David Oyelowo Says Academy Award’s Prefers To Praise “Subservient” Black Films David sounds like ol’ Marty Tha Kang… Via TheHollywoodReporter Black performers have been singled out for awards “more for when we are subservient, when we are not being leaders or kings or being at the center of our own narrative,” David Oyelowo, who stars as Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, said Sunday during an appearance at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. (See video at the bottom of this post.) He directed criticism at both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the larger film industry for, historically, out of “white guilt,” telling stories about black people only through the eyes of white protagonists, saying, “So you have a very nice white person who holds black people’s hands through their own narrative.” Because of the critical and commercial success in 2013 of the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave and The Butler, in which he played a supporting role, that narrative is finally beginning to change, he contended, adding that it was only those films’ strong performances at the box office that led Paramount Pictures to back Selma. Oyelowo made his remarks — at a ceremony at which he was being honored as one 2014’s virtuoso performers — when asked about being “the subject of Oscar snub outrage.” (Selma was nominated for best picture, but the fact that he and the film’s director, Ava DuVernay, were not triggered a torrent of criticism, especially since, for the first time since 2011, all 20 acting nominees are white. This prompted the viral Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite and an SNL sketch about how King himself would have been disappointed by the news, as well as a defensive response from the black president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs. He was just getting started, peep his full statement in the video below: Talk that talk good brotha. Image via WENN
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Race Matters: ‘Selma’ Star David Oyelowo Blames “White Guilt” For Academy’s Celebration Of “Subservient” Black Roles [Video]
