc all see these things before they’re published and SAY NOTHING.
Doesn’t that tell you something about their character? What’s more, doesn’t it indicate just how few members of marginalised groups hold those or similar positions in order to BE there to speak up in the first place?
Casting Practices in Hollywood [bahstudios]
Anyone surprised?
Not at all, actually. When I signed up to play extras in various shows filmed here in Atlanta, most of the casting calls specifically mentioned wanting only white extras who looked “wealthy” or “fashionable”. If they asked for Black extras it was always for an “urban scene” or someone to be “loud and ghetto” or a “thug”.
bolded for emphasis. cause people really be acting like Hollywood is the way it is on ACCIDENT.
No, it is a deliberate and consistent effort to paint america in a specific way and sell an exclusive, discriminatory and NOT color blind America
I want to see a fat girl in a leading role of a film.
I want to see a fat girl in a leading role of a film that isn’t about her weight.
I want to see a fat girl wearing mini skirts or just whatever the fuck she’s comfortable in.
I want to see a fat girl kick some bad guy’s ass.
I want to see a fat girl be the one that the guy/girl falls in love with at first sight instead of just the fat girl the guys all make fun of first before getting to the stereotypical blond, thin white girl.
I want to see a fat girl who isn’t the thin girl’s funny friend.
I want to see a fat girl love scene.
I want to see a fat girl be a fucking survivor of a god damned fucking zombie apocalypse! Fuck you and your rule #1, Zombieland!
I want to see a fat Disney princess.
I want to see a badass fat girl who is sardonic and smokes, and when someone comments on her weight and how smoking makes it worse, she just blows smoke right in their faces.
I want to see a fat girl who loves to screw and isn’t ashamed of the fact.
I want to see a fat girl’s leading man/woman punch some guy in the fact for making fun of her.
I want to see a fat girl be something that is not her weight. I don’t want her to be the butt of every joke. I don’t want her to be the one who’s constantly rejected, or the one who has to fight to accept herself and have others around her accept who she is. I’m tired of seeing roles for fat girls that are only about her weight. I want to see a fat girl living her normal existence. I want to see her know she’s beautiful and not have to go through some huge challenge of loving herself. I’m tired of seeing horror films with only a thin cast. Fatties can run, too, a lot of times faster than you can and I can guarantee fatties can probably beat a bad guy up better, too.
I WANT TO SEE A FAT GIRL, HOLLYWOOD!
SECONDED!
ALL.OF.THIS.
Butterfly McQueen achieved fame primarily as a film actress in the 1940s…She was born Thelma McQueen on January 8, 1911, in Tampa, Florida, the only child of a stevedore (waterfront-related, like the loading/unloading ships) and a cleaning woman.
She attended grammar school and cultivated her interests in music and dance. From, the Negro Youth Project to the Federal Theater Project, McQueen was able to play in many productions. Her performance in the musical “Swingin’ in Dream” brought her to the attention of David O. Selznick, producer of “Gone with the Wind.”
McQueen got great reviews for her role as Prissy, however, in retrospect, many African-Americans regretted her performance.
Malcolm X, for example, recalled feeling both anger and shame the first time he saw Prissy on screen.
However, to be fair to McQueen, she herself thought Prissy backward. She also resisted many offensive characterizations. She refused to eat watermelon in one scene and only after she made sure everyone was aware of her displeasure did she submit to the scene where Scarlett O’Hare (played by Vivien Leigh) to slap her after she speaks the immortal line
Lawdy, Miz Scarlett, I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies!
All of her subsequent roles, for the most part, were a variation of Prissy. McQueen had to “act stereotypes or starve.”
To protest the lines she was asked to speak as a colored servant on Jack Benny’s radio program, she walked out of the studio, and when she declined similar motion picture assignments, casting agents boycotted her for more than a year. The actress retired from films in 1947. “I didn’t mind playing a maid the first time, because I thought that was how you got into the business… but after I did the same thing over and over I resented it. I didn’t mind being funny, but I didn’t like being stupid.”
She briefly returned to Hollywood in the 50s, but left again. For the next the 50 years, she did menial jobs. In 1975, at age 64, she earned a Bachelor of Arts major in Spanish and immersed herself in social welfare projects.
She occasionally still acts (as she did in “The Mosquito Net” starring Harrison Ford), however, for her stand against racist stereotyping, she was, in effect, punished by the Hollywood establishment and her acting career never recovered.
I can find actors and actresses of most races/ethnicity by using IMDB a public website. There is a part of the website that costs money but that is not the part I use.
Step 1: Find one well known actor of the race/ethnicity that the character is.
- For example if I’m looking for an actor/actress that is South Asian in background I’ll go to Sendhil Ramamurthy’s IMDb page.
Step 2: On the side of most IMDb pages is a section called Related List. Click there.
Step 3: Look for a list that contains actors/actresses of a similar background.
FOR EXAMPLE:
These are the list I found from going to Sendhil Ramamurthy’s page.
Look various list of actors and actress that are South Asian!!!
This can be done with almost any background (I haven’t tried it with all)
Let’s try Asian,Black,Latin@,and Native American.
Following the above steps I found these list…
Asian (went to Justin Chon’s page)
Black (went to Shareeka Epps’ page)
Latin@ (went to Sara Ramirez’s page)
Native American (went to Irene Bedard’s page)
There are even list that are organized by body type,hair color,breast size, etc.
Now keep in mind this is the way I do it. I use this method when I dreamcast. I have NO connections at all. I know no casting directors. I know no agencies. Don’t forget a little thing called a casting call. I have all these actors/actresses at the tip of my fingers. When big names say they looked but couldn’t find an actor or actress of a certain background I don’t buy it.
And then there is, of course, the pressure of being an Asian American actor when roles with some heft are few and far between and the backlash from a community starved for humanizing portrayals can be harsh. Early in his career, Yeun turned down an acting gig in Chicago because, as he put it, “they wanted me to play Long Duk Dong.” But, for actors that do play stereotypes, Yeun reserves his judgment.
“Honestly, if you could make that fun, and you can do it and you can make that your own and have fun doing it, then, God, by all means do it,” says Yeun. “I don’t personally want that character to represent us in terms of the fact that we’re American. We speak English. We pay taxes. We grew up in Michigan. So for me, it’s just I couldn’t do that honestly.”
Luckily for him, he’s landed a role that doesn’t compromise his principles, and he’s not about to squander it. “I just hope to kind of do right, you know? If it definitely forwards, you know, kind of like helps the Asian American male to really permeate throughout Hollywood, then I don’t know if I can take that torch, but I’d love to do anything I can to help that.” But in terms of his own career, says Yeun: “My biggest struggle is to never become that guy that got hired because they needed to cast this role Asian American. I don’t want to be that guy that got added just because he had to fill the look rather than the actual abilities.”
Racist Red Dawn tweets.
Red Dawn came out this weekend. Racebending’s review + bit of historical context is here: Red Dawn Remake: Our Review and Reflections
Sickening.
Not surprising, but gross.
My first foray into infographics. I think this is an important, but sadly overlooked, subject. Feel free to spread around, but please don’t remove the source.
