We finally made it. February has found itself once again, to be the pinnacle month of the year to honor accolade and prestige — and no, we’re not talking about Valentine’s Day. A week ago we witnessed America’s biggest sports night as the Denver Broncos won Super Bowl 50. This Monday the music industry will hold its most celebrated awards night — the Grammys — and two weeks following the well-anticipated movie night of the year — the Academy Awards — will broadcast live after receiving a load of criticism in the past months for its lack of diversity in nominations.
It’s the contrast between nominees for the Grammys and the Academy Awards that makes this year’s award season a little different.
As the trending #OscarsSoWhite lit up social media following the announcement of the Academy Awards all-white acting nominations, the public’s dismay not only brought acknowledgment to the award ceremony’s 88-year-old historic diversity issue, but also change. A week following the nomination announcement — as well as the backlash criticism — the Academy took action in making a plan in “doubling the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020.”
It was a step in the right direction — a soon to be determined or not effective change — as the rest of the Hollywood’s film industry plays catch up.
But there’s good reason to question why Hollywood’s lack in diversity has always been more prominent in the film industry and the Academy than in the music industry and the Oscars. Although the Grammys have not been under the same scrutiny as the Academy Awards, that is not to say they are far from scot-free of the issue.
By just the small glance at this year’s Grammy nominees, it’s obvious the music awards are embracing talented people of color while the Oscars are not. From Bruno Mars to The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar to D’Angelo And The Vanguard, music’s biggest night shines in more colors than just white and gold.
By 1959, the year of the first Grammy Awards, the Academy had already been around for 29 years. And in those close to three decades, only one black actor won an Oscar —Hattie McDaniel’s historic win for “Gone With the Wind” in 1939. Latino actors Anthony Quinn and Jose Ferrer, as well as Japanese actress Miyoshi Umeki, also went on to win, making a total of three minority winners in those 29 years that were filled with hundreds of nominations.
During the first Grammy Awards ceremony, two musicians of color took home major and honorable accolades, meaning in one night the Grammys honored nearly the same amount of people of color as the Academy had in nearly 30 years.
In the following 58 years, the Academy Awards would rally up a grand total of 14 minority men and women who had won Oscars for their acting performances. That’s 87 consecutive years of awards. It took the Grammys less than 20 years to honor 14 men and women of color for major music awards.
However, this is not to say that the Grammys have been the subject of any controversy.
Will Smith — whose performance in “Concussion” failed to receive a nomination has publically announced that he is boycotting this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, an action he once took to the Grammys as well. In 1989, Smith along with DJ Jazzy Jeff, JJ Cool J, Salt-N-Pepa and others boycotted the music award night due the Grammy’s refusal to televise the Hip Hop portion.
And though this year’s Grammy nominees for major accolades are notably mixed in terms of race, it was just last year that the awards show found itself under fire for its distinct lack of diversity in a number of major categories. The 2015 ceremony featured all white nominees in both the Best New Artist category as well as for Record of the Year. Out of the Grammy’s top four categories, only two of the 20 nominated musicians — Pharrell Williams and Beyoncé —were people of color, with many criticizing the snubs of Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar in the categories.
The fact of the matter is both of these entertainment institutions are overwhelmingly different from one another in many aspects. There’s of course the obvious fact — and possibly the most important — that with actors in the film industry you physically see their presence on screen rather than just a musician’s voice on the radio. But there are other underlining differences between the two.
If asked to picture an artist in your head from different genres of music, your idea of that artist would change with each genre. But if you were asked to do the same thing with film, how would that thought change? Who do you see when I ask you to picture an actor in an action film? Or comedy? Or horror? I would bet on white.
The films you see with actors of color are the ones where their race is the most prominent aspect of the story, movies like “12 Years a Slave”, “Glory”, “Ray” and of course “Gone with the Wind.”
The problem is not that the Academy Awards aren’t a fair representation of people of color in the film industry — nor should it be. But that’s not to say there aren’t deserving nominations from performances by people of color every year. The problem is that those who vote for these awards — the Oscar voters, the Grammy members — they are not a fair representation of their respected industry.
The most recent report on the demographics of Academy members determined that 94 percent were white and 76 percent were male. Though this report was taken in 2012, the result has likely stayed more or less the same as Academy membership is for life even if you’ve left the industry — though that will change as of next year with the new instated guidelines. In similar vein, an unidentified 17-year Grammy voter told Billboard that, “The voting bloc is still too white, too old and too male.”
Grammy winners are still overwhelmingly white men. Women of color make up a minor 14.3 percent of nominations in the Grammys’ 58-year history. In the last 20 years, only one woman of color has ever won Record of the Year: Whitney Houston.
So even though the Academy Awards — particularly this year’s — are making the Grammys look like the epitome of diversity, they still share similar problems, whether its publicly addressed or not. And with those problems, they should share similar solutions. The Academy’s fitting decision to increase diversity within its member’s board by 2020 should be one the Grammys should follow as well.
Will this entirely transform the overly white male institutions of the two entertainment businesses? No. But it’s certainly a step in the right direction.