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The people that vote for the Oscars, don't look like the people that watch the films. The Academy is much older, whiter, and dude-ier*. Oscar winners, are the inevitable outcome of Oscar voters.

The question isn't "Has the Academy changed enough to where filmmakers from marginalized backgrounds have the same chance to win an Oscar yet?"

The question is "Will the Oscars have the same relevance to society 10 years from now, that they do today?"

(*In 2022, 81% white, 67% men.)

The Oscars is a bunch of old white dudes, voting for things that old white dudes like. 🤷🏿‍♂️

This isn't necessarily intentionally malicious! People vote for what they understand and can relate to.

Which is why a civil rights movie can win! But only if that civil rights movie is made for the white eye:

* There has to be a white savior in it! Non-negotiable.
* The white racist is often forgiven at the end of the movie!
* There is often a "Black people are racist too!" character.

If you constructed an Academy that was 81% Black folk who had grown up in a majority Black country like Nigeria*, and 67% men, with an average age of ~60, and ask them to pick Oscar winners, you'd have a similar problem, but in a different direction.🙂🙃

(*Being Black in a majority Black country like Nigeria, is very different than being Black in the US. A Black person in the US, has much better cultural understanding of majority US culture).

So the question I think we should be asking is not:

"How do we get more 60-year-old white men to vote for Barbie than Oppenheimer?"

But

"Why, in 2024, is the Academy still so gender skewed? And when should we expect equity in racial representation?"

Something people are reluctant to admit:

How good you thought Barbie or Oppenheimer was, depends deeply on how much of the underlying referent system you carry into the movie.

The more you understand about US consumer toy culture, contemporary US sexism, and the Barbie toy... the better the Barbie movie was for you. Men who knew more about sexism and the Barbie toy, enjoyed the movie more.👍🏿

Oppenheimer was the inverse. Men who knew less about Lumumba and Navajo people, liked it more.
🙂🙃

@mekkaokereke

> Men who knew less about Lumumba and Navajo people, liked it more.

Can you help me like it less? I like to learn about the real background behind things where possible.

mekka okereke :verified:

@dascandy42

Lumumba:

Most of the high quality uranium came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congo was recently liberated from Belgium, but Belgium was still doing colonial stuff. The prime minister of the DRC asked the US government for help not being bullied by France. The US government said "But we like Belgium more than we like you, so they can bully you, it's fine! LOL!"

Lumumba said "Please? The only other superpower I could ask for help is the USSR."

So we said, "🤬"

@dascandy42

Anyways, Lumumba was assassinated and the DRC has been in turmoil and violence ever since. Many times more people died in Africa so that the US could get uranium for the bombs, than died in Japan when the bombs were dropped.

5.4 million people died in the Congo, because Patrice Lumumba was assassinated, because he asked the US for help in a way that made the US feel that if they didn't help, he would sell his uranium to the Soviets. And the US had no intention of helping.

@mekkaokereke
I have a really good book about all of this, the ties to Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah and the pan African movement. As well as the involvement of the CIA in all this. The book is called "White Malice: the CIA and the neocolonialisation of Africa" it's a very good introduction to the subject if you want to learn more.
@dascandy42

@mekkaokereke Geological history note: USSR's access to uranium was not effectively limited by such moves.
Russia was already extracting uranium from the oil shale deposits near Sillamäe, Northeast Estonia, which Stalin had had occupied in 1944, and in 1960s, mining of the massive uranium deposit in Streltsovsk, Zabaykalsky Kray, began.

@dascandy42

@mekkaokereke It would be really interesting to know how much about USSR's industrial geology CIA knew at the time.

Dollars to doughnuts, picking up clues about mineable deposits was among the purposes of U2's overflights.

@dascandy42

@mekkaokereke @dascandy42 to be clear, "So we said '🤬'" is an excellent summary... if "we" is the US, we said that by attempting to assassinate Lumumba, backing a coup that overthrew his government and replaced it with an autocracy, and supporting a successful operation to have him killed