[Infographic] The Oscars Diversity Problem

February 25, 2014·Entertainment·by MMXLLI·63 views

Well this really doesn’t look good. It’s not news that the Academy Awards have lagged behind when it comes to recognizing actors, directors, producers, and other pros who aren’t white. The blame for that failure could fall in a few places: our culture at large, risk- and change-averse producers, the oddly regressive dynamics of the Academy voters. Either way, it’s not great.

An infographic published on The New York Times‘ Carpetbagger blog has spelled out the Academy Awards diversity gap in stark, visual terms. Created by children’s book publisher Lee & Low Books, the chart reveals just how stacked the deck is against anyone hoping to see a shift in the racial make-up of Oscar winners. One stat sticks out like a very sore thumb: Of the Academy’s 85 Best-Actress winners, only one — Halle Berry for 2001′s Monster’s Ball — has been anything other than white. That’s inflated to 1% for the purpose of being visible on a pie chart.

Over the past few years, the field of Oscar nominees has been inching into more-inclusive territory — which could give us a glimmer of hope for change. Then again, with 94% of all Academy voters being white, that change may still be a sad many years away. (New York Times)

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Fox Says Diversity Leads To Good Ratings And Better Business

February 11, 2014·Business·by MMXLLI·86 views

Today’s TV executives are betting that millennials expect more diversity in their pop culture than previous generations — a thought echoed in a recent study released by UCLA that found more viewers were drawn to shows that mirrored the country’s ethnic diversity, with smaller audiences for programs on either side of parity.

It’s easy, when writing about network TV, to be cynical.

For example, when I heard the Fox network had been holding annual conferences on diversity, telling top show producers their casts and crew had to feature more people of color, I remained skeptical. What’s the catch, I wondered?

Turns out, the network began talking about diversity as a business imperative about three years ago, shifting the conversation to the need for TV programing that reflects the multicultural reality of today’s world to keep younger viewers. One year, representatives from several advocacy groups representing different ethnic minorities made presentations. The next time, Fox offered a simpler presentation.

The Deadline Hollywood blog reported on this year’s event, held in October for more than 150 people including representatives from the top talent agencies in town, Def Jam Recordings co-founder Russell Simmons, and top executives from several Fox-owned TV and film business divisions.

The message: Diversity increases the chance Fox will pick up a new show, promote it, syndicate it and see it do well with audiences.

Years ago, an actor/writer working on a pilot episode for Fox told me she suspected a 2010 session just led producers to transform tertiary white characters into ethnic minorities, with no change in the scripts to acknowledge the shift in race or culture.

But then came this fall’s sleeper hit, Sleepy Hollow, Fox’s tale about the modern-day adventures of Ichabod Crane. Ichabod somehow awakens in modern times after a 250-year sleep. The story unfolds like The X-Files meets A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court(except the Yankee moves forward in time rather than back). Crane teams with a young cop to tackle supernatural weirdness related to the return of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

And the young cop, Abbie Mills, is played by Nicole Beharie, an up-and-coming African-American actor who made a splash as Jackie Robinson’s wife this spring in the film 42. Suddenly, the show was anchored by a strong black woman who gets to kick down doors, tote a trusty sidearm and play skeptical Dana Scully to Ichabod Crane’s witchcraft-wise Fox Mulder (for the uninitiated, that’s an X-Files shout-out).

When the show featured a storyline centered on Mills’ sister, we got to see two black women in an action/adventure setting, fighting the bad guys instead of waiting to be rescued or seduced. It was exactly the kind of diverse casting I had been waiting for since 1999, when the issue hit a crisis point as the broadcast networks offered a fall slate of new TV shows without a single character of color.

This isn’t just about helping redefine roles for black women on TV. In the case of Sleepy Hollow, it’s about finding new storylines and fresh perspectives. An upcoming episode will find the duo facing the legacy of slavery — a storyline that a more old-fashioned network series might have glossed over now has a new twist with an African-American co-lead.

Look across Fox’s schedule and you see similar diversity on the comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine,featuring Andre Braugher, Terry Crews, Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz (when I met the cast in July, Fumero and Beatriz joked about their surprise at being on a show with two Latinas, but no one playing the “spicy character”). The network’s Almost Human, which makes its debut Sunday and Monday, features African-American actor Michael Ealy as co-lead alongside New Zealand native Karl Urban.

