Hollywood Swinging - Kool and the Gang

Good morning peeps!! Did you watch The Oscar Ceremony last night? Being the pop culture "junkie" that I am, I watched in anticipation of the highly publicized hype of "something different from The Oscars that you've never seen before..." Well, unless I dozed off  (which I did occasionally), I missed something. Sure, there were two hosts: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, and less big production numbers; not much else seemed really new. Did they mean having former winners from each category offer commentary about the new nominees? Ho-hum. Nothing exciting there. However, what was somewhat new, was having at least three African Americans in the running for Oscars, at one time: Morgan Freeman (Invictus),  Mo'Nique, (Precious), and Gabourey Sidibe, (Precious), and an African American in contention for Best Director (Lee Daniels; Precious).  Can't remember when that happened before or if that ever happened. An African American won for Best Adapted Screen Play for Precious; Geoffrey Fletcher, a New Yorker who teaches at NYU.

Speaking of Precious, it is only one of three of the nominated movies I actually saw; the others being Avatar and The Lovely Bones. I don't go to the movies much these days, but I do see what I want on DVD. Now, back to the Oscars. Kudos to Mo'Nique for her winning her very first Oscar on her first time nominated! That is quite an accomplishment! I also have to say that she looked stunning in her royal blue, shirred front gown, and her beautifully coiffed hair!  In watching her performance in Precious, I do agree that she was powerful, but I don't know if it was Oscar worthy...don't hate, it's my opinion. To me, it was "The Monster's Ball Syndrome" all over again. That is, when Black women play either overly sexualized women (Halle in Monster's Ball) or some convincingly brutal batterer as in Precious, they get Hollywood's attention! I have seen many other performances by African American women that I felt should have won Oscars but didn't. Angela Bassett as Tina Turner for example. This is progress though, in this sense: in the not too distant past, heavy set African American women were relegated to playing maids, mammies, slaves; or fair-skinned black women were always portraying  "tragic mulattoes" "passing for white" or "exotic island dwellers."

Speaking of maids, I thought it was very gracious of Mo'Nique to pay homage to the late Hattie McDaniels, that I'll bet went over the heads of many in the audience, as well as home viewers. How many African American youth even know who Hattie McDaniel was! Do You? Hattie McDaniel was a heavy set African American actress who was very active in films during the thirties, forties and possibly fifties. She played...you guessed it...maids! She is also the first African American to win an Oscar in 1940, for her portrayal as a "mammy" in Gone With The Wind." In her real life, she supposedly quipped that she'd rather "play a maid than be one" as she laughed all the way to the bank!

Another first this time around, is that a woman won a "Best Director" Oscar for the little known film, "The Hurt Locker." This is significant for more reasons than one: the movie beat out the Goliath: Avatar, and the director, Kathryn Bigelow, beat her former husband...James Cameron in the Best Director category!
Congratulations to all the winners!!!