Hegemony is the power or influence that people or groups who are already in control (of cultural, political, or economic institutions) use to stay in charge. Hegemony works so well because we usually can’t even see it; it just seems like how things are. But a funny thing happened at the end of the Oscars on February 26th. For the first time in 89 years, the Academy Award for Best Picture went to the wrong film, and in the process, made the racial hegemony of the Oscars visible. Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope, and, for about two-and-a-half minutes, La La Land, the tale of two white people living their Hollywood dream, was victorious over Moonlight, the coming of age story of a gay, black teenager in Miami. One of La La Land’s producers, Marc Platt, made a now-beautifully ironic plea just as chaos began to break out amongst the stage managers behind him: “And to Hollywood and the hearts and minds of people everywhere, repression is the enemy of civilization. So keep dreaming, because the dreams we dream today will provide the love, the compassion and the humanity that will narrate the stories of our lives tomorrow.”
And then, in a moment that feels like it only could have happened in an actual movie, the Academy took him at his word and took away his Oscar (Click through for the video). In truth, it was never actually his. Twitter erupted in a heady blend of incredulity and joy. Warren Beatty haltingly tried to explain that he had been honestly befuddled rather than milking the moment for a laugh. And, here in Canada, the morning news began with the striking headline, “Diversity wins at the Oscars.”
The Academy Awards has a long history of problems with racial, ethnic, and gender diversity. For decades, there was a running tally of how many (extremely few) black actors and actresses had won in each of the major acting categories. It was a shibboleth of Oscar knowledge for would-be movie buffs: Hattie McDaniel for her portrayal of a racist mammy stereotype in Gone With the Wind (1939); Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field (1963); Louis Gossett, Jr. for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982); Denzel Washington for Best Supporting Actor in Glory (1989) and Best Actor in Training Day (2002); Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost (1990); Cuba Gooding, Jr. for Jerry Maguire (1996); and finally Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball (2002). After the 2002 double-win for Washington and Berry as Best Actor and Best Actress, African Americans were finally represented as victors in all four categories, and it seemed as though a ceiling of some sort had been broken. The Oscars would now ostensibly be awarded solely on merit for a given performance rather than because an actor or actress was a certain color or ethnicity that needed a symbolic acknowledgement from the Academy. For over a decade, African Americans received nominations and continued to win attention and awards for their work… until #OscarsSoWhite.
For the ceremony in 2015 and again in 2016, every single acting nominee was white. The Twitterverse went apoplectic, while celebrities and commentators spoke about boycotts and how the Academy was sorely out of touch. In a time of deep racial tension in the United States – amidst the aftermath of Trayvon Martin’s murder, the Ferguson, Missouri protests against police violence, the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, the shooting of 9 black congregants in a Charleston, South Carolina church, and Donald Trump’s rise to power – the way that movies appeared to be valued and praised by the film industry’s governing body underscored the hegemony of the (white) old boys’ club in Hollywood.
Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony argues that the elite in a given society use cultural institutions in order to maintain power. Only a small number may truly benefit, but others are often complicit in helping the hegemonic or dominant standard to remain in place by accepting a situation as ‘natural’ or ‘just the way things are’. For much of Hollywood’s history, the Academy has been made up of predominantly older white men who have had the ultimate power in deciding whose name is in one of Oscar’s famed envelopes, and thus what films and actors are considered the “best” or most important to American culture. At the time of #OscarsSoWhite, a 2015-16 protest hashtag, 94% of the 6,000+ Academy members were white. This was the opposite of a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-racial organization.
All of which made Moonlight’s eventual triumph this year all the more resonant. This was the first film with an all-black cast to win Best Picture; it was also the first LGBTQ story to win top honors and, unlike 2013’s 12 Years A Slave, it was a story about African Americans without an explicit narrative about racism. Mahershala Ali became the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar. In the wake of #OscarsSoWhite, this looked like real progress.
In his Revisionist History podcast, journalist Malcolm Gladwell talks about “the token” phenomenon – the outsider whose groundbreaking success does not, in fact, chart new territory, but actually reaffirms the status quo (or hegemonic standard) because the general public feels that they have proven their tolerance, acceptance, or beneficence. Moonlight won – but did the awards and nominations garnered Sunday night by Viola Davis, Mahershala Ali, Denzel Washington, Barry Jenkins, and others – make the Academy Awards truly diverse at last?
Where are the other visible minorities when the nominations come out every January? How many Asian, Native American, Hispanic, or Middle Eastern Oscar nominees can you think of? If nominated, did they win, or was their brief inclusion enough of a token gesture? Where is gender parity in any category that is not specifically assigned to a woman? As of this year, only four women have ever been nominated for Best Director, and, of those four, only Kathryn Bigelow has won. Did her victory for The Hurt Locker in 2010 open the door for women directors in the industry, or was it a momentary triumph followed by general apathy? Are the categories for Best Editing and Sound Mixing and Score producing winners now and then who are not white and male? And does anyone expect the status quo to change any time soon?
Art’s power to transcend literal and figurative boundaries gives movies both their historical longevity and their central role in contemporary culture. Benedict Anderson, the late scholar of government and international relations at Cornell University, coined the term ‘imagined communities’ to explain where nationalism comes from. In his concept, an ‘imagined community’ is made up of people who may never meet in person, but who are joined through like-minded ideas, feelings, and dreams. If people perceive themselves as part of a given group, their investment in that identity carries significant social and political power. People who love movies are part of an imagined community that comes alive every time the lights in a theater begin to dim. It will be very interesting to see if the drama of Moonlight winning Best Picture and the other trophies awarded in 2017 to black artists creates actual dividends for diversity at the Oscars down the road. Will visible minorities now be a regular part of the winner’s circle at the Oscars, or will this symbolic gift of inclusion from the hegemonic powers-that-be actually make it that much easier to overlook “the others” for many years to come?
Post by Jane McGaughey
Further Reading
“How racially skewed are the Oscars?” The Economist, 21 January 2016.”
Listen
Malcolm Gladwell, The Revisionist History Podcast, Episode 1, “The Lady Vanishes.”
Decoding Media 