This morning the news broke that Spike Lee, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith will not be attending the live presentation of the Academy Awards this year—directly in response to a slate of nominees that includes not a single actor of color. In what is perhaps the most egregious example, the films “Creed” and “Straight Outta Compton” had plenty of black talent attached to each, but the academy found a way to honor only the white creatives participating in each—and neither is honored for best picture.
It’s bad. In an industry that has been engulfed by change in the past decade, the Academy Awards are remarkably conservative; indeed, it’s gotten worse. There isn’t a single actor of color nominated, whether black, Latino, Asian or Native American; Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle “The Revenant” is the closest the academy came to honoring a story about First Nations peoples since “Dances With Wolves” (1990), and DiCaprio’s Golden Globe speech aside, “The Revenant” is about two white men trying to kill each other. (Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who is Mexican, is the only director of color nominated this year.)