And my friend and fellow TV critic James Poniewozik at Time magazine wrote a great online column about how Fox’s adding Damon Wayans Jr. back to the cast of The New Girl breaks the unspoken “one black friend” rule on many TV comedies (I’d expand that to “one minority friend” rule, just to include shows ranging from Big Bang Theory to Super Fun Night, where the nonwhite best friend isn’t black).

I’m told such casting at Fox is often a result of the diversity sessions, which now include corporate siblings such as FX and Fox Searchlight studios. In the sessions, the case is made that diversity is good business as well as a good deed. Casting an actor like Beharie doesn’t happen unless someone is pushing for it, and it’s been fun to see that move rewarded with strong ratings and an order for Season 2 before the first has barely started.

This makes it all the more ironic that Fox has been criticized as airing the most racist new show of the fall season, a comedy from the producers of Family Guy and Ted called Dads.

The show features Giovanni Ribisi and Seth Green as millennial video game entrepreneurs with horrifically embarrassing fathers. Said fathers aim insulting jokes at Latina and Asian-American cast members, including a bit where an attractive Asian staffer has to dress like a schoolgirl to distract a group of Chinese businessmen.

Some people reduced the controversy to a case of “don’t make fun of minorities.” But my theory is that the humor in Dads failed because it centered on stereotypes about the characters, encouraging the audience to see them as crude caricatures. You may be able to get away with that after viewers get to know characters of color; but if you begin by putting them in a cultural box, it’s tougher to see them any other way.

There’s one wild card left: How will white audiences react? Ask producers of long-ago shows such as Homicide: Life on the Street or The Wire, and they’ll note that one reason their shows struggled for viewers was their casts were so diverse that white audiences seemed apathetic.

But today’s TV executives are betting that millennials expect more diversity in their pop culture than previous generations — a thought echoed in a recent study released by UCLA that found more viewers were drawn to shows that mirrored the country’s ethnic diversity, with smaller audiences for programs on either side of parity.

There’s more to be done. ABC’s Scandal proves there’s ratings gold in giving a talented person of color the sole starring role. And there’s a lot of hiring left to do before TV catches up with the country’s population of Hispanics or features Asian-Americans and Native Americans.

But Sleepy Hollow just may teach a lesson some of us have been shouting for years.

Sometimes, by doing good, you can also end up doing well, too.

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What to Watch: American Promise Documentary on PBS

January 15, 2014·Education·by MMXLLI·155 views

…this provocative, intimate documentary presents complicated truths about America’s struggle to come of age on issues of race, class and opportunity.

American Promise spans 13 years as Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, middle-class African-American parents in Brooklyn, N.Y., turn their cameras on their son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, who make their way through one of the most prestigious private schools in the country. Chronicling the boys’ divergent paths from kindergarten through high school graduation at Manhattan’s Dalton School, this provocative, intimate documentary presents complicated truths about America’s struggle to come of age on issues of race, class and opportunity. Winner, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award, 2013 Sundance Film Festival. A co-production of Rada Film Group, ITVS and POV’s Diverse Voices Project, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Part of American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen, made possible by CPB. Produced in association with American Documentary | POV. A co-presentation with the National Black Programming Consortium.

To coincide with the POV documentary, Spiegel & Grau will publish Promises Kept: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life, by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson with Hilary Beard. Where American Promise raises provocative questions, Promises Kept delivers answers, combining insights Brewster and Stephenson derived from their own experiences with the latest research on closing the black male achievement gap, providing readers with an unprecedented toolkit full of practical strategies from infancy through the teenaged years.

After the broadcast, you can visit the American Promise companion site to read an excerpt from the book Promises Kept, watch interviews with the filmmakers, download graphics to share on social media, guides for bringing the film into the classroom and community, and more.

POV has partnered with the online video journalism studio Storyhunter to commission a series of short web documentaries about the challenges and achievements of young black males in the United States. The web series will premiere on February 3 with shorts Teaching Fatherhood, The Jazz Ticket, and The Algebra Ceiling.

American Promise premieres February 3, 2014 at 10 PM on PBS stations. (Check local listings.).

Watch the trailer for American Promise online at PBS.org

An Unconventional Hero Uses Comedy to Fight Hollywood Stereotypes

November 26, 2013·Business·by MMXLLI·110 views

We have been so bombarded with Middle Easterners as the bad guys that it’s time we start changing that trend. 

A Middle Eastern hero starring in an American comedy film is no ordinary save-the-day tale.

