If you value diversity, you have to appreciate the effort this year. The 2019 Oscars managed to avoid most of the problems people usually complain about. Given how many awards they present, a long show is unavoidable, but the pace this year seemed positively snappy, with more than one winner getting played off the stage […]
Few people want to hear about the reality of disability — and even fewer people want to watch disabled people lead challenging, nuanced lives. When The Shape of Water won the Oscar for Best Picture, some people said it was progress. How wonderful that the best film of the year featured a main character who […]
For something about the brokenness of these women reminded me of my own mother, enabled me to understand her not merely for the harm she enacted but in the light of her own suffering and her pain. The Oscars were a coup for bad mothers, and I have to say I am delighted. The Best […]
Diversity was a hot-button issue at the Oscars last year, and we still have a long way to go. But I believe that this year holds a lot of promise for women—particularly in the LGBT community—who yearn for more dimensional characters onscreen. Late February/early March holds a tradition for my best friend and me. On […]
Movies and their marketing offspring are products that we consume, and sexism and racism are cheap and profitable components of those products. Last week, two Hollywood women talked about Hollywood’s endemic sexism. Melissa McCarthy called out a New York Observer film critic for calling her a “hideous,” “tractor-sized” “female hippo” two years ago while reviewing the film […]
We have a right to demand that solidarity and intersectionality not get thrown under the bus when a famous white woman speaks publicly on injustice. Scarily, I finally have something in common with a Fox News pundit. I found Patricia Arquette’s Oscars speech last night appalling. For some different reasons, though. Arquette’s choice of words […]
In an Oscars ceremony marked by questions of representation and cultural politics (host Neil Patrick Harris quipped early on that this was “A night to honor Hollywood’s best and whitest”), there were no shortage of social issues at the forefront of this year’s Oscars ceremony. Long before the ceremony unfolded, actors and activists took to […]
Palmer’s role reflects an important departure from business as usual on Broadway, and is a meaningful step in the right direction. But now we await the fallout. Keke Palmer made theater history yesterday, with the announcement of her casting in the title role of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, currently playing at New York City’s Broadway Theatre. […]
