The 2002 Oscars - a step forward, or backward?

Last week, while arguing that inequality still exists, I mentioned the 2002 Academy Awards, when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry made history and America heaved a sigh of relief, that the Academy clearly couldn’t be racist, if they were willing to admit that it was two African American actors who gave the best performances of the year. Today, I would like to take a look at these wins and try to explain the claim that this is just a further instance of the Mass Media portraying minorities in a negative light.


Denzel Washington is the kind of man that women love and men want to be: he is cool, smooth, sexy, and smart. He plays characters with depth and intensity. He has starred in movies such as Malcolm X and The Hurricane: both of which confronted racism and the plight of African American men throughout history. But of the many roles which made him famous and brought him critical acclaim and the love of fans, it was the role of a ‘dirty cop’ which won him an Oscar. Washington won the Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Training Day, a role that consisted of him playing a street-wise cop that lies, cheats, steals, and kills. Rather than any of his acclaimed performances in roles that challenged the racist status-quo and provided a positive role-model for young black men, the Oscar went to Denzel Washington when he played to the many racist stereotypes and fears that permeate our media and culture.


Halle Berry was the first African American woman to win the Best Actress Academy Award. She was not the first Black woman to win an Oscar; that honor goes to Hattie McDaniel, who won Best Supporting Actress for her role as a slave in Gone With the Wind. Berry isn’t the first woman to win a Best Actress award for ‘uglying herself up’ – Charlize Theron won for playing a serial killer, and Julia Roberts traded in her romantic-comedy crown to win an Oscar for Erin Brockovich. However, Halle Berry is the only woman on the list of Best Actress winners whose character angered a large part of her community and reinforced racist stereotypes. Halle Berry’s character in Monster’s Ball was a poor Black widow who turned to a relationship with the racist man who, effectively, killed her husband. Berry’s character was uneducated and helpless, and the majority of the Black community was not only outraged by the film and her character, but also by the mainstream white media’s commendation of the film and its message.


(for more about the response to Washington and Berry’s Oscar wins, see http://www.seeingblack.com/x032802/post_oscars.shtml at SeeingBlack.com)


Is all of this a coincidence, or is it a symptom of a much larger illness that affects all areas of the mass media, wherein minorities are portrayed as bad, scary, corrupt, stupid, helpless, or any of the other stereotypes that lead to inequality and injustice worldwide?


We here at MaMeMi believe that it is the latter.