In the Indiegogo-funded film Jimmy Vestvood, Amerikan Hero, comedian Maz Jobrani plays an Iranian hero named Jimmy, who hails from Westwood, Calif., known as the capital of the Iranian diaspora in the United States. (“Vestvood” pokes fun at the Iranian accent, which typically puts a “v” sound ahead of certain words starting with consonants.) Jimmy is no conventional hero, though; the private investigator with a burly mustache has a flair for solving Hitchcockian murder mysteries while hiding his adventures from his overprotective mother.

 

Jobrani, an Iranian, uses comedy in film and in his standup comedy routines to counter Hollywood’s stereotyping of Middle Easterners as “bad guys.”

The lack of enthusiasm and support for a film featuring a different kind of hero became apparent after rejections from various production companies. So Jobrani launched an Indiegogo campaign and raised just shy of half its $250,000 funding goal in its three-month duration.

“Indiegogo did help us get the word out about the project,” Jobrani told Mashable via email. “In the past, you needed a publicist to get you on the right radio and TV shows. That still exists, but social media has made it all a lot more grassroots.”

Although the campaign didn’t fully reach its funding goal, the film gained more exposure online and later raised funds from private investors at a final budget of $500,000. Other indie films gave garnered funds this way, and two Kickstarter-backed films even received Oscar nominations in 2013: Kings Point for Best Documentary (Short Subject) and Buzkashi Boys for Short Film (Live Action).

 

“I think this is the first comedic hero of Middle Eastern descent in an American film,” Jobrani said. “

 

We have been so bombarded with Middle Easterners as the bad guys that it’s time we start changing that trend. Most of the Middle Eastern people I know are good people. Jimmy Vestvood is just one small step in the right direction of humanizing an entire population.”

 

The film crew used social media to promote the film, posting updates from behind the scenes on Twitter, Instagram andFacebook, where Jobrani has more than 150,000 Likes.

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In 2013, Is A Movie About Slavery Still Necessary?

October 18, 2013·Education·by MMXLLI·128 views

The year is 2013. The United States is 150 years past the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves. We even have a Black president. Is another film about slavery still necessary? Absolutely, says journalist Lewis Beale.

Simply put, “A country that refuses to confront its past is a country in denial,” says Beale in his Op-Ed on why you should see the film “12 Years a Slave.”

Based on the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free black man kidnapped in 1841 in Washington and sold into slavery in New Orleans, “12 Years a Slave” opens Friday (October 18) with an A-list cast–Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt. Directed by British director Steve McQueen, the film takes a brutally honest look at the racism and sheer brutality that defined the era.

“12 Years a Slave” is easily the most hard-hitting portrayal of slavery since the 1977 TV blockbuster “Roots.” It is the kind of film that many people will avoid, in part because of its depiction of everything from the surrealism of slave markets to whippings, rapes, hangings and the myriad ways in which slave owners terrorized and ruled over their property.

Watch the trailer for “12 Years a Slave”

Read the rest of Lewis Beale’s thoughts on “12 Years a Slave” at CNN

 

Lisa Russell on Global Health Advocacy [Countdown to 2042]

October 4, 2013·Education·by MMXLLI·147 views

On this episode of Countdown to 2042, filmmaker Lisa Russell talks to us about what the year 2042 means to her as well as how more artists can help affect global change. Lisa Russell is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker who uses the power of film to explore and challenge social injustices that affect our collective humanity. She is also a maternal health advocate and a Huffington Post contributor.

Learn more about her work at governessfilms.com

 

 

If you liked this video and want to see more like it, check out our YouTube page, where we have other great Countdown to 2042 videos with Casey Veggies and Adrian Younge.

Why Doesn’t Keanu Reeves Play More Hapas?

September 23, 2013·Film·by MMXLLI·380 views

Check out this trailer for a new Keanu Reeves vehicle, based (believe it or not) on an actual Japanese legend, and due out this coming December.
 

 
The movie may or, perhaps more likely, may not turn out to be good. What caught our attention about this trailer though, much more than the low-budget CGI or action film clichés, was that first line, when the man with the full-body tattoo asks for a “half-breed.” The half-breed is Keanu’s character, and given the feudal Japanese setting it’s an obvious assumption that he’s playing what might today be more politely referred to as a hapa.
 
