With a week left until the 2016 Oscars, John Oliver is the latest to weigh in on the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. For the second year in a row, there is a serious lack of melanin in the acting categories – or as Last Week Tonight put it, it’s “whiter than a Yeti in a snowstorm fighting Tilda Swinton.”
The segment takes on the lack of roles for actors of color and further explains why this is the case. “One of the reasons for this might be that even when there are roles for non-white actors, they sometimes still get played by white people,” the voice over said. “…And when filmmakers get called out on whitewashing, the justification has less to do with black and white, and more to do with greed.” (i.e. Ridley Scott.)
https://twitter.com/DeniseGascoigne/status/667013882288951296
The video also addresses the fact that while minorities are supposed to be OK with white actors taking roles meant for people of color, the opposite is not true – even if the characters are fictional.
There’s a lot the video couldn’t address, but it succinctly encapsulates what’s wrong with Hollywood’s whitewashing practices.