Thursday, December 26, 2013

Hollywood Hypocrisy: Leftist Movie Industry Slammed for Ethnic and Racial Discrimination

Do as we say, not as we do.

Hollywood is dominated by far-left industry hacks and hangers-on, and they're the biggest racists, it turns out.

Time to get with the program, like the rest of society and the norm of diversity and inclusion. Freakin' assholes. Typical left-wing douchebags.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Hollywood is losing the race for ethnic and gender inclusion":
Backstage Hollywood: Despite people of color being honored by the Academy Awards, movie studios still have a fundamental hiring problem.

If you're among the small number of directors or actors who isn't white, there is finally some cause to be excited about what's happening in Hollywood.

For the first time in Academy Awards history, a black man — British filmmaker Steve McQueen — may win the directing Oscar for his heralded, harrowing film "12 Years a Slave."

Besides McQueen, critics and awards voters are celebrating the work of other people of color, singling out "Gravity's" Mexican-born filmmaker, Alfonso CuarĂ³n, the African American talk show host Oprah Winfrey from "Lee Daniels' The Butler," and a variety of black actors, including Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o ("12 Years a Slave"), Barkhad Abdi ("Captain Phillips") and Michael B. Jordan ("Fruitvale Station").

But all of those achievements mask fundamental, enduring problems within the movie industry.

A few weeks of feel-good inclusion can't alter the more troubling fact that opportunities for people of color remain scarce and that, for all of the Academy Award interest these directors and actors are receiving, Hollywood ultimately will judge their value using the only yardstick it believes matters: box-office performance.

"It's a big issue," said Lee Daniels, who directed "The Butler." "People can say, 'I'm sick of hearing about the race issue.' But it has to be addressed. I just think it's time for us to actually be at the party."

Several other prominent black filmmakers say that change within show business remains glacial. Even if Hollywood likes to present itself as magnanimous and liberal, its hiring decisions — including jobs handed to women — continue to be demographically constricted, with most work still going to white men.

It's not just movies that are an issue. The Directors Guild of America recently found that 73% of all primetime TV episodes were made by Caucasian males, and the Screen Actors Guild concluded that 76% of all leading roles in television and film were given to Caucasians. (Separately, the picture for women of all races is similarly depressing, and yet again no female filmmakers are contending for the directing Oscar.)

Following a 2012 Los Angeles Times study that found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was whiter, older and more male than the organization's toughest critics feared, the academy has tried to diversify its ranks.

The last two classes of people invited to become Oscar voters look far less like members of a country club, even if the invitees hardly mirror the nation itself, where African Americans, Latinos and Asians collectively make up more than 35% of the population. But because the academy has more than 6,000 voters, the more diverse new members haven't been able to change the organization's overall makeup in a meaningful way.

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