Happily, this is not an instance of the common and uncomfortable practice of casting white actors as people of color, a modern phenomenon uncomfortably analogous to historic traditions like blackface and yellowface. Keanu Reeves really is a hapa – his father was of native Hawaiian and Chinese descent. There has been plenty of commentary decrying the tendency to give similar roles to white actors. For us, 47 Ronin raises a different question. Why is it so unusual for a hapa actor like Reeves to play a hapa character?
 
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MIXLY Roundup

August 30, 2013·Entertainment·by MMXLLI·164 views


50th Anniversary of the March on Washington


 

 
This week was, of course, the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Leaders from around the nation gathered in Washington to celebrate the progress we’ve made, as well as to note how far we have left to go before that dream becomes reality.
 
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MIXLY Giveaway! Wong Kar-wai’s “The Grandmaster”

August 14, 2013·Film·by MMXLLI·137 views


 
If you’re a fan of acclaimed director Wong Kar-wai, international superstar Tony Leung, or cultural icon Bruce Lee, you need to check out “The Grandmaster,” Wong Kar-wai’s new film, starring Tony Leung, and telling the story of Ip Man, the martial arts master who trained Bruce Lee. Even better, now you have the chance to check the new movie out for free! MIXLY is giving away three tickets to tomorrow’s 7:30 pm screening at Arclight Cinemas in Sherman Oaks. If you win, you’ll receive a ticket for yourself and a guest, not only to the exclusive screening but to a Q&A with Tony Leung as well.
 
To win all you have to do is tweet a memory of your own favorite mentor @MMXLII, using #TheGrandmaster. We’ll pick the three we think measure up best to the legend of Ip Man.

New Project, “TransParent,” Spurs Discussion About Violence Against Transgendered People

July 26, 2013·Film·by MMXLLI·275 views

Trailer for TransParent from Natasha Miller on Vimeo.

 
On October 23, 2011 transgender woman Shelley “Treasure” Hilliard was murdered in East Detroit. When her body was discovered, it had been burned and mutilated. The transgendered community, and their allies in Detroit and across the country, suspected a hate crime.
 
Weeks later, Detroit police arrested Qasim Raqib, a drug dealer Hilliard had bought from in the past. It was revealed that Raqib had been the target of a police sting in which Hilliard had acted as an informant. After posting bond, Raqib allegedly used a new disposable cell phone to lure Hilliard to a house on the 900 block of Longfellow. That was the night of the 23rd. Hilliard was not seen again after her cab dropped her off that night.
 
After the drug connection became apparent, many discounted the idea that Hilliard’s murder was a hate crime against transgendered people. Whether or not that’s accurate, the tragedy sparked an important conversation about violence against transgendered people, and especially transgendered people of color, in Detroit and around the country. In the year Shelley Hilliard was murdered, 40% of murders classified as hate crimes against the LGBTQH community involved a transgendered woman as the victim. A report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs revealed that LGBTQH people of color were more likely to suffer extreme violence, and that transgender people suffered more severe injuries when compared to other victims of hate crimes that year.
 

o LGBQH people of color were 3.13 times as likely to experience injuries as compared to overall survivors.

o Transgender people were 1.76 times as likely to require medical attention as compared to overall survivors and were 1.67 as likely to experience police violence.

o Transgender people of color were 2.38 times as likely to experience police violence and 1.85 as likely to experience discrimination.

 
Violence against transgendered people, and especially transgendered people of color, is a significant and serious issue, which is why we’re happy to hear that director and journalist dream hampton, along with filmmaker and producer Natasha “T” Miller, plan to shoot a documentary not only about Shelley Hilliard’s life, but about the issues facing the transgendered community in Detroit she was an active member of. We’re big fans of dream hampton here at MMXLII. We’ve always been impressed by her thoughtful reporting and filmmaking, which often combines an interest in social justice issues with the world of hip-hop, and we’re especially impressed by the thought she seems to have given this project, which she almost turned down for fear that a beneficiary of cis privilege such as herself making a film about a transgendered woman would amount to voyeurism. We’re equally impressed by Natacha Miller, whose work as an activist and performance poet lead to the award of the Detroit Kresge artist fellowship that made the film possible.
 
Their movie will be called “TransParent,” and is being funded largely through a Kickstarter campaign, which recently met its fundraising goal of $30,000. The Kickstarter will remain up for a few more days, until the end of July, and though they’ve reached their goal it’s certainly not too late to make a contribution. If you’re as impressed by the trailer above as we were, we encourage you to check out their page and consider helping out with this important and sure-to-be thought-provoking film.
 
Photo from Catch Fire.